Dear Artists, Collectors, Colleagues, Friends and Supporters,

In 2021, as the world evolved at the rhythm of the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite all the uncertainties that the future held at the time, you chose to work with us all in the name of art. On January 1st 2022, Bwo Art turned one year old and we would like to thank you for the tremendous support you have shown us last year, as we look forward to solidifying and growing our bond this new year.  

Thanks to you, our commitment as custodians to contemporary artists from the African continent and its diaspora was strengthened as we navigated through global restrictions to find a community whose love for Black art surpasses any form of obstacle. 2021 was filled with challenges, but also excitement as Bwo Art welcomed new artists to its family and made new encounters around the world, from collectors to gallerists, to artists, fair directors, writers and museum curators. Thanks to your support, we were able to arrange the sale or acquisition of works to collections based in Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States whilst securing exhibition opportunities for artists. As a result of this, we generated a six-figure revenue in just our first year of doing business.

We are extremely grateful for your trust, and we hope to keep having you by our corner in 2022 as we reveal our new signings, some of the exciting deals we closed last year, and as we find new ways to make you enjoy and experience the works of contemporary African artists. 

For this new year 2022, we wish you and your loved ones health. We wish you more success in your enterprises, and we wish you an abundance of wealth and love. 

Happy New Year 2022!

Brice Yonkeu & Noelle M-Elhalaby
Art Advisors, Artists Agents & Founders of Bwo Art LLC

We are pleased to announce that Bwo Art will be attending the sixth edition of West Africa’s biggest art fair: Art X Lagos. The fair will physically return after last year’s online edition and will take place from November 4th to November 7th at The Federal Palace in Victoria Island.

Although this will be a timid return as 15 galleries have confirmed their physical participation in this year’s fair, the works of more than 50 emerging, confirmed and leading artists from across the African continent and its diaspora will be presented for the greatest pleasure of art enthusiasts. Some of these artists include Amoako Boafo, Aboudia, Kwesi Botchway, Bunmi Agusto, Barry Yusufu, Johnson Eziefula, Bara Sketchbook, Soly Cissé, Araba Opoku and more.

Bwo Art which also has as mission to advise collectors worldwide interested in growing their collections with selected pieces by leading contemporary African artists will be present to continue serving its clients. If you would also like us to be your eyes at the fair and advise you, please click on the button below. We have established a list of all the artists who will be showing, a map of other exhibitions taking place in Lagos around the same time as the fair, and we plan on doing studio visits.

Best regards,
Bwo Art’s Team

Bwo Art is pleased to announce that Bara Sketchbook has created a new body of work. This new series comes after his widely acclaimed series Ajayi’s People which was featured in group exhibitions across Africa, Europe and North America this year. 

The singularity of Bara Sketchbook’s work lies in his Nigerian and Sierra Leonean heritage which he tries to incorporate each time in his portraits as he explores the inwards and outwards feelings of his subjects. Inspired by his own personal life and stories that marked him, Bara Sketchbook’s new body of work which is yet to be titled is a poetic and visual depiction of human fragility.

In the artist’s synesthetic mind, fragility takes the form of green skin hues on human bodies. With his meticulous brush, Bara Sketchbook revives beauty and the resilience in his subjects struck by vulnerability and pain. They are positioned against an abstract background on which colorful pigments collide into each other to create a harmonic and almost symphonic musical partition that highlights the challenges each of them endured and have overcome throughout their lifetime, forging their character. Inspired by Joseph’s coat of many colors from the Bible’s Book of Genesis, Sketchbook dresses his subjects in clothes which reveal the geometry of light as an attempt to attenuate their vulnerability and stress out that regardless of the circumstances, they remain adorned.

From October 28 to 31, Bara Sketchbook will be presenting new works at FNB Art in Johannesburg during Open City. In November, LouiSimone Guirandou Gallery will be unveiling some of his new works at Art X Lagos (November 4-7).

Living between Lagos and Kaduna in Nigeria, Bara Sketchbook (b. 1993 in Nigeria) is a synaesthete whose portraits reveal his interests in the relationship between identity and colors. Following his current museum show at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii (USA) and in anticipation of his group show at LouiSimone Guirandou Gallery next month in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) where new works will be on display, we thought it important to have a conversation with him. 

Introduce yourself in your own words 
My name is Bara Sketchbook. To me, art is more than just having a purpose upon this earth. It is my own way of documenting everything around me. It is a way of leaving something behind so that when I am gone there is going to be some documentation about my life, about how I loved, how I lost and how I felt. That is who I am.

From the conception of your works to the materials, how would you describe your creative process?
As every creator, I try as much as possible to make sure that I am in total control of the process. When I stage my subjects, there does not need to be an emotional connection, I just need to be able to interpret my thoughts. What I usually do is take a photograph and use it as a reference for the canvas. My painting process is intentional:  every brushstroke, every splash, every coat and color has a particular intention. I know exactly what I want to do. 

I come from a very rich African heritage, my father is from Nigeria and my mother is from Sierra Leone, I’m through and through African. In my creative process, I want to communicate this heritage through the positions of my subjects. I want to communicate how my family is, how my tribes are. I want to paint our ups, our downs but also our good and bad moments. My last series is titled Ajayi’s People. It reconnects with the spirit of my mother who passed away last year. My tenacity as an artist comes from this woman and I want this heritage to be part of my creative process.

As for the materials, I mainly use acrylic on canvas. I love the vibrancy of acrylic colors and I have fallen in love with them since the first time I held a brush. I guess I am going to be using them for the rest of my life.

Could you describe one work of your choice?

This painting is titled Silas and Chioma. It is from the Ajayi’s people series.

Colors come easy to me, they appear easily in my head in an instant synesthesia. It feels spontaneous to be able to pair the orange of their hair with a turquoise background. 

Silas and Chioma are two young people who are tired of what is going on around them. I painted it while Nigeria was going through a huge wave of protests against the political power and demonstrations against police violence. What I wanted to portray was the fatigue but also the confidence of the youth. Those two subjects will stand in front of you, no matter what. They are strong and resilient. In my last twelve paintings, I have only used two main colors for my subjects:  purple because it expresses royalty and blue because it expresses pain.

What inspires you and what connection do you have to your art? 
What inspires me is mostly the idea of being a human being. Sometimes I step away from my humanity to document it. You know when you are getting through a tough week of work, you tend to forget that there is beauty in those patterns. I love to document it, we’re caught up being humans. I really want this idea to be present in my next series, it is going to be completely different, completely new. I want to bring more humanity in a new way.

What does your work aim to say? 
My work aims to talk about love, loss and lost love. As a human being, you must love and you will experience loss. You will lose people you loved when you were a human being.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, It do not mean you will lose the ability to love. Loss does not decrease your ability to love.

Interview by Maud Ntonga

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If you would like to know more about him, see more works from him or stay in touch, please follow him on Instagram, check out his Artsy, or request a catalogue.

This month in Paris, our co-founder Brice attended the solo show of Cameroonian artist Jean-David Nkot at Afikaris (photo 1), as well as the solo show of French-Senegalese artist Rakajoo at Danysz Gallery (photo 3), and had the privilege to visit studio of French-Cameroonian artist Laura Tolen (photo 2).

Bwo Art offers international art advisory services to collectors interested in expanding their collections with exciting pieces from contemporary Black artists. We help our clients source and acquire art – including paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures – for their home, business, or collection.