TAFETA | Niyi Olagunju

The fair includes plenty of art closely associated with the African continent...The British-Nigerian Niyi Olagunju is the most hard-hitting, creating partially gilded remakes of traditional sub-Saharan sculptures to criticise the global trade in objects that often had sacred or ritual origins in Africa.

The New York Times, Mar 2020

The artist re-appropriates traditional African sculptures, bisecting them vertically and coating them in metals mined from the region from where they are originally sourced. His use of precious and semi-precious metals draws attention to the multiple relationships that can emerge from the exploitation of natural resources in Africa, and its impacts on people and their cultural legacies.

Sothebys, Mar 2022
Text in support of the benefit sale to support The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Lagos