Chronicling the Artpreneurs Who Bet Everything on the Studio

Long before today’s flourishing Nigerian art scene, a generation of artists chose uncertainty over security, and Oji Onoko’s The Artpreneurs chronicles how they turned the full-time studio into a viable profession. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes 

Who among the local art scene’s cognoscenti still remembers Olu Ajayi’s Living Legends Project, the late artist’s ambitious attempt to preserve Nigeria’s collective memory through portraiture at a time when official history had too often fallen silent? Or Kehinde Sanwo’s painstaking documentation of Lagos’ Brazilian-style architecture, preserving the memory of a built heritage yielding to the pressures of urban development?

Ajayi and Sanwo belong to a rare generation of artists who rejected the security of salaried employment and committed themselves entirely to the studio. Some turned down appointments. Others never sought them. They regarded art not as a vocation subsidised by another profession, but as a profession in its own right.

It is this remarkable community that Oji Onoko chronicles in The Artpreneurs: The Untold Story of Nigerian Full-Time Studio Artists. More than a compendium of artists’ profiles, the book records an overlooked chapter in Nigerian art history: the emergence of practitioners who proved that full-time studio practice was not an act of romantic idealism but a workable way of life.

For decades, the path for most art-school graduates followed a familiar pattern. They taught, joined the civil service, worked in advertising or accepted government appointments, returning to the studio after office hours simply to keep working. Few believed that painting, sculpture or ceramics alone could pay the bills.

 A handful thought otherwise. The artists gathered in The Artpreneurs, spanning three generations—from the pioneers of the 1980s to those who came of age over the past decade—share one defining decision. They chose the uncertainty of full-time studio practice over the security of a monthly salary.

Seen from today’s thriving Nigerian art market, the decision to become a full-time studio artist can seem almost self-evident. At the time, it was anything but. Structural adjustment, inflation, poor infrastructure and an underdeveloped collector base made it difficult to earn a living from art. Galleries were scarce, serious collectors scarcer and institutional support uncertain. Remaining in the studio demanded conviction, without the slightest assurance of either recognition or a decent livelihood.

This is where Onoko’s book makes its strongest contribution. Rather than dwelling on celebrated careers, it returns to the years before recognition came, when tenacity counted for more than reputation. 

The title itself makes the point. Long before “artpreneur” entered the contemporary art lexicon, these artists had already learnt to combine creative practice with commercial survival. They cultivated collectors, organised exhibitions, promoted their work and built careers because they could not afford to wait for the system to do it for them.

The book makes a convincing case that the strength of today’s Nigerian art scene did not appear overnight. It was built by artists who discovered, often through necessity, that earning a living from art and remaining true to it were not mutually exclusive. If entrepreneurship became part of their practice, it was because survival demanded it.

The pioneers illustrate that reality in strikingly different ways. Bunmi Babatunde has devoted decades to sculpture, working with bronze, wood and fibreglass in a career marked by steady discipline rather than spectacle. Levi Yakubu’s ceramics draw deeply from indigenous traditions while remaining unmistakably contemporary. Abraham Uyovbisere’s figurative paintings, Zinno Orara’s meditations on labour and ageing through the eloquence of hands, and Gerry Nnubia’s painstaking collages fashioned from discarded aluminium cans all bear the imprint of artists who stayed the course when doing so offered few guarantees.

Those who came after widened both the scope and possibilities of full-time studio practice. Angela Amami Isiuwe demonstrates how much can be achieved through understatement. Sam Ebohon’s portraits are less concerned with likeness than with the emotional lives of his sitters, while Hamid Ibrahim addresses alienation and social anxiety with unsparing honesty.

George Edozie works with equal ease across painting, sculpture and installation. Juliet Ezenwa Pearce brings artistic practice and advocacy into the same conversation, particularly around gender and identity. Toni Oshiame reimagines Christian iconography through an African sensibility, while Millicent Osumuo-Onuegbu’s luminous paintings celebrate the strength and dignity of African women. The work of Kainebi Osahenye, Obi Nwaegbe, Fatima Masaya, Tyna Adebowale and Ato Arinze further reflects the range of approaches that now characterise Nigerian studio practice.

By the time the youngest artists came onto the scene, the terrain had changed. International art fairs, digital platforms and a growing network of collectors had created fresh opportunities, even if making a living from art remained uncertain. Sor Sen’s energetic abstractions, Jacqueline Suowari’s monumental ballpoint drawings and Helen Nzete’s mixed-media sculptures, alongside the work of Maryam Umar Maigida, Cliff Agba and Elizabeth Ekpeterson, show a tradition still growing without forgetting how it got here.

One of the book’s real strengths lies in its refusal to treat these artists as isolated success stories. Instead, it presents them as chapters in the same story, with each generation building on what its predecessors achieved while confronting the economic realities of its own time.

The selection criteria underline that commitment. Every artist in the book is a graduate of a university or polytechnic who entered full-time studio practice after national service, has never relied on salaried employment or political appointment, and has remained in professional practice for at least seven years. The emphasis is on endurance rather than celebrity. 

That distinction is worth making because the recent rise of Nigerian contemporary art can easily obscure the years when little came easily. Auction prices have climbed, museums are acquiring Nigerian artists with greater regularity and biennales now feature their work as a matter of course. But long before the international attention came the slow business of building a career—finding collectors, mounting exhibitions and returning to the studio day after day.

Franklyn Chu Egwali’s introductory essay, Aesthetics and Agency: The Rise of the Full-Time Studio Artist in Contemporary Nigeria, provides the wider context for the book. He argues that these artists did more than build successful careers for themselves. By proving that a full-time studio practice could also provide a living, they changed how many people thought about the artist’s place in Nigerian society.

Appropriately, the publication will be accompanied by an exhibition of works by the featured artists. Seen together, the book and exhibition trace four decades of Nigerian full-time studio practice through the careers of those who helped give it shape.

Onoko is well placed to tell this story. A University of Benin-trained theatre practitioner, former Deputy Editor of THISDAY, Editorial Board member of The Sun and former Deputy Director of Public Relations at the National Gallery of Art, he has spent more than three decades writing about Nigeria’s cultural life. The book grew out of two years of interviews and research conducted between 2022 and 2024, with the Advance Reader Copy completed in 2025. The result is a timely account of a chapter in Nigerian art history that has received far less attention than it deserves.

At its heart, The Artpreneurs is about conviction. The artists in its pages wagered their livelihoods on the belief that the studio could be more than a place to make art—it could also provide a living. By doing so, they expanded what later generations could imagine for themselves. They showed that, in Nigeria, the studio need not be a sideline to another career. It could be the career.