Biography

After qualifying as a lawyer in Nigeria, I studied art criticism and writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York. During my MFA program, I was immersed in forms of critical and creative writing at the intersection of art and the media environment. In the past fifteen years, I have developed a diverse body of work that spans criticism, memoir, photography and fiction, including three books and a digital platform for African photography, as well as varied editorial and curatorial projects. In my writing and research, I have given the most attention to the meanings and impacts of photographs, whether they are found in archives, newspapers, or produced in the context of contemporary art. For my PhD in Digital Humanities, I will use computer vision methods to critique the dissemination of photographs during the Nigerian civil war and the ongoing Boko Haram conflict, conducting research on how those photographs have shaped global perceptions about Nigeria, and the African continent in a wider sense. As I accept the privilege to study in Cambridge as a Gates scholar, I hope, in addition, to develop a curatorial and ethical framework for the circulation of conflict photographs in an age of misinformation and AI-generated imagery.

Previous Education

School of Visual Arts Art Criticism and Writing 2015
Obafemi Awolowo University Law 2010