G.A.S. Foundation is pleased to welcome Fiyin Koko Tunde-Onadele, a multidisciplinary Nigerian artist, for a residency taking place between G.A.S. Lagos and the G.A.S. Farm House in Ikise from January to February 2026. Working across painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, installation, and moving image, Tunde-Onadele’s practice is grounded in womanism, memory, play, and embodied experience. Her work explores how personal and collective stories—particularly those centered on women—are formed, remembered, and transformed over time.
During the residency, Tunde-Onadele will focus on developing a new body of work that draws from Yoruba stories while expanding her ongoing inquiry into womanhood, memory, and identity. She plans to integrate photography, painting, and sculpture, allowing the slower rhythms and landscape of the farm to shape both her process and material choices. Time spent away from Lagos will provide space for reflection, experimentation, and intentional making, as well as close observation of daily life on the farm and engagement with the land and surrounding communities.
Her research will include visits to clay and pottery communities in Ijebu and Ijebu Ode, alongside studio visits in Lagos. Tunde-Onadele also hopes to contribute to the cultural life of the residency through community engagement, including the creation of a site-responsive installation using found materials on the farm and the facilitation of a simple creative workshop for children using clay and everyday materials. Through these gestures, she aims to foster exchange, imagination, and shared making.
Image courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Daniel Obasi
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
My current practice is centred around play, memory, and what it feels like to be a woman right now. I’ve been working with old photographs and blending them with the present, using them to explore how memories change and how they shape who we are. I’m also interested in bringing the stories I create and the stories that have been shared with me into something people can see and touch with sculpture
I work across different media, but at the heart of it, I’m trying to understand identity, womanism and the everyday stories we carry.
Image courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Anny Robert
What drew you to apply for this residency and how do you think it will inform your wider practice?
I applied for this residency because it felt like the perfect environment for the kind of work I’m ready to make. It truly is a dream come true honestly especially after seeing the incredible artists who have passed through G.A.S. and hearing them speak about how supported they felt. Having that level of intentional support and structure is something every artist hopes for, because it’s often in those moments that the work reaches its truest potential.
I also really wanted to experience The Farm, the quiet, space, and distance from Lagos’ intensity. I believe the environment will allow me to slow down, think more expansively, and experiment in ways that will feed my practice long after the residency ends.
Image courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Niyi Okeowo
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
I hope to use this residency to dive into new ideas and expand my visual language. I plan to experiment with painting, sculpture, and possibly installation work, allowing the landscape and rhythm of the farm to influence the direction of the work. I also want to explore play and memory more deeply, and create pieces that feel grounded, honest, and spacious. And having ideas and dreams of a new body of work that I want to do and I’m ready to do it here.
This time away will also be an opportunity to reflect, research, take photographs, and allow myself to be fully present with the work without the usual pressures of Lagos life. My aim is to leave the residency with a stronger sense of clarity, new work, and a renewed connection to my practice.
About Fiyin Koko Tunde-Onadele
Fiyin Koko Tunde-Onadele (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinary Nigerian artist whose practice is rooted in womanism, storytelling, and the reimagining of narratives that place women at the centre of their own worlds. Self-taught, her artistic journey began in childhood, inspired by watching her mother paint. Working across mixed-media painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and digital illustration, she draws from six guiding pillars: womanism, conversation, body positivity, movement, love, and femininity. Her work blends fantasy, her signature use of blue, and elements of artivism to create immersive visual stories that explore memory, identity, and the everyday experiences of women.