Three key takeaways from Lagos’s newest African art symposium

The second week of November 2025 marks Lagos Art Week, featuring the 10th edition of Art X Lagos, West Africa’s leading international art fair, and the 15th edition of Lagos Photo Festival, now a biennial. A new symposium, Re: assemblages, hosted by the Alliance Française de Lagos and organized by the Guest Artists Space and Yinka Shonibare Foundations, brought together cultural practitioners from across Africa and the diaspora to discuss African and Afro-diasporic art archives. Key takeaways include the importance of archives as living tools for shaping the future, concerns about restricted access to the archives of late curators Okwui Enwezor and Bisi Silva, and the need for restitution efforts to incorporate African knowledge systems and language, not just the return of objects.