Education like culture can be a driver of socio-economic changes in developing societies. The accessibility of education in the struggling nations in Africa and throughout the world has been one of the major obstacles in bringing social stability to impoverished regions throughout the world.
State-funded schools in countries like Nigeria or South Africa often include education through arts in a limited capacity. During the last few decades, initiatives like the Center for Contemporary Art have helped educate a new generation of artists and provided them with the support they needed to achieve international recognition.
Bisi Silva first visited Lagos, Nigeria in 1999 with an idea to organize a project that will encourage cultural activities on a local scene, and eight years later, in December of 2007, she founded the Center for Contemporary Art. Her aim was to organize exhibitions for local artists and foster the development of the local community by improving the quality of education.
A non-profit space that organizes cultural activities, grants quick access to knowledge about art through its library and unites artists working in different mediums under the same roof quickly developed into one of the best cultural institutions on the African continent. Bisi Silva acknowledged the local arts scene and used it as foundations on which she built something new for the future generations.
Bisi Silva
In doing so, she has opened up space where Nigerian artists could speak about their history and culture. More importantly platforms like the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos are a reminder of what can be achieved in terms of self-representation of the artists and creating an environment in which they can present their work.
Professional affirmation of artists is not easily achievable unless there is a system in place that makes it possible. Bisi Silva’s initiatives revealed the importance of having the appropriate tools and systems in place that are necessary for the transformation and modernization of the local contemporary art scenes across the African continent.
Acquiring and spreading knowledge remains one of the biggest obstructions in the process of establishing non-profit cultural centers in poverty-stricken areas. The Asiko initiative that was launched by the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos in 2010 aimed to fill the gaps in the Nigerian educational system and generate structures that encourage the production of artwork.
Art school programs, residencies and a part art academy provided by the Asiko initiative served as dialogue and cultural exchange facilitators. Collaboration between artists from different countries on the African continent is yet another reason why more initiatives like Asiko are needed in order to cultivate a vibrant cultural scene that spans over the entire continent.
Silva understood the significance of making the Asiko initiative accessible in other regions that at least in part shared Nigeria’s colonial history. She chose the sites where editions of Asiko are going to take place carefully and encouraged artists to communicate about their cultural heritage and forms of expression.
More than eighty emerging artists from fifteen African countries participated in the six editions of Asiko that were organized in Dakar, Addis Ababa, and other strategic locations. Over the years, the presence of curatorial observers and other international faculty members has placed these events on the global stage.
Bissie recognized the potentials of implementing the local expertise with the global norms of art production and the dissemination of knowledge. Establishing connections between different communities was an essential step towards creating long-term projects even though there is no support structure that is necessary to carry out projects at that scale.
Through her innovative and visionary way of thinking she created new models of improving the educational systems, made knowledge accessible to all artists and art enthusiasts regardless of the context they were coming from and introduced local art communities to the global art scene.
Both Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, and Asiko initiatives gathered a significant number of upcoming artists as well as established cultural figures, and in doing so set an example of how scholarships and residencies can be utilized to transform the educational system from within. Completing what Bisi Silva has started is going to take time but her actions and the exhibitions she curated show that transformation and development of the educational systems through art is possible, however slow it may be.