Re:assemblages Symposium

Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) are proud to announce the inaugural Re:assemblages Symposium, taking place on 4–5 November 2025 at Alliance Française de Lagos during Lagos Art Week. The landmark gathering will convene artists, archivists, curators, scholars, publishers, and cultural practitioners to collectively rethink African and Afro-diasporic archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces.

The symposium launches the second phase of Re:assemblages (2025–26), a two-year programme reimagining the role of archives in shaping African and global art histories. Developed in response to the Picton Archive—a collection of rare African-published journals, magazines, and manuscripts held at G.A.S.—the programme reframes archives not as static repositories, but as dynamic infrastructures for research, cultural production, and exchange. A second symposium, scheduled for autumn 2026, will extend these conversations by developing a toolkit of adaptive archival practices.

The Lagos symposium will unfold across four conceptual strands. Ecotones trace transitional zones where ecologies, communities, and knowledge systems intersect. The symposium explores these intersections through presentations and workshops that envision Afro-ecotones across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. The Short Century revisits 1945–1994 as a catalytic era of African independence and cultural production, revisiting the seminal exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 curated by Okwui Ewenzor. Annotations probe margins, silences, and archival absences through experimental literary and performative strategies, bringing to light hidden narratives and alternative epistemologies. The Living Archive reimagines archives and libraries as active, artist-led, community-centred sites of care, restitution, and creative transformation. Through performances, readings, panels, and workshops, the symposium asks how archives can be regenerated as socially and politically vital spaces.

The symposium will also serve as the inaugural public gathering of the African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab), a new network convened by G.A.S. and Y.S.F. that unites a dynamic group of African arts libraries and publishers across cities including Lagos, Dakar, Marrakesh, Cairo, Nairobi, Cape Town, and Limbe. Through its Affiliates Network, the Lab engages global institutions holding significant African and Afro-diasporic collections. Each AAL Lab public convening will culminate in a micro-publication documenting its outcomes and contributing to the Archive Futures Repository – a dynamic digital resource advancing new, African-led models of archival stewardship and activation.

Curated by Naima Hassan, and coordinated by Samantha Russell with thematic contributions from Maryam Kazeem, Ann Marie Peña, and Jonn Gale. The programme planning committee includes Belinda Holden, Moni Aisida, Samantha Russell, Naima Hassan, Maryam Kazeem, Ann Marie Peña and Jonn Gale. Its esteemed advisory committee comprises Dr. Beatrix Gassman de Sousa, Natasha Ginwala, Dr. Rangoato Hlasane, Serubiri Moses, and Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan.

Re:assemblages 2025–26 is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, Afreximbank under the auspices of the Afreximbank Art Program, Bank of America and The Osahon Okunbo Foundation (TOOF) and Bookcraft Africa.

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