Atlanta BeltLine’s ‘LagosAtlanta’ Exhibition Brings Nigerian Artists to the Westside Trail

For the past 10 weeks, two Nigerian artists have been hard at work in makeshift art studios at the Ponce City Market. As of last weekend, the Atlanta BeltLine is the new home of “LagosAtlanta: Sister City Rising,” a special public art exhibition by renowned Lagos artists Taiye Idahor and Kainebi Osahenye, curated by Lauren Tate Baeza of the High Museum of Art .

Baeza, who is the Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art for the High, is uniquely qualified to facilitate the installation of these artists’ works. Lagos was designated a sister city with Atlanta by Mayor Maynard Jackson 50 years ago, in 1974. Today, Atlanta is home to the fifth largest Nigerian population in the United States and the largest in the Southeast.

This residency program celebrates a long-term cultural exchange between the two cities. The chosen artists were fully immersed in Atlanta culture during their residency and recently unveiled two new public art pieces along the Atlanta BeltLine’s Westside Trail. These works are the focus of the 2024 Art on the Atlanta BeltLine season.

“I am pleased to introduce this project on the BeltLine, an important site for community engagement and reconnection in the city of Atlanta,” Baeza said. “The installations by Taiye Idahor and Kainebi Osahenye will join other important public works by Nigerian artists, such as Jimoh Buriamoh’s Alumni Reunion at Howell Park and Yinka Shonibare’s Wind Sculpture (IV) at Centennial Yards, which dot Atlanta’s public arts landscape, providing an opportunity to connect these dots and commemorate a long history of creative engagement between the two geographies.

Artist Taiye Idahor’s work explores identity, family histories, and expectations and perceptions of femininity. She is a draftsman, sculptor, and multimedia collage artist whose works are in the permanent collections of the Princeton University Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and Zeitz MOCAA, to name a few.

“Residencies are always a great opportunity for me to unpack my thoughts and ideas in a different way, because a new environment almost always takes me away from my usual thought process, especially when it comes to materiality,” a said Idahor. “Being at the BeltLine will definitely introduce them. However, this is a public space, which means more people interact with the work and potentially its creation, making it interesting new territory. And I’m a little anxious. But from experience, it can be good feelings to create, so I’m looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, Kainebi Osahenye’s large-scale neo-expressionist paintings and sculptures, made from repurposed and discarded objects, play on themes of spirituality, consumerism and the environment. He has participated in residency programs in Asia, Europe, Africa and the United States.

“Through art residency programs, artists can venture beyond established boundaries in search of a new experience. The creative environment it offers enables this trend. » Osahenye explained. “With the LagosAtlanta Art Residency, I will bring the attitude of Lagos meets Atlanta in a poetic dialogue that will resonate with pop culture. My interest will be to create a piece of music using the language of sculpture. Additionally, I will be willing to understand what lies beneath the sophisticated facade of this “beautiful black city” that is Atlanta, hoping that the experience will prove worthy of the commitments.

“Ivbieva” means twins in the Edo language of southern Nigeria. Depicting twin sisters, the steel figures are connected by coiled hair. Using hair to connect the two is a tribute to the importance of hair as a symbol of feminism and holds significance in their shared genetic code. The image also evokes the relationship between Atlanta and Lagos as sister cities. By placing this piece in the lush greenery of the Westside Trail, the artist connects femininity to themes of reproduction and offspring.

Conceived as a brutalist abstraction of falling pollen, “Aesthetics of the Yellow Flower” is a commentary on the way humans experience the beauty and mischief of the nature around us. Conceived during Osahenye’s first visit to Atlanta in the spring, the work uses the color yellow and aluminum as a medium that connects to his broader artistic practice and addresses themes of industrialism and consumerism. The arched structure that features these panels was modeled on the canopy of a nearby tree to reach sunlight beyond the tree’s canopy.