Young Contemporaries

The Young Contemporaries

Over the years, the Rele Arts Foundation has successfully organised a number of projects including exhibitions, residencies, grants, seminars, panel discussions and public interventions which have at their core, a focus on artistic development, critical dialogue as well as situating art from the African continent in broader international discourse and platforms. Our Young Contemporaries residency and exhibition program has been instrumental in showing emerging artists from Nigeria working across various materials and techniques. Some of the artists like Marcellina Akpojotor, Tonia Nneji, Sejiro Avoseh and Ayobola Kekere-Ekun have all gone on to have exciting careers with increased local and international visibility in the form of exhibitions, residencies and fellowships.

Since its inception in 2015, the Young Contemporaries program has gained prominence, especially in Nigeria for showcasing some of the best artistic talents the country has to offer while also slowly expanding its scope to include artists from other countries in Africa. Recent editions have seen artists from Botswana, Egypt and Ghana participate in the boot camp and residency programs.

About Young Contemporaries

The Rele Arts foundation is pleased to present her annual young contemporary open call.
The Bootcamp is a 2 weeks intensive virtual class With leading artists and curators from across the continent as facilitators and mentors. The campers learn critical thinking, exploring a global artistic practice, establishing a social media presence, and how to care for and handle artworks amongst other things.
In collaboration with The Curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA Dr. Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi and The Ekiti state government, the residency gives grounds for collective and individual mentorship sessions with the artists in residence, these sessions in turn lead to the birth of elevated methods of thinking and exciting visual interpretation of artistic ideas.
After a final selection, we present the annual Young contemporary exhibition. The exhibition showcases the cumulative effect of the boot camp and time spent in residence.