Towards the end of last month, we were delighted to welcome Bulgarian-Nigerian ethnobotanist Jonn Gale for an immersive 12-week residency, structured as part of her PhD placement. Based in London, her interdisciplinary practice spans photography, moving image, sound, research, and ecology. Her work combines archival analysis, ethnobotanical research, and sensory-focused visual ethnography, to explore multi-species relationships and the historical role of plants. As part of her practice-led PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, and in collaboration with the Linnean Society of London,  she is currently investigating the overlooked contributions of Black and Indigenous naturalists to 18th- and 19th-century botanical knowledge, working to develop decolonial approaches to archival research.

Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) and Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation are delighted to announce that they have been awarded a transformative $220,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. This significant two-year funding will support two major cross-cultural initiatives at G.A.S. residency locations in Ijebu and Lagos, fostering cultural exchange, ecological engagement, and archival preservation.

Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) and Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation are delighted to announce that they have been awarded a transformative $220,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. This significant two-year funding will support two major cross-cultural initiatives at G.A.S. residency locations in Ijebu and Lagos, fostering cultural exchange, ecological engagement, and archival preservation.

On Friday, 7th February 2025, G.A.S. Lagos hosted Ecosystems by GROUP50:50, a film screening and discussion exploring the complexities of environmental conservation in the Congo Basin, led by resident Eva-Maria Bertschy. The short film, produced by Congolese filmmakers Joseph K. Kasau and Franck Moka, offers a visual entry point into ECOSYSTEM, a larger multimedia music theater project by GROUP50:50 - a collective of artists from Congo, Switzerland and Germany, with a production structure in Basel, Berlin and Lubumbashi that realizes and produces transnational artistic cooperation projects.

On Friday, 10th January 2025, G.A.S. Lagos hosted Uncommon Grounds, marking its first event of the year. Presented in collaboration with Monangambee, a nomadic Pan-African microcinema based in Lagos, and the London-based Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), with support from the British Council, this event is prompted by John Akomfrah’s work at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Listening All Night to the Rain. As one of three events held across different locations, Uncommon Grounds brought together landscape-oriented films that reflect on labor, ecology, and the afterlives of colonialism in Portugal, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom. Blurring the boundaries between film and installation, each work introduced an architectural approach to cinema, laying bare the physicality of filmmaking, the camera apparatus, and the unstable grounds on which it stands.