Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation in partnership with the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) is thrilled to announce the second edition of the G.A.S. Critical Writing Workshop, an initiative designed to support the professional and critical development of emerging local art writers, researchers and cultural practitioners.This edition, titled (Re)Casting the Canon, developed by forthcoming resident Folasade Ologundudu invites participants to reimagine art history as something living and unfixed, examining how Nigerian and Black artists have been framed within a Eurocentric canon of Western art history, and considering how these narratives might be reframed through the contemporary voices of African and Black writers.
Inspired in large part by the visionary, genre-expansive work of Saidiya Hartman, particularly her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, the workshop encourages participants to develop fictional and/or nonfiction narratives centred on a Nigerian modernist artist and a contemporary artist working today. Through this pairing, participants will situate both artists within a broader critical conversation about art, culture, history, and the present.
Applications for the G.A.S. Critical Writing Workshop II are open to emerging and early-career art writers, researchers, or cultural practitioners based in Lagos, Nigeria. 6 applicants will be selected by Folasade to participate in a three-day intensive programme taking place on September 21th, 22nd and 24th, 2026. The deadline for applications is September 9th, 2026, at 23:59 WAT.