Experience Nigeria Arts Show Gets Big By Yemi Olakitan

Experience Nigeria Arts Show Gets Big

By Yemi Olakitan

All is now set for the yearly arts show Experience Nigeria, which will take place in Lagos at the Skky Place, Ikoyi on December 8^th. Organized by African Arts Resource Center, an organization that is dedicated to the promotion and development of Nigerian visual arts since 1991. Experience Nigeria brings together a community of professional visual artists and showcases their works to a large audience. The show provides an opportunity for Nigerian artists to parade their works to men and women from all works of life. This year, the theme for the show is ‘Onward Nigeria.’

        In a chat with Oladele Olaopa, CEO of the organization. He said the special Guest of Honour for this year’s show is veteran artist and curator, Bruce Onobrakpeya who was the recipient of the AAARC’s Lifetime Awards for special contribution to the arts at the 2005 edition of Experience Nigeria arts show.  This year’s show will also mark the 80^th birthday of this iconic Nigerian artist.

The arts fiesta includes both exhibitions and competition. In the exhibition section, the artists will exhibit different works, which will be graded and rewarded at the show.          There would also be a ceremony that will reward Individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the arts in Nigeria.  These awards are given to those who have passionately invested time, resources and talents to the development of arts.

      ‘‘We have the Gani Odutokun Awards for Excellence in the Arts. We are going to have various works on parade such as oil on canvas, water colour drawings, wood carvings, metal sculpture, pen and ink drawings, charcoal drawings, mix media Mosaic as well as a Creative Arts Camp for children,’’ he said.

     Speaking further, Olaopa said, the children Creative Arts Camp aim to stimulate young people’s interest in the arts. It is the fastest growing section of the yearly arts show.

‘‘A lot of Nigerians are interested in this section because it develops the creative abilities of young children, which will have direct or indirect impacts in their careers later on in life. This year, we are expanding this section and that is why it is called Children Creative Arts Camp. What happened in our previous editions was that the girls engage in different activities such as Beads making while the boys are engaged in another activity. However, this year, due to popular demand, the girls and boys will be in involved in the same activity.’’

      According to Olaopa, one of the children’s projects includes the designing of Christmas cards. They will be designing different figures and shapes on Christmas cards, which have been laid out for them by instructors who will guide them as they do it. They will do the same on TV shirts. They will different Decorate T shirts. The children will design the logo of the creative camp on T-shirts.  This is the second activity. The final activity is the Nigerian Gipsaw puzzle. It is the designing of cut out shapes of the 36 states of Nigeria. When they cut out the states of Nigeria, they will then merge them together in order to form the bigger Nigerian map. Olaopa explained that his organization has invited children from different schools and orphanages both private and public. There will be life music and other side attractions. Sponsorship for this year’s show include Access Bank, Integrated System Devices Ltd, Solarmate Nig. Limited, SIAO and others.