This October, we are delighted to share recent achievements from G.A.S. alumni, who continue to make significant contributions across the global arts landscape. From a feature in The New York Times and the inaugural Tacchini Prize to the Cassirer Welz Award, new residencies in Cairo, Laikipia, and Cape Town, and a first monograph, these updates highlight the breadth of practices and critical dialogues being shaped by our community.
Oluwasemilore Delano Featured in The New York Times’ Selection of “12 Artists on the Rise" at The Armory Show
Following her residency earlier this year at G.A.S. Lagos, Oluwasemilore Delano exhibited at The Armory Show with Adegbola Gallery, which funded her residency. She is now featured in The New York Times’ selection of “12 Artists on the Rise at The Armory Show,” with critic Aruna D’Souza highlighting her presentation, The Life of a Few, at the gallery. Working between Nigeria and London, Delano explores memory, lineage, and Black spatial consciousness through drawing and sculpture. Her practice considers what it means to depict the figure, not just as form, but as a site of perception. The Life of a Few comprises works that emerged from Delano’s visit to an abattoir in Lagos, where she photographed cattle being prepared for slaughter. These encounters informed a series of oil and charcoal paintings on grainy, pieced-together plywood, which D’Souza called “disorienting,” an effect that turns our gaze back on ourselves.
Rested between slumped shoulders held the moon in waiting, 2025, Oil paint, charcoal, chalk on plywood, 162 x 244cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
adeoluwa oluwajoba Selected as One of Four Artists for a Three-Month Residency with the ARD South Residency Programme
Following his residency at G.A.S., mixed media artist adeoluwa oluwajoba has been selected, alongside Tendai Talent Mupita (Zimbabwe), Waleed Mohammed (Sudan/Kenya), and Yagazie Emezi (Nigeria), to take part in a three-month residency as part of the ARD South Residency Programme. ARD is a Cairo-based art institution founded in 2022 by Hana El-Beblawy. Located in the city’s Garden City neighbourhood, it specializes in contemporary art practice and runs residencies, exhibitions, and workshops that bring together local and international artists. The programme is presented in partnership with the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).
Photo of adeoluwa oluwajoba.
Liz Kobusinge Announced as Inaugural Visual Artist Fellow of the Mpala Artists and Writers Residency
2024 G.A.S. alumna and Ugandan artist Liz Kobusinge has been selected as the inaugural Visual Artist Fellow of the 2026 Mpala Artists and Writers Residency. She joins Frank Njugi (Kenya), the residency’s inaugural Writer Fellow. Established by the Africa World Initiative in partnership with Princeton University’s Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, the residency supports East African artists and writers whose work engages deeply with the region’s histories, cultures, and environments. Based at the Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia County, Kenya, it places artists and writers alongside scientists and conservation researchers. Fellows are given time and support to develop new work while engaging with the researchers and local communities, and with the region’s history and changing landscapes.
Bisila Noha Named Inaugural Recipient of the Tacchini Prize
Spanish-Equatoguinean London-based ceramicist Bisila Noha has been named the inaugural recipient of the Tacchini Prize, an award from the Italian furniture brand in partnership with Fondazione Officine Saffi, a non-profit dedicated to contemporary ceramics. The newly established prize celebrates the intersection of contemporary artistic research and design culture, focusing on materials as a field of research and expression. The prize includes an exhibition dedicated to Bisila at Casa Tacchini, the brand’s apartment-turned-showroom in Milan. The show, A Tactile Story, is on view until 13 November 2026 and presents Bisila’s sculptural works among a selection of Tacchini furniture.
Baney Clay Part 4 (2024). Image courtesy of Maxine Pennington.
Kim M. Reynolds Co-Formed Collective (B)andWi(d)th Becomes the First Artists-in-Residence at IMPRINT, Zeitz MOCAA’s Publishing Atelier
Kim M. Reynolds marks a significant milestone as the collective she co-formed, (B)andWi(d)th, becomes the first artists-in-residence at IMPRINT, the publishing atelier at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town. Formed with artist Luyanda Zindela, the collective brings together Kim’s work in poetry, literature, and culinary practice rooted in Black and African histories and rituals with Luyanda’s hand-drawn portraiture. For their residency, the duo presents First-Time, a project on the knowledge gained from experiencing something for the first time, from leaving home and falling in love to loss and belonging. Drawing on personal and collective memory, it invites us to consider the connections between our own stories and the archive. Presented as part of IMPRINT, the current iteration of the Koyo Kouoh Atelier, on view from 2 October 2026 to 2 April 2028 alongside Medupi Publishing and Creative Knowledge Resources, their work carries a resonance that extends beyond the page.
Luyanda Zindela and Kim M. Reynolds at the opening of IMPRINT. Image courtesy of (B)andWi(d)th and Zeitz Mocaa.
Katesi Jacqueline Kalange Wins the 2026 Cassirer Welz Award
2024 G.A.S. alumna Katesi Jacqueline Kalange has been named the 2026 winner of the Cassirer Welz Award, one of South Africa’s most prestigious awards for emerging artistic talent from across the Sub-Saharan region, established in 2011 by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. As part of the award, she will participate in a three-month artist’s residency at Bag Factory Artists’ Studios, which will culminate in a solo exhibition. She was selected from a shortlist that also included Ibrahim Bamidele (Nigeria), Oteng Keabetswe (Botswana), Shandré Lummis-Rabie (South Africa), and Ukhona Mthethwa (South Africa).
The Cry of Maama Butonde, performance. KLA Art Festival 2021.
Nolan Oswald Dennis Releases Ecliptics, Their First Monograph
Two-time G.A.S. resident (2023 and 2024) Nolan Oswald Dennis releases Ecliptics, the first monograph on the Lusaka-born, Johannesburg-based artist. Published by the Swiss Institute, Zeitz MOCAA, and Walther König, the book is inspired by their exploration of a “black consciousness of space,” traversing fiction, linguistics, and metaphysics to astronomy, mathematics, and technology, as well as Black, Indigenous, and anti-imperial intellectual traditions, to consider the planetary conditions for a decolonized future. Offering an introduction to Dennis’s “para-disciplinary” art practice through an elaboration of the political histories, scientific frameworks, and critical theoretical discourses that inform it, the book features newly commissioned texts, a conversation, and reprinted texts by a global constellation of artists and theorists.
Ecliptics by Nolan Oswald Dennis.
Head Image. Photo: Silvia Ros Photography. Courtesy of Adegbola Gallery.