Tiwani Contemporary Residencies

Guest Artists Space Foundation began working collaboratively with Tiwani Contemporary in early 2022 following the opening of their new gallery space on Victoria Island, Lagos. The resulting opportunities are funded through our Fellowship Platinum Partner donor package, a giving level used to directly support three residency fellowship awards in Nigeria over a three-year period with a focus on African and African Diaspora recipients. In this instance it allows artists who are either represented by or exhibiting with Tiwani to complete a one-month residency at G.A.S.

Emma Prempeh

UK | Aug - Sept 2022

 

Emma Prempeh lives and works in London. She studied at Goldsmiths University of London graduating in 2019 and winning the Alumno/Space bursary award in 2020. She recently attended MA Painting at the Royal College of Art under the LeverHulme Trust Arts Scholarship winning the Valerie Beston Trust Arts award for 2022.

 

Prempeh was Tiwani's inaugural Artist in Residence at G.A.S. and the gallery presented her most recent works at their Lagos venue on Victoria Island between the 8th of September and the 28th of October 2022 in an exhibition titled You were, you are, and you always will be.

 

 

Portrait of Emma Prempeh. Courtesy of the artist and ALSO Journal. Photo by Ellyse Anderson.

Gideon Gomo, Ko Ini Ndisinawo Hata, 2022. Spring stone, brass cymbals, metal wire and rivets. Image: Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary.

Gideon Gomo

Zimbabwe | Oct - Nov 2022

 

Gideon Gomo (b. 1983) is a visual artists and sculptor based in Harare, Zimbabwe. He studied at the National Gallery Visual Arts Studios of Zimbabwe and has exhibited extensively internationanlly in Germany, South Africa, Austria and his native Zimbabwe. He has completed both local and international artist residencies in Germany and South Africa and participated in the Oberncation Sculpture Symposium in 2009 and again in 2012.

 

His practice has always focused on everyday life and his lived experience, Gomo's current preoccupation is the exploration of emotions, and specifically uncovering emotions that men don’t typically express due to social and societal constraintaints and expectations.

 

 

 

Portia Zvavahera

Zimbabwe | Oct - Nov 2022

 

Portia Zvavahera was born in 1985 in Harare where she currently lives and works. She studied at the BAT Visual Arts Studio under the auspices of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe between 2003 and 2005, after which she obtained a Diploma in Visual Arts from Harare Polytechnic in 2006.

 

She has had six solo exhibitions at Stevenson Cape Town and Johannesburg (2014-20), and two at David Zwirner, London and New York (2020–21). The Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean in Mauritius presented a small survey, Walk of Life, in 2020. A two-person show, Portia Zvavahera and Gustav Klimt: A Dialogue, took place at De 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg, in 2019. Zvavahera held a solo exhibition, Under My Skin, at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, in 2010.

 

Zvavahera featured in the main exhibition of the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams. She represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 as part of the exhibition Dudziro: Interrogating the Visions of Religious Beliefs at the Zimbabwean Pavilion.

 

 

Portia Zvavahera, Rangani (devise your strategy), 2022. Oil-based printing ink and oil bar on Linen. Image: Courtesy of the artist, Stevenson, and David Zwirner

Photo courtesy of Umar Rashid 

Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers)

USA | Feb - Mar 2023

 

Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist, Umar Rashid is a painter and installation artist whose work illustrates alternative historical narratives, most notably, his fictional Frenglish Empire (1648 - 1880). His reappropriations of world histories explore the intricacies of race, gender, class, and power, and his chosen iconography is simultaneously evocative of contemporary and historical imagery.

 

Rashid’s work is included in numerous public collections, such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Hudson River Museum, and Nevada Museum of Art, and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), South Africa.

 

Umar will showcase new work this February, in a solo exhibition - The Undiscovered Genius of the Niger Delta, at Tiwani Contemporary in Lagos. He will also exhibit at the Sharjah Biennial 15 (SB15). His residency is supported by Tiwani Contemporary.

 

 

Leo Robinson

Scotland | Sept - Oct 2023

 

 

Leo Robinson is an artist and musician living and working in Glasgow. His work explores the creation of new symbols and spiritual technologies. 

 

Recent solo exhibitions include 'The Infinity Card', Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, UK ‘Theories for Cosmic Joy’, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK 2019. Group exhibitions include ‘To The Edge of Time’, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, ‘Antechamber’, Quench, Margate, UK, ‘Bathing Nervous Limbs’, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, UK, ‘tender spots in hard code…’, Arebyte, London, UK (all 2021) and ‘Talking Back’, Holden Gallery, Manchester, UK (2019). 

 

 

 

Leo Robinson Portrait. Photograph © G.A.S. Foundation

Gareth Nyandoro

Zimbabwe | Oct - Nov 2023

 

Born in Zimbabwe, Nyandoro studied Fine Art at Harare Polytechnic in 2003, and Creative Arts and Design at the Chinhoyi University of Technology. In 2014 and 2015 He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He is interested in trade, commerce, and the ways in which human interaction and behavior influence the dynamics of the local marketplace. His work has recently gained the abstraction of human figures.

He trained as a printmaker, and has developed a technique that follows etching techniques called “Kucheka Cheka” which in Shona, means ‘to cut’. It involves cutting out shapes and figures into paper, which is then sponged over with ink, prior to stripping the surface layer of paper with tape.

 

 

Dawit L Petros

Canada | May 2024

 

Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher, and educator. He completed an MFA in Visual Art at Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; a BFA in Photography at Concordia University, Montreal; a BA in History at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon; and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum in New York City.

 

His work bridges art, design, architecture, and history. Petros interrogates the relationship between African history, migration narratives, modernity, and the legacies of colonialism shaping current events. Petros anchors his production of photography, video, sound, and sculptural installations on extensive periods of study and travel. He is sensitive to formal concerns that balance political engagement with aesthetic language drawn from an abiding interest in minimalist sculpture and conceptual art-making.

 

 

Image courtesy of Dawit L. Petros
 

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