It was one of those unforgettable days in Lagos when art meets discovery. For curator Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu, founder of the International Institute for Creative Development (IICD), and his collaborator Mathew Oyedele, what began as a simple studio visit soon unfolded into a moment of revelation, one that would shape the vision for their upcoming collaborative art space in the city.

Words – Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu, Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! Photographs, Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu

Lagos is a city of motion restless, layered, and unpredictable, much like the art that continues to emerge from its heart. In this chaos, curator and artist Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu, founder of the International Institute for Creative Development, has built a new kind of space: one that dares to ask uncomfortable questions and welcomes artists to confront what lies beneath the surface.

Nduwhite hardly settles for less. He believes with the right drive and mindset, everything is possible. He is that curator with his signature cap, globetrotting and finding the right muse to curate. For the sceptics, Nduwhite is the creative maverick that led the team for the successful WAES Summit 2025 – Unleashing West Africa’s Creative Economy that was well curated and attended in Abuja. Now, you know who shares his recent creative journey with us recently. His new project turns the heads of many to look in.

When Ahanonu speaks of the IICD Lagos Project, his words carry both urgency and tenderness. This is not just an exhibition initiative but a movement, a collaborative experiment in truth-telling through art. The project’s debut curatorial theme, “What Lurks in the Shadow,” captures that spirit perfectly. Abstract yet intimate, it challenges both artists and audiences to step into unseen spaces emotional, psychological, and political and find meaning in the dark.

In a recent curatorial journey across Lagos, Ahanonu, and fellow curator Mathew Oyedele visited the studios of three participating artists. What began as a simple check-in turned into something far more profound. Each space revealed a personal dialogue between pain and creation, loss, and rediscovery. These were not just studios filled with canvases and brushes, they were sanctuaries where artists wrestled with memory, grief, and identity.

One artist, still mourning the loss of a child, described painting as his only form of release. Another spoke of art as survival, a fragile bridge between despair and renewal. In these moments, the curators realised that “What Lurks in the Shadow” wasn’t just a curatorial idea. It was a mirror reflecting the invisible weight that artists carry.

For Ahanonu, this is the essence of IICD: a collective effort to bring honesty back into the centre of artistic practice. “Behind every masterpiece,” he says, “is a person grieving, hoping, enduring.”

In a time when art is often reduced to spectacle or investment, the IICD Lagos Project invites us to slow down and listen, not just to what we see on the walls, but to what hums beneath them. It’s an invitation to rediscover the humanity of creation itself.

This is not merely about curation; it is about connection, empathy, and courage. And as Ahanonu would put it, it’s about learning to drift fearlessly into excellence.

Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu intimate encounter with the artists is shared unedited

“So today, Mathew and I embarked on one of the most scary studio visit in Lagos to 3 great artists. Yes scary, but that is because of the location of their studios.
But that is not the story here.

So here is the point, we had proposed a collective curatorial theme for our lagos space: The IICD Lagos Project earlier this year.

The theme was so abstract because we wanted to see the works the invited artists will create when they have the freedom to dig deeper and explore what cannot be seen.

The theme developed, after it was deepened by Mathew Oyedele; the Curator of our premier exhibition at the new collaborative space in Lagos.

As curatorial practice would demand, we introduced the theme to all the artists, inviting them to go deeper and conceptualize the theme individually. The ideation process with the artists was done three times.

But visiting them yesterday, proved beyond doubt that what we do, does not belong to us. We have been given a divine vocation, one that is more pertinent than ever, in today’s world.

The studio visit, allowed us the opportunity to come into the artist personal space: family, home and artistic practice. That felt sacred, as it should.

Meanwhile all along, the honour has always been mine, allowing me into their very intimate world, learning and hearing them speak very comfortably about their life, hopes, struggle, pain and practice.

The exhibition theme : “What lurks in the Shadow” curated by Mathew Oyedele is not just an abstract theme any more; these artists own the theme, they lived the theme , some almost broke down talking about the theme.

At one point, I was asking my self what did we start, one of the artist talked about his work as an opportunity to share what he would not really want to say, a place where he uses these works to unlock pain and fear, not in a superficial way, but in a deeper and realistic personal way, ways that says come and really see me, I am human too.

We also talked about floating and sinking, the very art of healing, the thin line before depression, the never knowing, the blankness of tomorrow, family expectation and diversions, getting lost and rediscovering your self , the act of creating to heal and sharing, and yet you are the one that needs what you are creating.

These are not every day kind of art, these are lived art, these are works they make from a point or moment of release, being lost, searching and pain.

One of the artist, saw the theme as an opportunity to mourn his baby, he had just recently lost his baby and has been struggling to find him self again. He believed that the call to participate in the exhibition was and still the best thing that happened to him, when we began articulating the exhibition.

He delved deeper, hit the low, emerge from a place he never knew he could, a place where sorrow and pain are in the same matrimonial bed, where remembering echoes pain and loss, where every colour was black and white, the irony is, he is an artist who makes colours, he makes colours for other artists to buy and use, but at this point no one is making colours for him, his rainbow has just two colours.

He created very personal pieces, pieces never seen before, because he has never been here before.

That is when I knew, we had not just created a shared space, we had started a space where we are real, where we say things the way they are, where our canvas echoes our real selves, where we are human.

Gifted yes, but also troubled like you, we feel pain, we do not grieve creatively, we grieve like you, we struggle with every political decision that disenfranchised us economically, we struggle every other day and time we are objectified and instrumentalised by a system and policies that do not get us.

Today, as I jump, from my UBER, into KEKE and the back of an OKADA to the artists studios, I wonder what if we did not start? What have we started?

I am always grateful and honored, because in all of us is a huge light , a fickle enough to light up tomorrow, gifts that needs sharing and most of all the magic we have been given.

Drift with me into excellence!

Thank you.”

Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu is a curator and founder of the IICD Abuja.