MASTERCLASS

Ojeikere’s Exacting Eye

The legacy of this year’s ICON, J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, lies in his meticulous observation of everyday Nigerian life. His photographs, featured throughout the exhibition, elevate the ordinary into enduring cultural memory. With an eye that is both documentary and poetic, Ojeikere treated each image as part of a vast visual archive — a record of a people, their artistry, and their evolving identities. His exacting eye reminds us that discipline and devotion can turn fleeting gestures into timeless history.

With this theme, we invite artists who approach their practice with similar purpose — those who see their work as living archives — to be part of The Masterclass. Through an open call, 10 artists whose practices engage with memory, typology, and culture as record will be selected to participate in a guided session and workshop.

Led by J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere’s son — himself a photographer and archivist — the session offers participants the rare opportunity to learn directly from a guardian of this legacy. 

A selection of participants will later present their work publicly in Lagos, bringing the archive into the city.

The Icon Masterclass seeks to:

• Preserve and extend the archival eye through photography.
• Create public dialogue between legacy and now.
• Offer tangible visibility via city-scale showcases.

• The Masterclass

10 selected artists will explore J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere’s philosophy — his disciplined eye, respect for form, and deep ethics of representation. Through themes of typology, formal clarity, consent, and the city-as-archive, participants will reflect on how their work can function as both record and imagination.

This session invites them to archive the future — to see the present as history in motion, creating with precision, care, and vision. In Ojeikere’s spirit, they will consider what a future African archive might look like: ethical, communal, and alive to everyday beauty.

• Public Showcase

Following the masterclass, three artists selected from the 10 participants of the Masterclass will refine their statements and present their works to a jury, responding to Ojeikere’s legacy of precision, typology, and the archive-as-art.

The final three works will be translated into outdoor formats across Lagos, transforming the city into a living archive — one that reflects disciplined seeing, collective memory, and the future imagined through an exacting eye.

• Applicants must be emerging or aspiring photographers aged 30 years or younger  and from all backgrounds
• Applicants must be based in Nigeria and available in Lagos on November 8th and November 9th for the masterclass

1. 1 Instagram carousel with up to 3 images
2. Tag @ARTXLagos and use #ARTXIconMasterclass.
3. Complete the Jotform link in ART X Lagos Instagram bio and can also be found here
4. Semi-Finalist (& therefore Winners) are required to open a Zenith account