LONDON: “I think of it as the African Mona Lisa,” said award-winning novelist Ben Okri, gazing at the long-lost portrait of a Nigerian princess which recently turned up in a London flat.
Ben Enwonwu’s 1974 painting of Adetutu “Tutu” Ademiluyi, daughter of a Yoruba king, has taken on almost mythical status in the painter’s native Nigeria.
It was last seen in 1975 but is now up for sale after its surprise rediscovery.
“It has been a legendary painting for 40 years, everybody keeps talking about Tutu, saying ‘where is Tutu?’,” the Booker Prize-winning writer Okri told AFP.
As a prominent Nigerian cultural figure on the world stage, Okri viewed the painting at prestigious London auction house Bonhams, where the work will be sold on February 28.
“He wasn’t just painting the girl, he was painting the whole tradition. It’s a symbol of hope and regeneration to Nigeria, it’s a symbol of the phoenix rising,” he said.
“I spent hours looking at it, making up for the time that we hadn’t seen it. It’s been a work of rumor, but here it is, crystallized.”
The work was uncovered by Giles Peppiatt, director of Modern African Art at Bonhams, after a north London family contacted him following lucrative recent sales of Nigerian artworks.
“It was quite remarkable when I walked into this flat in north London and saw it hanging on the wall, it was about the last thing I expected to see,” he explained.
“As soon as I saw it I knew it was authentic, but I couldn’t say that at the time to the owners because you can’t just blurt that out.”
After confirming the search for “Tutu” was over, the family “were, not surprisingly, pretty astounded,” he revealed. “It’s a missing masterpiece.”
Enwonwu, who died in 1994, is considered the father of Nigerian modernism. He made three paintings of “Tutu,” the locations of all of which had been a mystery until the recent discovery.
The works became symbols of peace following the clash of ethnic groups in the Nigerian-Biafran conflict of the late 1960s.
“The sitter is Yoruba and Ben Enwonwu was Ibo, so they were of different ethnic tribes,” said Eliza Sawyer, specialist in Bonhams’ African Art department.
“It was an important symbol of reconciliation.”
Enwonwu was from a politically-connected Ibo family and his father was a traditional sculptor. The painter stumbled upon his most famous muse by accident.
“He would go around local villages and sketch local scenes and figures, and he encountered this young woman whom he thought was just entrancing and requested to paint her, not knowing her stature,” explained Sawyer.
“She was a little taken back by the request,” she added.
“It is the peak of the artist’s career, there’s also the sitter’s status as a princess and thirdly the painting had been lost. That all creates an awful lot of mystery.”
The rediscovered painting was last displayed at the Italian embassy in Lagos in 1975, and was bought by the father of the north London family during a business trip.
“It was pretty much regarded as his prize work,” explained Peppiatt.
“I think he was secretly in love with the sitter. She is a very pretty lady.
“It’s pretty audacious, with the light under the chin, which focuses you on the head. As a bit of painting it stands on its own anyway, without any of the other stories,” he added.
The painting is expected to sell for around £250,000 ($347,000) when it goes on sale jointly in London and Lagos on February 28, but Okri argued that its worth was more than financial.
“It gives us a glimpse of an important African reconfiguration of the art of portraiture,” he said.
“It’s going to start a fire, start a debate. Never have they given proper due to African painters. This is the perfect work to start” to ask why, he added.
‘African Mona Lisa’ mesmerises after surprise rediscovery
‘African Mona Lisa’ mesmerises after surprise rediscovery
Abu Dhabi’s 421 Arts Campus celebrates 10 years with new show
- ‘Rays, Ripples, Residue’ triple exhibition runs until April 16
- Focus on UAE art, director Faisal Al-Hassan tells Arab News
ABU DHABI: Abu Dhabi’s 421 Arts Campus has just turned 10 and is marking the milestone with an exhibition “Rays, Ripples, Residue,” running until April 16, 2026.
The exhibition comprises three sections, each curated independently but with a cohesive thread.
The curators, Emirati Munira Al-Sayegh, Lebanese transplant Nadine Khalil, and Sharjah-born Indian writer, Murtaza Vali, explore how artistic practices and exhibition-making in the UAE has evolved over the past decade.
Faisal Al-Hassan, director of the arts hub and commissioning institution, spoke to Arab News about the showcase.
“‘Rays, Ripples, Residue’ is a landmark exhibition that celebrates this 10-year milestone and reflects on artistic practices over the past decade or so. The exhibition unfolds in three separate chapters, each curated from a distinct point of view,” he said.
Al-Sayegh’s chapter, titled “Leading to the Middle,” is perhaps the most personal and rooted, because of her deep connection to the land and its people. She looked at how seemingly minute moments have a rippling effect.
In her space, she examines the practices of established artists including Emirati Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim and the late Kuwaiti creative Tarek Al-Ghoussein.
In the adjacent space, Khalil presents “Ghosts of Arrival,” described by Al-Hassan as “an intimate look at what it feels like to arrive after the moment has passed.” This serves as the residue part of the exhibition.
Al-Hassan said: “She (Khalil) brings to the fore the practices of artists from the past 10 years who were influenced by work that was created a decade prior. It is both an analysis of artmaking in the UAE and a personal reflection of her own arrival in the country in 2017.”
Artists featured in the section include Hashel Al-Lamki, Mona Ayyash, and Nadine Ghandour.
Vali’s “SUN” presents the rays part of the show, highlighting a sunny — and shady — survey of the last 10 years and the preoccupation of local artists with the flaming ball in the sky.
According to Al-Hassan, Vali selected “works made between 2015 and today that are focused on the sun as both a symbolic and physical presence in our everyday lives — presented visually and metaphorically — to convey and investigate environmental degradation, hyper-commodification, and urban development.”
The three chapters feature new commissions, as well as previously presented works, or new iterations of existing works.
It also spans a wide range of disciplines, including photography, video, performance, installations and multimedia works.
“When we started our journey 10 years ago, the mission was clear: we wanted to provide a nurturing space for emerging artists to experiment and grow,” Al-Hassan told Arab News.
In the last decade, 421 has supported over 1,500 emerging creative practitioners, presented over 50 exhibitions, including solo, group and traveling shows, and commissioned hundreds of new works across visual art, design, performance and writing.
During that time, it also delivered around 2,000 impactful programs across residencies, grants and exhibitions. This was alongside various public programs including talks, workshops, film screenings and special events, while training and mentoring more than 60 interns and creative facilitators.
“We see our work as complementary to the wider ecosystem,” he said.
“It took some time for the creative community to understand why it was so important for us to include such an extensive set of access points in the exhibitions,” he added.
“To us, these materials, like the tactile books, family labels, glossaries, and wall text annotations for example, are just as important as the artwork itself.”
Mays Albaik, who is 421’s “wall whisperer,” walked Arab News through the overall space and explained how the organization gets it done.
“So from the get-go, 421’s mission has always been about breaking down the wall that makes people say, oh, it’s art, I don’t get it, it’s not for me. And so in everything that we do, we’re constantly thinking, how do we tell people: no, actually, it is for you,” Albaik told Arab News.
“Art spaces should be fun,” she added with a laugh.
Text on the walls are written in English and Arabic and the wording used is aimed to be simple but not simplistic, being mindful of the extensive expatriate community in the UAE who may not be fluent in either language.
“What we actually do is, the version of the wall text that you see — or an earlier version of this wall text — goes to a few different members of our community. We go to our operations team, for example, our housekeeping staff and our security guards,” she said.
Arab News spoke with Rajesh Maurati, 28, who has been a security officer at 421 for the past four years, to find out more.
“Initially, we did not have a lot of context, there was some description about the artist, the curators and about the artist point of view,“ Maurati, who is from Nepal, said.
During his 12-hour shift, he would spend a lot of time walking past the walls. Now those walls are a part of the show for him.
“Initially, it was a little bit hard for me to understand the text. Before, I said nothing. Now, before the exhibition, they give us the text to read and if we don’t understand something, we just underline it. And they listen.”
With this simple shift, he now takes pride in not only responding to questions from visitors, but being able to make the space even more immersive and welcoming. And much more human.
“It is really helpful for me personally, too, to create more knowledge about art. Even English, my communication is better — it was not really good before.”
“When I came here (to 421), I learned a lot of things; how to communicate with our clients, our colleagues—we are a mixed nationality. So every time we communicate with each other it gets better. It is better,” he said.
