The ART X ICON Masterclass was conceived as a bridge between generations, connecting one of Nigeria’s most important photographic legacies with the new players lending their voices to how we see ourselves today. Rooted in the work of J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere and guided by his son, archivist and fellow photographer, Amaize Ojeikere, the programme invited ten emerging photographers to expand their views of photography as an archive, a place where history, memory and imagination meet.
From this first cohort, three photographers distinguished themselves for the rigour of their vision, the clarity of their intentions and the care with which they approach the people and places they work with. We are proud to announce the photographers recognised for excellence in the ART X ICON: The Masterclass.
Taslimah Woli
Taslimah Woli is an emerging Nigerian photographer and visual artist whose practice grows out of a long-standing interest in drawing, fashion sketching, and architecture. With early illustration, later realistic sketches and collages made from scraps of paper and cardboard, she has always worked with shape, structure, and the emotional charge of built space. A turning point came in 2022, when she joined the Phoenix Project in Lagos and began using her phone camera seriously. Since then, she has been photographing in Lagos, Ibadan, and other cities, compelled to show people the reality of places they pass through but rarely see, and to treat streets and bridges as living archives of culture and everyday life.
Her architectural training and the GIDA Imagemakers Masterclass, where she studied with Rachel Seidu and encountered the work of J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, sharpened her interest in the architecture of routine and belonging. This has resulted in published photo essays and an online exhibition that positions photographers as custodians of memory in urban spaces. Her mirrored image of the Lawanson Bridge underpass exemplifies her approach—precise symmetry, negative space, and a shifting sense of where structure meets sky, revealing her belief that architecture is never neutral.
With support from the grant, Taslimah will deepen this inquiry by expanding her growing archive of how people inhabit, adapt to, and emotionally interpret their urban environments, focusing on everyday perimeters as sites of encounter, memory, and imagination.
"When I first saw J.D. Ojeikere’s book, it was for less than a minute. I had no idea that I’d one day get to learn more about him and his practice. I would later be taught by the amazing Amazie Ojeikere through the ART X ICON Masterclass.
It was comforting to realize that, like us, J.D. Ojeikere committed to his work despite the hurdles, and he sought to reflect his environment, history, and the exchanges between people and culture.
I’m incredibly humbled to have been among the photographers taught to see through his exacting eye."
Daniella Almona
Daniella Almona is a photographer and visual storyteller whose practice centers on building and preserving a visual archive of her communities through portraiture and documentary work. Working across analog film, cyanotype, digital photography, and collage, she documents beauty, love, and connection while continually redefining what “home” means. Her work explores identity, representation, collective memory, joy in community, and visibility as a form of resistance. Guiding her practice are questions about how bodies and spaces function as archives, how to challenge inherited narratives, and how to build enough trust that people feel truly seen on their own terms.
Her photograph Between Mother and Memory (2024) exemplifies this approach. Meditating on heritage and maternal lineage, the image draws on the symbolism of water, Orishas, and the sacred energy of Iyami. Using textiles passed down through generations, the work turns fabric into a shared language between Mayowa and their mother—a way of exchanging knowledge, admiration, and care. By inhabiting these garments, Mayowa honors their mother’s legacy while asserting their own individuality, embodying Daniella’s broader interest in how archives live within people, gestures, and cloth.
With support from the grant, Daniella will further develop Faces of Dencity, her ongoing series documenting Dencity, a women-led skate collective that has grown from a small Lagos group into a nationwide movement. Her photographs and films follow the skaters as they carve out pockets of freedom and joy in a city where leisure is often overshadowed by survival, framing skateboarding as both play and radical reclamation of space. The grant will help her expand the portraiture and environmental studies in the series, deepen her collaborative engagement with the skaters, and produce archival prints and an immersive exhibition that brings their movement, sound, and stories into the gallery.
"The ART X Masterclass was both grounding and inspiring, reminding me of the power of intention and thoughtful visual space in my work. It rekindled my love for analog photography and affirmed why I document life and the souls within my community. Being selected as an ART X ICON winner feels deeply meaningful because it offers an opportunity to share a piece of my life, and the way I see the world, with a wider audience. I’m truly honored."
Amarachi Nnoli
Amarachi Nnoli is a Nigerian lens-based artist and photojournalist whose work centers on everyday life, memory, and joy within Igbo communities. Trained in English and Literature at the University of Benin, she began her career with Document Women and has since exhibited in London, Chicago, Spain, and Lagos, while participating in programs such as the Dikan Photojournalism & Documentary Practice Program (Ghana) and the African Digital Heritage residency (Kenya). A member of Black Women Photographers, the African Photojournalism Database, and African Women in Photography, she is also a founding member of the Ahutan Collective. Across her practice, she focuses particularly on women, her family, and Igbo cultural traditions, using portraiture to counter one-dimensional narratives of trauma and foreground dignity, joy, and continuity.
Her ongoing body of work “Anwuli: An Invitation to Joy and the broader project Archiving Igbo Joy” forms a growing visual archive of Igbo life. Working in her hometowns of Adazi-Ani and Ogidi (Anambra State), Amarachi creates staged yet intimate portraits of everyday people, especially women, against backdrops inspired by Igbo domestic spaces. Alongside new images, she digitizes family and community photographs, weaving past and present to ask what it means to be seen and remembered on one’s own terms. The project actively counters post-Biafran narratives of loss by foregrounding joy, belonging, and self-representation.
With support from the grant, Amarachi will deepen and expand this archive during the upcoming Christmas and New Year period—when families return home and communal life is most vibrant—by creating new portrait environments, strengthening community collaboration, and producing on-the-spot prints that allow participants to take their images home. In the long term, she aims to extend the project across multiple Igbo towns and develop community-based exhibitions, building a collaborative archive that centers everyday beauty and joy while contributing to wider conversations on self-representation and cultural memory in Nigeria.
"The Masterclass was a deep, deep dive into the life of J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere; his work, his inspiration, his beginnings as a photographer’s apprentice in Abakaliki, his evolution, how he chased what he wanted, and how he wasn’t comfortable with “easy” work.
It was a very inspiring reminder of how an artist can grow and adapt, and of how important it is to carefully save our life’s work because we aren’t just photographing or creating for ourselves. As someone who’s very interested in archiving, I was awestruck by how meticulously Ojeikere catalogued and preserved his work, especially at a time when you couldn’t just upload to the cloud or back up on a hard drive.
I’m very grateful to ART X for this opportunity to experience Ojeikere’s work in person; to the Masterclass for revitalizing me as an artist and photographer; and for the grant — a much-needed moral, creative, and financial boost to keep creating."
Together, they show how intergenerational dialogue can sharpen an artist’s voice, drawing on Ojeikere’s attention to ethics, typology and everyday beauty while speaking to the realities of a changing Nigeria.
Beyond the recognition and grant support, ART X ICON: The Masterclass points to the importance of structures that allow this kind of work to grow, where mentorship, peer exchange and institutional backing come together. Through a citywide digital campaign in Lagos, the work of these three artists will be shared more widely, marking this moment as part of a longer story about how photography can shape the histories we keep and the futures we imagine.
The ART X ICON: The Masterclass is proudly sponsored by Zenith Bank PLC.