Art Lifestyle: Remembering Afi Ekong – 1930 – 2009

REMEMBERING AFI EKONG – 1930 – 2009

Nigerian artist and arts promoter Afi Ekong as she paints on a canvas, Lagos, Nigeria, January 1962.

Ekong began her art studies in London in 1951 at the Oxford College of Arts and Technology, went on to Saint Martin’s School of Art in 1955, then returned to Lagos in 1957.

In 1958 at the Exhibition Centre Marina, she was the first woman artist to hold a solo exhibit in Lagos.

She owned and operated the Bronze Gallery in various locations, in Lagos and on the Fiekong Estate in Calabar.

She was manager of the Lagos Arts Council, a founding member of the Society of Nigerian Artists, supervisor of Gallery Labac from 1961, and chair of the Federal Arts Council Nigeria from 1961 to 1967.

She appeared regularly on a Nigerian television program called “Cultural Heritage”, to promote the arts. In 1963 she was featured in a New York Times photo essay as an example of the “new African woman” after independence.

She also chaired a UNESCO commission in the 1970s, and in 1990 the National Council of Women’s Societies Committee on Arts and Crafts.

Afi Ekong died in 2009, in Calabar, aged 78 years. The Bronze Gallery remains in operation in Calabar.Paintings by Afi Ekong are in the University of Lagos Library.

Celebrating amazing women in the arts.