In July 2023, the call for the second G.A.S. Fellowship Award was unveiled. This fully-supported opportunity welcomed emerging creative practitioners from diverse disciplines residing in the West African region. The 2023 edition specifically welcomed applications from emerging practitioners whose work is rooted in the realms of Materiality, Ecology, Food, Environment, and History in the Present.
The judging panel was impressed by the wealth of talent, the quality, and the diversity of artistic practices presented. After careful consideration of the 160 applications received, we are thrilled to announce the selection of three winners. Two of these talented individuals will be embarking on their residencies at G.A.S. Lagos, while the third will have the unique opportunity to research and create at our sister location, the G.A.S. Ecology Green Farm in Ijebu.
AMANDA IHEME
Amanda Iheme is an architecture photographer living and working in Lagos, Nigeria. Her works are focused on documenting and preserving Nigeria’s architectural heritage and the celebration of design and history, culture. Amanda will complete her residency at G.A.S. Lagos.
KOSISOCHUKWU NNEBE
Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a conceptual artist whose practice draws inspiration from postcolonial and Black feminist thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Sylvia Wynter. Working across installation, lens-based media and sculpture, Nnebe engages with topics that range from the politics of Black visibility, embodiment and spatiality to the use of foodways as counter-archives of colonial histories. At its core, Nnebe’s practice is interested in anti-colonial and -imperial world-building through acts of solidarity (human and otherwise), the troubling of colonial logics, and speculative (re)imaginings of otherwise pasts, presents and futures. Kosisochukwu will complete her residency at the G.A.S. Farm House.
OJO TAIYE
Ojo Taiye is a Nigerian eco-artivist, cultural worker, and writer who uses poetry as a tool to hide his frustration with society. His practice is collaborative and often draws from personal experience or interpretation of climate change, homelessness, migration, as well as a breadth of transversal issues ranging from racism, black identity and mental health. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Evergreen Review, Mizna, Narrative Magazine, Mycelia, The Spectacle, Salamander, Consequence, Stinging Fly, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Banshee, Willow Springs, Lambda Literary, Fiddlehead, Puritan, Frontier Poetry, Notre Dame Review, or Strange Horizon. He has worked on the Future(s) 2021 with Catalyst Arts and Belfast Photo Festival; 2021 Sustrans Black History Month Art Project, 2021-22 Scene Stirling COP26 Climate Commission, switch-art project 2021/22, 2022 Green Transitions Conference, Norway; 2022 – CHCI/MELLON Global Humanities Institute, South Africa; We Hear You—A Climate Archive, 2023. His debut mixed media installation was exhibited in Linz, Austria, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival, 2023. Ojo will complete his residency at G.A.S. Lagos.
The G.A.S. Fellowship Award for 2023 is made possible through the generous support of Still Earth Holdings and the unwavering commitment of the G.A.S. and Y.S.F. Residency Patrons. We look forward to witnessing the remarkable contributions these emerging talents will make to the creative landscape and would like to thank