Yoruba Archives

The Masters Africa Can Still Afford

Ladi Kwali’s work in TAFETA’s presentation, “Ladi Kwali: Modernism in Clay,” at TEFAF Maastricht, March 2026. Photograph: Philip Poppek, GRAYSC. Courtesy of TAFETA Gallery, London.

Ayo Adeyinka left finance to deal in modern African art. As his gallery takes Lamidi Fakeye to Frieze Masters, he makes a case for buying the continent’s masters while they remain within reach, and giving their work a life beyond private collections.

Holy Dress Codes: What Comes to Mind When You See the Garment?

Photography by Stephen Tayo

There is usually something immediately legible about religious dress codes. When I see a woman in a hijab, a man in a yarmulke, or a Black American Southern Baptist church hat, I have some sense of who they are — their values, their community, their relationship to God, defined largely on their own terms. In […]

Can a Piece of Clothing Bring You Home?

Riverside, California. Kimanzi in a dress her mother made. Photo: Courtesy of Kimanzi.

For Kimanzi, a Kenyan living in Riverside, California, home fits inside a scarf. When she left Kenya for the United States at 17, she had only two suitcases and a carry-on. Every item she packed meant another had to be left behind. Among the things she refused to leave was a kitenge scarf that had […]

Adirẹ and the Wrapper-Wearers

Guaranteed Nigerian Adire - Available By the Yard!, detail from Post-Tropical Imagination, Unfair Amsterdam, 2025. Photo: Kosisochukwu Nnebe

My relationship to adirẹ is perhaps an unusual one; it begins not with indigo, but with cassava. In 2024, I returned to Nigeria for a two-month residency with the G.A.S. Foundation to study cassava’s role and cultural significance in the country. It was the longest I had spent in the country since leaving at five […]

Aṣọ-Òkè: The Cloth We Inherit

Akinola Lasekan, Portrait of Chief J.D. Akeredolu, 1957. Oil on board. Collection of Femi and Aima Lijadu, shown in "Nigerian Modernism" at Tate Modern.

I am standing before a portrait in Nigerian Modernism, the survey at Tate Modern. It is Akinola Lasekan’s 1957 oil of Justus D. Akeredolu. Lasekan and Akeredolu were both first-generation Nigerian modernists who once shared a studio in Lagos, and Akeredolu is remembered as the pioneer of Yoruba thorn carving, so the painter here is […]

Sanjo Lawal: Artsman the Traveler

Sanjo Lawal works between photography, creative editing, and digital painting. He renders skin in near-charcoal tones so the colors around it can sing harder. Born in Lagos in 1997 and raised in Ijebu Ode, he draws on Yoruba ceremony, the Ojude Oba festival, and the layered textiles of his mother’s wardrobe. His Artsman the Traveler […]