Hosted by Open House Lagos
On Saturday, 30th November 2024, G.A.S. Lagos, in collaboration with 9H Media and Open House Lagos, hosted the ‘7 Speakers 7 Minutes’ lecture series as part of the Open House Lagos Festival 2024. This event celebrated the theme ‘Women in Design & Art,’ showcasing the diverse contributions of female creatives in the local design and culture scene. Seven accomplished women from fields including architecture, visual arts, photography, filmmaking, and multidisciplinary design delivered seven-minute presentations, offering first-hand insights into their work and perspectives.
The evening opened with an introduction by Chuka Ihonor, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Open House Lagos and founder of the 9H Design Talk series, where he set the tone by emphasizing the importance of dialogue and collaboration in celebrating creativity and innovation. The speakers including Ayaba Ayo-Joseph, Françoise Aramide Akinosho, Nengi Omuku, Nengi Nelson, Marcellina Akpojotor, Eve Nnaji, and Claire Idera shared presentations that explored their respective disciplines' and personal journeys, whilst addressing the overarching theme of ‘Women in Design & Art.’ Their talks sparked lively engagement and meaningful discussions during the Q&A session which followed afterwards.
The event concluded with a celebratory book giveaway and a networking session over food and drinks. Attendees left with fresh perspectives, new connections, and a shared appreciation for the vital role of women in design and art.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Ayaba Ayo-Joseph
Ayaba Ayo-Joseph is a Lawyer who worked as a Banker for 26 years including at Ecobank Nigeria Limited, Magnum Trust Bank Ltd, Habib Nigeria Bank pIc and finally as a CBN-appointed Executive Director of Bank PHB.
She has since retired from Banking and is currently a Consultant who runs a ‘Family Office’ offering a total solution to managing the investments, property and trusts that make up a family’s wealth. She is also a Resource Person/Facilitator specialising in Process Re-Engineering and Private Wealth. Ayaba is the Chairperson of the Executive Committee, Ebola Containment Trust Fund, a Director of Fiber 1 Broadband and Polaris Bank, as well as a member of the Board of Governors of Corona Schools Trust Council. She also sits on a number of other Public Committees as part of her contribution to Community Development.
Passionate about Health and Wellbeing, the Environment, the Arts and People Development (Coaching & Mentoring), she uses her corporate and leadership experience to positively impact and transform persons wishing to grow professionally or seeking a career change.
Nengi Nelson
Nengi Nelson is a Lagos-based visual artist, whose works intersect photography and film. She is known for her monochrome photographs that capture the ever-so-palatable and changing Lagos landscape. Using portraiture and documentary-style photographs her works explore herself first then her community through themes like identity, vulnerability and social response/acceptance. She draws inspiration from films, everyday life and issues affecting her immediate community.
Her works have been exhibited at the Passport, Lagos Photo Festival (Lagos, 2019); Female Lockdown Views (Virtual Exhibition, 2020); Heinrich Bohl Stiftung solo installation (Lagos, 2021); Women In The City LUDI X HBS, (Lagos, 2022); End Police Brutality; Forme Femine (Virtual Exhibition 2022) etc. She has been commissioned and published, amongst others, by the BBC, Gucci, ATLAS, Etihad, Reuters, Thomson Reuters Foundation, WhatsApp, Centre for Cooperative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), African Women Board.
Eve Nnaji
Eve Nnaji is an architectural designer, researcher and writer and founder of Add.apt, a practice that utilizes architecture, design, and data as a tool to bridge environmental consciousness with urban development. Her research interests include urban flood mitigation strategies, indigenous intelligence, and alternative material exploration.
Add.apt is an architectural practice that was established in 2022 in Lagos, Nigeria. The practice builds architecture that is conscious of itself, its environment, and responsive to the communities it serves. It solves not solely through the transformation of mass, but the transformation of self, grounded in its research and development arm, the Material Lab.
Claire Idera
Claire Idera is an award-winning creative entrepreneur, multidisciplinary artist, and educator. She also Gaby’s mum and wife to Nigeria’s most versatile Actor, Akah Nnani.
As a leader in art, fashion, and design, she founded the first illustration and design school for designers in 2015, fostering emerging talent. Through CIWorkshop, she has mentored over 500 creatives to discover their unique voice. At Cladini Studio, Claire collaborates with designers worldwide, creating faith-inspired fashion, paintings, and limited-edition pieces that explore spirituality and femininity. Her work is driven by a mission to inspire and connect others with her supernatural expressions.
Françoise Aramide Akinosho
Françoise Akinosho, a French trained architect, grew up in Paris, where her passion for drawing led her to pursue architecture. Trained at the École de la Ville et des Territoires, she developed an approach focused on urban scale, incorporating the dynamics of new cities into her projects. After graduating, Françoise moved to New York for four years, where she worked with prestigious firms such as Bernard Tschumi Architects and Archi-Tectonics. There, she refined her approach to high end design, for interior and architecture.
She is the managing Director of FAA (Françoise Akinosho Architectures), describing the style of her practice as ‘contemporary vernacular’ blending modernity with respect for the local context. Her notable achievements include a glasses store, Vogue Optique in Paris, Fusion Concept (the luxury male clothing boutique in Lagos, and an ambitious master plan for Abidjan. Her international recognition is highlighted by her victory in the competition for the Kano market and features in specialized magazines. Today, Françoise aspires to integrate a deeper spiritual dimension into her projects while exploring innovative solutions for affordable housing in Abidjan. Her journey, shaped by her French roots and her experience in Lagos, continues to influence an architecture that is both bold and deeply rooted in its environment.
Nengi Omuku
Omuku is a visual artist and founder of ‘The Art of Healing’ charity (TAOH) and lives and works between Lagos Nigeria and London United Kingdom. She completed her BA and MA at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
Using the subject of the body to translate interior experience, Nengi Omuku’s expressive paintings portray abstracted figures among spectacular celestial landscapes that draw evocatively the natural world, horticulture, and creationism. Drawing inspiration from the social and psychological realities of her subjects, whom she has often photographed and painted in her studio, as well as from various sources in archival and contemporary media, she creates worlds in which the distinction between bodies and nature is often blurred, reflecting on the intricacies around navigating place and belonging. The images are rendered in oil paint and painted on strips of Sanyan; a pre-colonial western Nigerian fabric, created from woven threads of wild moth silk and blended with industrial cotton. For the artist, the blend of oil paint and Sanyan speaks to living between cultures, yet firmly contextualising her work within her local setting of Nigeria.
Recent exhibitions include Soulscapes at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Aso Oke: Prestige Cloth from Nigeria at Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri; A Corps Defendant at La Galerie Centre d’Art Comtemporain, Paris; The Dance of People and the Natural World at Hastings Contemporary, England and a solo institutional exhibition. Omuku was awarded the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy April 2024, The Black Rock Senegal Residency 2023, and The World Trade Organisation Residency in Geneva 2021. Omuku’s work can be found in international private and public collections such as the Baltimore Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami); The Whitworth Collection, Manchester; HSBC Art Collection; The Bunker Artspace Museum; Loewe Art Collection; Monsoon Art Collection; Easton Capital Collection; Azman Museum; Dawn Art Collection; Ditau Collection; Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edward’s College, Cambridge; Norton Museum of Art.
Marcellina Akpojotor
Marcellina Akpojotor (b. 1989, Lagos, Nigeria) creates richly textured, layered works exploring femininity, personal and societal identity, familial history and women empowerment through collaging and traditional painting. Utilizing discarded Ankara fabric, she examines its cultural significance and role in memory and shared energy.
Akpojotor's work has been showcased in several exhibitions, including The Flower Show (2023) at L.A. Louver Gallery, Los Angeles, and Narrative as Reality: Constructing an Identity (2023) at Martin Museum of Art, Texas. Her most recent solo exhibition, Joy of More Worlds, was held at Rele Gallery, London in 2024. She was an artist resident at Fountainhead, Miami (2021). She has featured in publications such as CNN, Harper's Bazaar, BBC, and the New York Times, among others.
This event was hosted by Open House Lagos and 9H Design Talk in collaboration with G.A.S. Foundation.
