Kennedy, Stacey Elizabeth Anne (2023). Women’s agency in the Nigerian art world: modernist legacies and contemporary moves across African art networks. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.
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Abstract
This thesis focuses on powerful Nigerian women who have in recent years influenced and shaped the global contemporary African art scene. It explores a vibrant art scene populated by successful female art curators and administrators who power the burgeoning global contemporary African art industry from the continent. The research considers art networks and the wider art infrastructure as cosmopolitan arenas in which women’s agency is formulated, debated, contested, and exercised. Drawing on rich ethnographic fieldwork conducted in art institutions and at art events between 2018 and 2022, as well as interviews with art administrators and artists, the study explores ideas around agency and empowerment. The conclusions argue for the importance of Nigerian women in debates around contemporary art from Africa and its shifting position internationally, particularly in the context of mobility, identity, belonging and opportunity in the art world and beyond.
The conceptual and methodological approach of this thesis draws on social anthropology to examine the field of contemporary African art. In doing so, it makes a novel intervention in conceptualising women's agency in the creative visual arts. Building on this, the research considers the agency of the artwork itself in building social relations. It is crucial that women are written into art-historical contexts in meaningful ways. Female art creators and producers have been erased or ignored in both anthropological and art historical scholarship. By centring women, this thesis offers new perspectives on cultural production: It demonstrates the relevance of Nigerian women who have used their agency to create, connect and shape contemporary art worlds, whilst also contributing to understandings of gender and power in Nigeria. Finally, it proposes new directions in research on art within anthropology and the benefits of thinking ‘art anthropologically’.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.) | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ph.D. | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Licence: | All rights reserved | ||||||||||||||||||
| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Arts & Law | ||||||||||||||||||
| School or Department: | School of History and Cultures, Department of African Studies and Anthropology | ||||||||||||||||||
| Funders: | Arts and Humanities Research Council | ||||||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology | ||||||||||||||||||
| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/14233 |
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