Lagos, Nigeria – The Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA), Pan-Atlantic University, and SMO Contemporary Art are set to present Chika Okeke-Agulu: Freedom Bird, a major survey of the Nigerian artist and scholar’s practice spanning more than three decades, from November 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027. Curated by Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, with Sandra Mbanefo-Obiago as Associate Curator, the retrospective solo exhibition will bring together paintings, drawings and sculptures alongside selected poems, diary entries, photographs and archival materials that illuminate the intellectual, political and personal contexts behind the artist’s work.
The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Chika Okeke-Agulu first and foremost as an artist, whose more than three decades of studio practice have evolved alongside his influential work as a scholar, critic and curator of African art. His artistic practice emerged during the turbulence of military rule in the 1980s and 1990s, engaging questions of repression, civic life, democratic struggle and the position of artists and intellectuals in a changing Nigeria. His subsequent migration to the United States introduced further questions of exile, memory, displacement and belonging into his artistic vocabulary.
Since the early 1990s, Okeke-Agulu’s artistic practice has been presented in solo, collaborative and group exhibitions across Nigeria, the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia, including exhibitions at the National Museum in Lagos, Goethe-Institut Lagos, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, the first Johannesburg Biennale and the Newark Museum, among others.
The title, Freedom Bird, is drawn from a recurring motif in Okeke-Agulu’s visual and poetic vocabulary and speaks to freedom as an aspiration continually negotiated through political struggle, personal memory and artistic expression. Across works produced from the late 1980s to the present, the exhibition traces an evolving artistic language through which the artist reflects on Nigeria’s postcolonial experience, from military dictatorship and democratic aspiration to civic fracture, migration and the continuing movement of Nigerians in search of new futures.
For YSMA, the decision to host Freedom Bird is deeply connected to the museum’s identity as an educational museum – an institution committed not merely to displaying artworks, but to creating opportunities for audiences to encounter art through research, context, critical inquiry and dialogue. The exhibition brings together artistic practice and scholarship in an especially powerful way: Okeke-Agulu has spent decades simultaneously making art and producing some of the most influential scholarship on Nigerian and African modern and contemporary art.
An artist, art historian, critic, curator, published poet and educator, Okeke-Agulu is currently the Robert Schirmer
Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University and Director of its Africa World Initiative. He has taught extensively on modern and contemporary African art and historiography, curated major exhibitions internationally, and authored or co-authored influential studies of artists including El Anatsui, Yusuf Grillo and Obiora Udechukwu. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022 and served as Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 2023.
It is this intersection of studio practice and scholarship that makes the exhibition particularly significant. Freedom
Bird provides an opportunity for students, researchers, artists, educators and the wider public to engage with the work of a major Nigerian artist while also exploring the ideas, histories and intellectual questions that have shaped his practice within a museum setting.
Dr. Jess Castellote, Director of the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, described the exhibition as a natural extension of the museum’s educational mission in his words:
“YSMA was conceived as a museum where art is not simply seen, but studied, questioned and understood. Freedom Bird embodies that philosophy in an exceptional way because Chika Okeke-Agulu’s artistic practice and intellectual work are inseparable from some of the most important conversations about Nigerian and African art today. Bringing this exhibition to YSMA gives us the opportunity to place the artist, his work and the historical questions that shaped them in conversation with our students, researchers and the wider public. It is precisely the kind of exhibition that demonstrates what an educational museum can contribute to the cultural life of Nigeria.”
The exhibition also represents a meaningful reunion of curator and institution. Dr. Onwuegbucha, who is currently Assistant Professor of African and Caribbean Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Cambridge, was previously guest curator of YSMA’s inaugural exhibitions in 2019. His academic and curatorial practice has focused extensively on African modern and contemporary art, including the Nsukka School – the subject of his doctoral research at Princeton University. He has also curated and co-curated exhibitions in Nigeria, Europe and the United States, including Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts at the Princeton University Art Museum.
For Onwuegbucha, the exhibition represents the convergence of a sustained scholarly inquiry and a longstanding engagement with Okeke-Agulu’s artistic world. He said,
“Freedom Bird grew out of a sustained engagement with Chika Okeke-Agulu’s work and the historical and intellectual questions surrounding the generation of artists shaped by the Nsukka School and Nigeria’s turbulent postcolonial history. For an artist who has played no small role in producing exhibition and scholarship on other artists of the Nsukka school, while excluding himself, the exhibition allows us to encounter Okeke-Agulu not only through the lens of his celebrated scholarship, but through his art because he is first an artist before becoming a scholar Presenting this exhibition at YSMA is particularly important to me not only because of the museum’s commitment to connecting art with research, education and public discourse but because it is a homecoming for the artist .”
The exhibition is co-presented by SMO Contemporary Art with longstanding experience in curating and presenting modern and contemporary African art to diverse local and international audiences, always with a focus on democratising access to art. Besides helping to build important institutional collections, SMO conserved and curated over eighty large scale modernist art works at the recently refurbished National Theatre between 2021-2024, and created an archive of important historic objects dating back to FESTAC ’77.
Reflecting on the power of art to foster nation building and change the way Africans view their history, their identity and their future, SMO has been at the cutting edge of curating art for social change. Sandra Mbanefo-Obiago, Founder and Creative Director of SMO Contemporary Art, said,
“We consider Freedom Bird a pivotal exhibition to challenge us to think more deeply about our individual and collective responsibility towards building a more equitable world, touching on issues such as nation building, freedom and social justice. Chika Okeke-Agulu’s fourty year journey as artist and social critic is especially timely when we grapple with questions about leadership, followership and civic responsiblitiy, against the backdrop of a rich body of incredibly important historic artworks which document our political history. Freedom Bird is probably one of the most important contemporary art showcases held in a museum in Nigeria for many years.”
Freedom Bird is being supported by a number of sponsors, including TEMPLARS, a leading African law firm. The exhibition will be on view at the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-Atlantic University, Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, from November 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027 and is supported by a specially curated public programme of conversations about Nigeria’s political and cultural history, and the role of the artist as witness and participant in public life.
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