In March 2025, Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, in partnership with the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.), announced the call for the pilot edition of the Ìmòra Arts Intensive, an initiative designed to support the professional development of emerging local artists. Taking its name from the Yoruba words Ìmòra (support, guidance, mentorship) and ìmò ẹkọ (acquisition of knowledge or skill-building), the programme offers early-career visual fine artists based in Lagos a unique opportunity to gain practical knowledge, expand their networks, and refine their approach to professional practice.
The open call received over 100 applications. A dedicated selection panel comprising G.A.S. Executive Director Moni Aisida, artist and CEO of Five Cowries Educational Initiative Polly Alakija, G.A.S. Trustee, artist and curator Temitayo Ogunbiyi, Y.S.F. Trustee and curator Ann Marie Peña, and founder of Soto Gallery and Plus 234 Art Fair Tola Akerele carefully reviewed the submissions to select this year’s participants. We are grateful for their time and thoughtful consideration throughout the process.
Today, we are pleased to announce the participants of the 2025 edition of the Ìmòra Arts Intensive: Amadi Chukwuemeka, Anaghoba Oluchi, Apah Benson, Bello Oladele, Emore Yoma, Jolaolu Moyosore, Nwafor Chidimma, Okwudini Noah, Lawal Ololade, and Lawal Oyewole.
The ten selected participants will take part in a one-week intensive at G.A.S. Lagos featuring a dedicated programme of hands-on workshops led by industry professionals. Through this, they will receive tailored guidance and support to strengthen key areas of their practice, including writing compelling funding applications, developing strong project proposals, crafting effective artist statements, and documenting their work. The programme will also offer insight into navigating both local and global arts ecosystems, equipping participants with the practical tools and networks needed to advance their careers.
We would also like to acknowledge the shortlisted applicants for their outstanding proposals, which made the selection process highly competitive. The shortlisted artists are: Anachuna Victor, Eluṣadé Tolúwalọpẹ́, Fab-Uche Valerie, Nnoli Amarachi, Oba-Fidelis David, Onadipe Oluwayemisi, Osanyintolu Timilehin, Ozoemena Nzubechukwu and Ugoala Uzor.
The Ìmòra Arts Intensive falls under the wider scope of Project Nexus, an ambitious residency and education programme designed to nurture and empower artists, art educators, art historians, and curators through a series of residencies, professional development workshops, and educational initiatives over three years. The project embodies the spirit of collaboration and cultural exchange that lies at the heart of both Foundations’ missions, aiming to encourage and cultivate artistic excellence and curatorial innovation. Project Nexus is generously supported by Deutsche Bank.
The Ìmòra Arts Intensive is made possible through the generous support of Deutsche Bank. We look forward to witnessing the many ways these artists will evolve their practices and contribute to the wider arts ecosystem through their participation in this programme.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Amadi Chukwuemeka
Amadi Obinna Chukwuemeka (b .1992) a graduate of Fine and Applied Arts (2nd Class honours upper division) from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, specialising in painting. He also had his industrial training at the Universal Studios of Art, Lagos where he was tutored by seasoned artists like Abiodun Olaku, Wallace Ejoh, Joshua Nmesirionye, Mr Bunmi Babatunde and others. He is currently a member of the Universal Studios of Art, National theater Iganmu.
He is a versatile artist who favours the use of oils, acrylics, graphite and charcoal to create pictures that are rich in light, contrast and texture. His core is the depiction of portraits and figures of everyday people often in exaggerated light. He explores themes of love , family, virtue, community, nostalgia, beauty, positivity and the resilient human spirit. He sees community as a means to nip the vices of society in the bud. He also views companionship/family as remedies to today’s challenges of mental health, anxiety, loneliness, social media addiction and drug/substance abuse which are very prevalent in our climate today.
Anaghoba Oluchi
Oluchi Anaghoba (b. 2001) is a visual artist working with painting and collage. Her practice merges painted surfaces with photographic elements to explore and emphasize the layered nature of identity. Anaghoba’s work engages themes of vulnerability, resilience, and creative authenticity. By challenging societal expectations that often stifle self-expression, she creates art centered on the preservation and reimagination of memory-both personal and collective.
Since earning her Bachelor’s degree in Fine and Applied Arts from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra, in 2021, she has participated in several group exhibitions, including The XX Exhibition I (2021), Awka Museum; Mirror (2022) with the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), Anambra chapter; The XX Exhibition II (2023) Awka Museum; The Heartscape Exhibition (2024), Yenwa Gallery, Lagos; and Undiscovered 2.0 (2024), Thought Pyramid Art Centre, Abuja. Anaghoba is also an alumna of the 2024 African Female Artist Mentorship Program (AFAMP) residency in Lagos. She currently lives and works in Lagos.
Apah Benson
Apah Benson is a Nigerian visual artist and photographer whose work bridges identity, culture, beauty, and socio-political issues through surreal storytelling. His artistic journey began with poetry—an intimate means of processing emotions—before evolving into photography as a way to explore deeper visual narratives. Merging fine art, fashion, and documentary photography, Apah celebrates the richness of dark skin tones while unraveling intricate narratives of freedom and self-expression. His images masterfully weave light and shadow, creating striking compositions that blur the line between reality and illusion without excessive manipulation. Through this approach, he challenges viewers to rethink the nature of photography itself, sparking conversations on culture, identity, and society.
His work has gained international recognition, with exhibitions at Art Basel Miami, Haute Photographie Amsterdam, Paris Photo with Kahmann Gallery, and The African Foto Fair by Aida Muluneh, among others. A pioneer in the fusion of blockchain and art, he curated The Inception, Africa’s first Solana-based exhibition, and founded a thriving Web3 DAO for emerging artists. In 2023, he was shortlisted for the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art and a semi-finalist for the Tilga Art Prize 2024. Having recently completed the Co-Cr8 Experimental Cross-Disciplinary Residency, Apah continues to push the boundaries of fine art photography, using his lens to explore untold stories and redefine contemporary African visual culture.
Bello Oladele
Oladele Bello is a Nigeria-based artist working across video art, photography, poetry, and theatre. He was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and earned a B.A. in Theatre and Media Arts from the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, in 2022. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Russian Museum of Ethnography in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His video art piece Ghost was the jury pick (18-25 category) at the International Plural+ Video Festival in Fez, Morocco, 2022. In 2024, he was the 3rd runner-up for The Tilga Art Prize, Nigeria Edition. He worked with The QDance Centre as an artistic assistant and served as the media lead for The Q School.
Emore Yoma
Yoma Emore (b. 1997, Nigeria) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores memory, migration, and materiality through textile-based interventions, archival excavation, and conceptual cartography. With a background in fine art and visual studies, from the University of Worcester and UAL: Chelsea College of Arts, Emore engages with personal and collective histories, often centering familial archives as a means of interrogating the residues of displacement and transnational connection.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including recent presentations in Los Angeles, Art Basel Miami, and Lagos, where she continues to develop bodies of work that blur the boundaries between art, documentation, and speculative geography. Through the layering of hand-stitched textiles, printmaking, and found ephemera, Emore's work foregrounds the tactile as a site of both preservation and transformation - mapping the imperceptible routes of correspondence, longing, and belonging across time and space.
Jolaolu Moyosore
Born in 1993 in Lagos, Nigeria, Moyosore is an artist whose paintings exude a profound sense of emotion and introspection. Through his masterful use of colour and composition, he invites viewers into a realm of yearning, memories, and unspoken truths, relaying his thoughts on various issues affecting his immediate society and the world through different mediums. He holds a degree in Graphic design from Yaba College of Technology, and he worked as an art director in advertising, after which he decided to focus on his practice as a full-time studio artist. Moyosore's art is largely autobiographical, featuring self-portraits, portraits of others, and serene depictions of his acquaintances and surroundings. In October 2021, his work was displayed in various exhibitions. In September 2022, he completed a residency at the DiDA gallery in Ivory Coast.
Nwafor Chidimma
Chidimma Nwafor is a Nigerian visual artist based in Lagos. Working primarily in oil on canvas her expressive, symbol-laden paintings draw from personal memory and dreams to explore identity, social conditioning, and the fluid process of becoming, deeply rooted in her experience as a first daughter. Influenced by Rococo and Symbolism, she creates dreamlike scenes where recurring self-portraits inhabit liminal states between shame and self-reclamation. Her recent series, Nature vs Nurture, examines how dreams and reality shape identity. Nwafor holds a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Benin and has been a finalist for both the Art X Prize and the Kuenyehia Prize.
Okwudini Noah
Noah Misan Okwudini is an antidisciplinary artist, writer, and futures synthesist. He believes in the power of community and the potential to dream and co-create desirable futures and participatory realities. His inquiry process employs research, art thinking, pedagogical approaches, and cultural organizing to document, conceptualize and speculate, using formats like photography, sound, performance, and new media, including creative coding. He often experiments at the intersection of art, science, and technology, viewing this as a critical site for prototyping and imagineering alternative realities. He explores eco-cultural narratives, memory, space-time and changes within these contexts, with a particular focus on African narratives and ways of knowing.
Lawal Ololade
Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Ololade is a visual artist who inquires through lens-based mediums and abstract paintings. She studied mass communication at Yaba College of Technology and in 2019, during the higher diploma level, she discovered her passion for arts and visual media. She is also a mentee at the Nlele institute.
She has developed individual practices in photography and abstract painting over the years. The former focuses majorly on documenting and creating visual evidence of stories connected to discourse on death, motherhood, and some trivialities of the mundane, while the latter and recent experimental installation, are personalized commentary on similar themes and detachment, with situational evidence based on her lived experiences. She looks to evolve to an interdisciplinary practice that merges both mediums. Some of her exhibitions includes: a solo show for her paintings themed ‘Eternal Sunshine’ with Aziza Gallery, a group show ‘Floating in Place’ with Affinity Gallery, she has featured in Ake Review and she is a Kuta Arts Residency Alumni.
Lawal Oyewole
Oyewole Lawal is a photographer, visual artist, and storyteller based in Lagos, Nigeria. His work is rooted in sociological inquiry and driven by a deep commitment to documenting social issues, environmental injustice, and the complexities of human experience. Through his lens, Lawal challenges stereotypes, amplifies marginalized voices, and initiates critical conversations about power, identity, and societal structures.
In recognition of his powerful visual narratives, Lawal received the prestigious 2023 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Student Grant and the 2024 Emerging Lens Fellowship Grant, among other accolades. His work has been featured in acclaimed publications, exhibitions, and artist residencies across West Africa.
