Originally aired live during the 2025 Re:assemblages Symposium, this segment, now available on YouTube, offers on-the-ground coverage, audience engagement, and key moments that shaped the event’s atmosphere and discussions.

Earlier this week, a new and slightly different Art Week affair took place: the Re: assemblages symposium, hosted by the Alliance Française de Lagos, organised by the Guest Artists Space and Yinka Shonibare Foundations and curated by Naima Hassan. The event brought together cultural practitioners including artists, curators, archivists and scholars from across Africa and the world in wide-ranging conversations about African and Afro-diasporic art archives. These are The Art Newspaper’s three key takeaways from the event.

Timed to coincide with the Art X Lagos fair, the gathering was initiated by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and his Guest Artists Space Foundation. The Re:assemblages programme, curated by Berlin-based researcher Naima Hassan, saw contributions from more than 70 African and Afro-diasporic artists, academics and collectors seeking to “reimagine” archives not as “static repositories” but as “dynamic infrastructures for cultural production and exchange”. Events included the launch of the African Arts Libraries Lab, a network connecting institutions and publishers in Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt and SA (represented by the African Literary Cities research project at the University of Cape Town).

Notably, the renowned British artist Yinka Shonibare CBE opened Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation in 2019, a nonprofit in Lagos offering artist residencies and public programming by and for artists in the country and across the globe. “Our focus has always been on building long-term cultural infrastructure rather than short-term visibility,” Shonibare explained, pointing out recent initiatives including the foundation’s Ìmòra Arts Intensive, which trains 10 early-career artists in the city. “What I’m seeing internationally is a genuine shift,” he added. “Nigerian art and creativity is no longer treated as a peripheral curiosity, but as a central force in global culture—and that change is driven by the strength of the institutions and networks we are building in Nigeria.”

THE Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) convened the inaugural Re:assemblages Symposium on November 4 and 5 at the Alliance Française, Ikoyi, Lagos. The event marked the official launch of the African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab), a new continental network connecting arts libraries, publishers, and cultural institutions across Lagos, Dakar, Marrakesh, and Cape Town, while engaging global institutions that hold African and Afro-diasporic collections.

Over 50 leading artists, archivists, researchers, and cultural practitioners examined how archives shape contemporary cultural memory and artistic production during the programme.

African and Afro-diasporic archives will be celebrated and reinterpreted as part of a major project launching later this year in Lagos, driven by the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. The Re:assemblages symposium (4-5 November), taking place at Alliance Française de Lagos, will bring together artists, scholars and publishers “to collectively rethink African and Afro-diasporic archives as living, contested and future-shaping spaces,” says a statement.

The symposium is organised by the non-profit Guest Artists Space Foundation (G.A.S.) and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, which were both founded by Shonibare in 2019. The Lagos event is the second edition of Re: assemblages (2025-26), a two-year programme which “reimagines the role of archives in shaping African and global art histories”, the organisers add.

Join us at G.A.S. Lagos on December 9th, 2025, for Art CRIT, an informal critique session facilitated by current resident Sola Olulode. Designed for artists working across various mediums who have felt underserved by traditional critique spaces, the session offers a supportive environment to share practice, exchange ideas, and receive constructive feedback. Sola recognises that many artists may have had limited opportunities for meaningful critique or may have experienced spaces where feedback feels rigid or discouraging. Art Crit at G.A.S. reframes this experience, centring openness, dialogue, and mutual respect.

This December, we are thrilled to host our final resident of the year, Swiss-Haitian multidisciplinary artist Sasha Huber, as she undertakes a four-week residency at G.A.S. Lagos.  Based in Helsinki and internationally recognised for her research-driven practice, Huber works across performance, video, photography, and collaborative intervention to explore the politics of memory, care, and belonging in relation to colonial histories. Central to her practice is the staple gun—a tool she reclaims from its violent associations to propose possibilities for repair, symbolically stitching together wounds and challenging contested narratives. Working with archival materials and layered processes, she creates reparative gestures that connect past and present. Huber is also widely known for her contribution to the Demounting Louis Agassiz campaign, which seeks to critically reassess the glaciologist’s racist legacy.

Join us at G.A.S. Lagos on November 4th, 2025 for Body Memory, a meditative, movement-based workshop exploring how the body carries personal and collective memory. Led by current resident Khaleb Brooks, the session offers an opportunity to acknowledge our histories and consider how future generations might engage with the past. It asks: Who gets to memorialise, and who is excluded? What do we hide from ourselves, and what unprocessed memories rest quietly in our bodies?

G.A.S. Foundation is pleased to announce that Khaleb Brooks, a multidisciplinary artist and researcher working across painting, sculpture, film, and performance, will undertake a five-week residency at G.A.S. Lagos. Based in Brazil, Khaleb's practice investigates the intersections of collective memory, the body, and the afterlives of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rooted in decolonial and archival methodologies, their work engages history as a living, embodied site, one that continues to shape identities, landscapes, and communities across the diaspora.

The fourth edition of the Lagos Art Week programme brought together global and continent-based cultural leaders in a new iteration that integrated the first ever Re:assemblages Symposium, presented with Guest Artists Space Foundation alongside the tour’s established programme of curated art and cultural visits. Running from 4-5 November, the symposium marked a new institutional pillar within the week, complementing the traditional art tour from 6-9 November, which delivered gallery, museum, residency, and studio engagements, including VIP access to Art X Lagos and signature Foundation-hosted events. This inaugural integration expanded the tour’s scope while retaining its core model of patron access and arts ecosystem highlights.

G.A.S. Foundation is pleased to announce that our newly activated Reading Room at the G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive is now open to the public for guided sessions every Tuesday and Thursday. First unveiled during the Re:assemblages Symposium on 4 November 2025, the space is designed for encounters with publications that trace connections across African and Afro-diasporic art and cultural ecologies.