Originally aired live during the 2025 Re:assemblages Symposium, this segment, now available on YouTube, offers on-the-ground coverage, audience engagement, and key moments that shaped the event’s atmosphere and discussions.

Earlier this week, a new and slightly different Art Week affair took place: the Re: assemblages symposium, hosted by the Alliance Française de Lagos, organised by the Guest Artists Space and Yinka Shonibare Foundations and curated by Naima Hassan. The event brought together cultural practitioners including artists, curators, archivists and scholars from across Africa and the world in wide-ranging conversations about African and Afro-diasporic art archives. These are The Art Newspaper’s three key takeaways from the event.

Timed to coincide with the Art X Lagos fair, the gathering was initiated by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and his Guest Artists Space Foundation. The Re:assemblages programme, curated by Berlin-based researcher Naima Hassan, saw contributions from more than 70 African and Afro-diasporic artists, academics and collectors seeking to “reimagine” archives not as “static repositories” but as “dynamic infrastructures for cultural production and exchange”. Events included the launch of the African Arts Libraries Lab, a network connecting institutions and publishers in Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt and SA (represented by the African Literary Cities research project at the University of Cape Town).

Notably, the renowned British artist Yinka Shonibare CBE opened Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation in 2019, a nonprofit in Lagos offering artist residencies and public programming by and for artists in the country and across the globe. “Our focus has always been on building long-term cultural infrastructure rather than short-term visibility,” Shonibare explained, pointing out recent initiatives including the foundation’s Ìmòra Arts Intensive, which trains 10 early-career artists in the city. “What I’m seeing internationally is a genuine shift,” he added. “Nigerian art and creativity is no longer treated as a peripheral curiosity, but as a central force in global culture—and that change is driven by the strength of the institutions and networks we are building in Nigeria.”

THE Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) convened the inaugural Re:assemblages Symposium on November 4 and 5 at the Alliance Française, Ikoyi, Lagos. The event marked the official launch of the African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab), a new continental network connecting arts libraries, publishers, and cultural institutions across Lagos, Dakar, Marrakesh, and Cape Town, while engaging global institutions that hold African and Afro-diasporic collections.

Over 50 leading artists, archivists, researchers, and cultural practitioners examined how archives shape contemporary cultural memory and artistic production during the programme.