Bisi Silva (1962-2019) was a long-time ICI collaborator and, beginning in 2010, the Founder/Director of the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Lagos, Nigeria. In one of our first Curator's Perspectives, she presented research across the U.S. in a traveling series of public lectures, panel discussions, and conversations exploring the growing impact of transnational practice, which led to several enduring collaborations between CCA Lagos and American institutions.
CCA Lagos provides a platform for the development, presentation, and discussion of contemporary visual art and culture, with over 100 exhibitions (including the ICI traveling exhibition Publishing Against the Grain). It seeks to create new audiences and to prioritise media such as photography, film and video, performance, and installation art.
Silva and CCA Lagos also developed Àsìkò, an itinerant art school held across Africa in cities including Lagos, Accra, Dakar, Maputo and Addis Ababa. The educational program for artists and curators—part art workshop, part residency and part academy—has filled a gap in the Nigerian arts ecosystem and promoted essential critical methodologies and histories in artistic practice.
In her lifetime, Silva mentored many artists and curators, including Oyindamola Faithful (2010 Intensive alum), who later became CCA Lagos's Executive & Artistic Director, and curator Favour Ritaro. After participating in ICI's 2024 Curatorial Seminar in New York, Favour returned to CCA Lagos to curate Archives and Memories in the center's newly renovated space.
The exhibition offered an emotional homage to Silva’s enduring influence on contemporary African art, which also became foundational to Ritaro's curatorial practice and crosses the archives of the six Nigerian artists on view.