Founding the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos; founding the Asiko Art School
Bisi Silva (Olabisi Obafunke Silva) (29 May 1962 – 12 February 2019)[1] was a Nigerian contemporary art curator based in Lagos.[2]
Early life and education
Bisi Silva graduated with an MA in Visual Arts Administration: Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1996.[3]
Career
In the early days of her career, Silva worked as an independent curator and founded Fourth Dial Art, a non-profit project in London dedicated to promoting and cultivating cultural practice in the visual arts, and to help artists form meaningful collaborations with artistic institutions and professionals. One of the outcomes of Fourth Dial Art was a traveling exhibition, “Heads of State”, featuring the work of Faisal Abdu'Allah, who was then an emerging artist of the London art world.[4]
Silva visited Lagos, Nigeria in 1999 with the idea of starting a project there.[5] She was the founder and artistic director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (CCA, Lagos), which opened in December 2007. CCA Lagos promotes research, documentation and exhibitions related to contemporary art in Africa and abroad. At CCA, Lagos, Silva curated numerous exhibitions, including one with the Nigerian painter Ndidi Dike. Silva was also the founder of the Asiko Art School, which describes itself as "part art workshop, part residency, and part art academy."[6]
Silva was co-curator of “The Progress of Love”, a transcontinental collaboration across three venues in the United States and Nigeria (October 2012 – January 2013). Silva was co-curator of J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere: Moments of Beauty, Kiasma, Helsinki (April – November 2011). She was also co-curator for the second Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece, Praxis: Art in Times of Uncertainty in September 2009. In 2006, Silva was one of the curators for the Dakar Biennale in Senegal. In collaboration with the Portuguese art critic Isabel Carlos, she selected artists for the third Artes Mundi prize in Wales. She also curated Contact Zone: Contemporary Art from West and North Africa (October 2007) and an exhibition titled Telling ... Contemporary Finnish photography, in the Seventh Biennial of African Photography in Bamako (November 2007).
Silva wrote on contemporary art for international publications, including Art Monthly, Untitled, Third Text, M Metropolis, Agufon and for Nigerian newspapers such as This Day. She was on the editorial board of n.paradoxa, an international feminist art journal, and was the guest editor for the Africa and African diaspora issue of n.paradoxa (January 2013).
Silva died in Lagos, Nigeria, at the age of 56 after a four-year battle with breast cancer.
