The hustle and bustle of the Tate Modern always reminds me of how much the museum remains a focal point for London art. This fact only amplified my excitement going to see one of its largest exhibitions to date, exhibiting the works of influential Nigerian modernist artists.

“What was particularly striking about this exhibition was the range of media displayed, from painting to poetry and everything in between”

The exhibition centres each room around a significant individual modernist artist or school of art throughout the 20th century, straddling the colonial and post-colonial periods in Nigeria. The rooms cover themes such as ‘Figuring Modernity’ and ‘Tradition’, and later centre around artists and artist movements such as the Zaria Art society, the Nsukka school, Uzo Egonu and others. The display of Ladi Kwali’s ceramics, who was the first woman trainee at the Pottery Training Center in Abuja in the 1950s, both shows the delicate beauty of indigenous pottery making techniques and, strikingly, asserts the prevalence of women potters in the Nigerian art revolution. Seeing her work for the first time, I was particularly taken by the simultaneous fullness and intricacy of her ceramics. Kwali’s works capture the blend between local traditional techniques and international influences, creating a visual banquet of colours, textures and sounds.

Importantly, ‘Nigerian Modernism’ manages to avoid making British influence, either artistically or through its decolonisation, a focal point. Instead, the thematic structure rightfully foregrounds the art and social movements that were taking place from a grassroots level that made way for the creation of many of these pieces. Indeed, a description of one of Rufus Ogundele’s works rebuts the patronising description often given to him of being the ‘Picasso of Nigeria’, instead emphasising the heavy influence of Yoruba aesthetics present throughout his works. Similarly, Ndidi Dike’s wall sculptures in the room displaying works from the Nsukka School movement capture the themes of temporariness and loss in the wake of the Nigerian Civil War.

“The thematic structure rightfully foregrounds the art and social movements that were taking place from a grassroots level”

What was particularly striking about this exhibition was the range of media displayed, from painting to poetry and everything in between. Each part of the exhibition captured the vibrant range of cultural production which was intersecting with anti-colonial, anti-establishment political movements during this period. The exhibition covered a lot of ground in just a small space. This particularly stood out to me in the room called ‘Eko’, the pre-colonial name for Lagos. Walking into this room, I was met with the invigorating sounds of highlife music – a genre that blends Latin, European and African sounds and rhythms – which was sweeping urban areas in anticipation of Nigerian independence in 1960. This room certainly captured this excitement as the mixture of music, paintings, record covers, a film and a display of different editions of Nigeria Magazine allows you to experience the head-spinning boom in the arts, behind the backdrop of the excitement of political and economic self-determination. For me this room felt like an immersive insight into the cultural landscape of 1960s Lagos, with the vibrant highlife tunes still playing in my head as I made my way through the rest of the exhibition.

By the end, I definitely felt like I had been on a journey that included all of the twists and turns within Nigerian modern art movements. The expansive title of the exhibition was undoubtedly reflected in its content – although this didn’t come without its limitations. At times, the ambition of the exhibition felt like a compromise on detail, as it juggled explaining the political and economic happenings with artists’ own contexts. This was of course to be expected given the time frame that the exhibition covered, as well as the multi-faceted nature and volume of art produced in Nigeria during this period. But ‘Nigerian Modernism’ nevertheless offers a fantastic introduction to and overview of the innovative artists and movements in Nigerian modern art across the 20th century.