Breaking ground: Nigeria's first woman to win a major sculpture prize
In a moment that resonated across the global art world, a Lagos-born artist accepted a major international sculpture prize, becoming the first Nigerian woman to do so. The recognition arrived not through a single breakthrough work but through decades of patient, deliberate practice, a fact that makes the achievement all the more meaningful. For an Australian reader accustomed to the celebrated bronze traditions that line the corridors of the National Gallery of Victoria and the sculpture courts of Sydney, her ascent offers a fresh perspective on how sculptural excellence can emerge from very different soil.
The artist, Peju Alatise, has spent more than twenty years refining a body of work that draws on Yoruba visual cosmology, the textures of Lagos street life, and the patient labour of women across southwestern Nigeria. Her sculptures, often life-sized or larger and frequently incorporating wire, fabric, and mixed media, speak to migration, memory, and the quiet resilience of those whose stories rarely reach the marble halls of Europe. When the jury cited her capacity to transform humble materials into objects of profound psychological weight, the phrasing captured exactly what has long distinguished her practice.
This profile traces her journey from a young art student sketching in the Yaba district of Lagos to the international stage, examining the works, influences, and cultural conversations that shaped her path. It also considers what her recognition means for African women sculptors, for global art history, and for collectors and curators as far away as Melbourne, who are increasingly looking beyond the traditional centres of the art world.
From Lagos to the world stage
Alatise was born in 1975 in Lagos, a megacity whose visual cacophony has shaped her eye since childhood. She trained at the Yaba College of Technology, one of Nigeria's premier art institutions, before completing a degree at the University of Lagos. Her early paintings caught the attention of local galleries, but she was drawn instinctively to three-dimensional work, citing the example of Yoruba carving traditions that have long elevated sculpture above other art forms in the region.
The decision to focus on sculpture was, in part, a political one. In Nigeria, as in many postcolonial societies, women have been underrepresented in monumental public art, a field historically dominated by men. Alatise has spoken about watching her mother and aunts work with extraordinary skill in textile arts, and about recognising that this material intelligence could be translated into bronze, wood, and wire on a far larger scale. The Yoruba tradition of adire cloth and indigo dyeing, with its deep blue hues and symbolic patterning, became one of the wellsprings of her sculptural vocabulary.
Her international career took shape through residencies in South Africa, the United States, and Europe, and through high-profile exhibitions at the Dakar Biennale and the Venice Biennale. When she became the first Nigerian woman to take home one of Africa's most significant contemporary art awards, the moment carried the weight of a generation's ambition.
Forging an artistic vision
Alatise's work is unmistakably her own, yet it converses with a long lineage. She has acknowledged the influence of Ben Enwonwu, the Nigerian modernist who brought African sculpture into global view during the twentieth century, as well as contemporary peers who insist on the political urgency of figuration. Where some of her predecessors abstracted the human form, she returns to it insistently, building figures that bear the weight of specific, sometimes unnamed, stories.
The themes she explores are unflinching. Migration, the vulnerability of children, the labour of market women, and the quiet violence of inequality all surface in her pieces. She has described sculpture as a form of memory work, an idea that resonates with how artists and curators have approached commemoration in other contexts, including projects that seek enabling remembrance across cultures, and thoughtful efforts such as Shagrir's wartime interviews that keep difficult histories visible through image and testimony.
Her studio practice is collaborative. She works with assistants, often younger women, and credits them with extending the technical reach of her pieces. This communal approach is itself a departure from the singular genius narrative that has long dominated Western art history, and it offers an alternative model for how major works can be made.
The winning work
The piece that secured her the prize was a monumental installation: a fleet of wire-drawn figures suspended from the gallery ceiling, each one suggesting a child in flight. Titled after a Yoruba proverb, the work transformed the exhibition space into something between a market scene and a dreamscape. The figures were neither fully solid nor fully ethereal; their wire skeletons allowed light to pass through them, casting shifting shadows on the walls.
Critics noted how the installation echoed, without copying, the narrative ambition of more established Western sculptors, while remaining rooted in specifically Nigerian concerns. The work spoke to the global crisis of displaced children, a theme that has resonated in Australian conversations about asylum seekers and offshore processing, while never abandoning its local specificity.
The jury's citation praised her extraordinary ability to animate the inanimate, a phrase that captures the technical and emotional range of the work. For Alatise, the prize was less an endpoint than a platform. She used the subsequent year to mount exhibitions in Accra, London, and Cape Town, and to begin planning further representation of Nigerian artists on the world stage.
Material as memory
If there is a signature to Alatise's practice, it is her use of wire. She bends, welds, and weaves it into forms that suggest both industrial scaffolding and delicate lacework. The material choice is deliberate: wire is ubiquitous in Lagos, used in everything from market stalls to electrical infrastructure, yet it is rarely considered a medium for fine art. By elevating it, she challenges the hierarchies of value that have governed sculptural materials for centuries.
She also incorporates fabric, often dyed using traditional methods, into her sculptures. Her interest in textile techniques connects her to broader Nigerian craft traditions, including the intricate raffia weaving and embroidery of the Boki people of Cross River State, whose fibre arts have long been considered among West Africa's most accomplished. In Alatise's hands, these traditions become three-dimensional, monumental, and contemporary.
The labour involved is significant. A single large-scale figure can take months to complete, and her studio operates with a discipline that would not be out of place in the workshops of major Australian institutions. This emphasis on slow, deliberate making is itself a statement against the speed of the contemporary art market.
Critical reception across continents
Australian audiences have had only limited opportunities to see Alatise's work in person, though her inclusion in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and a planned touring exhibition through the Brisbane Powerhouse have begun to change that. Local critics have noted the affinities between her work and the practices of Indigenous Australian artists, who have similarly insisted on the centrality of story, country, and ancestral memory in their sculpture.
European and American reception has been, at times, complicated. Some early reviews exoticised her use of wire, framing it as a discovery of African materials rather than an engagement with a long-standing local tradition. Alatise has spoken about the fatigue of explaining her work to audiences who arrive with little knowledge of Nigerian visual culture. Yet her prize win has begun to shift these conversations, prompting curators to invest in deeper contextual research.
The commercial market has responded as well. Auction houses in London and New York have reported increased interest in her work, and her pieces now appear in private collections from Hong Kong to São Paulo. The Australian market, while smaller, has its own sophisticated buyers, and a handful of Melbourne-based collectors have begun acquiring her smaller studies.
A mentor for the next generation
Beyond her own practice, Alatise has emerged as a powerful mentor. Through the African Artists' Foundation and her own studio programmes, she has supported dozens of young Nigerian women entering the field of sculpture. She has been particularly vocal about the need for technical training, arguing that the scarcity of welding and metalwork facilities in West Africa remains one of the most significant barriers to women's participation in monumental art.
She has also pushed back against the expectation that African women artists should focus on village or traditional subjects, insisting on the right to engage with global themes in their own visual languages. This stance has resonated with artists working in similar conditions elsewhere, including those in Australia's regional arts communities who similarly negotiate the tension between local specificity and international visibility.
Her influence is now structural. Several of the artists shortlisted for major prizes in the past two years cite her as a direct inspiration, and a new generation of curators has begun to organise exhibitions around her legacy. The ripple effects of her recognition are likely to be felt for decades.
Reshaping the canon of African art
The significance of her prize extends beyond any single artist. By becoming the first Nigerian woman to win a major international sculpture award, she has changed what is possible for those who follow. The first in such milestones is rarely the last; it is, more often, the opening of a door that will admit many.
Major institutions are beginning to adjust their collecting strategies. In Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria has signalled a commitment to expanding its holdings of contemporary African sculpture, and similar conversations are underway at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. These shifts are partly the result of advocacy by scholars and partly the result of artists like Alatise making the case impossible to ignore.
For Nigerian art specifically, the recognition has helped elevate the visibility of sculptors working in figurative and mixed-media traditions. It has also drawn renewed attention to the depth of Nigeria's contemporary art scene, a depth that OYASAF has long championed through its support of artists, scholars, and cultural programmes across the country.
Where to begin with Nigerian sculpture
- Visit a major exhibition: Look for touring shows of contemporary African art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney or the Brisbane Powerhouse, where Nigerian sculptors are increasingly represented.
- Read widely: Seek out catalogues and scholarly texts that place Nigerian sculpture in conversation with broader African and global modernisms rather than as a separate tradition.
- Collect with care: Smaller works on paper and maquettes by emerging Nigerian artists can be acquired through reputable galleries; always request provenance and exhibition history.
- Support institutional collecting: Encourage your local gallery, whether in Hobart, Perth, or Adelaide, to consider Nigerian and West African artists in their acquisition strategies.
- Engage with cultural organisations: Foundations such as OYASAF provide resources, articles, and artist profiles that deepen understanding of the field.
- Travel when possible: A visit to Lagos, Benin City, or the National Museum in Onikan offers an immersion in the visual culture that shapes these artists.
Alatise's career offers a compelling reminder that the most significant developments in contemporary art often unfold far from the well-trodden gallery circuits of London and New York. For Australian readers, her work invites a reassessment of what sculpture can be, who gets to make it, and how institutions might broaden their frames of reference. To learn more about Nigerian artists, the Foundation's collection, and upcoming programmes that bring these conversations closer to your own community, explore the resources available through the Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation. Subscribe to the OYASAF newsletter, attend a virtual lecture, or visit the foundation's website to discover how you can engage with this vital and expanding field.