04/09/2026
FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK
THE AFRICAN ARTIST’S MARKET
Article One: The Artist Is Not Enough
Why African Artists Must Learn to Market Themselves
Nobody owes the African artist discovery.
This may sound harsh. But it is one of the most liberating lessons an African artist can learn.
For generations, artists have been encouraged to believe in the mythology of discovery: make great art, remain committed to your studio practice, and someday somebody important will find you.
Perhaps a curator will walk into your studio. Perhaps a European collector will encounter your paintings in Lagos.
Perhaps an American museum director visiting Accra will notice your sculptures.
Perhaps a gallery from London will see your work at an art fair and suddenly your career will take off.
It happens. But waiting for it to happen is not a marketing strategy.
Indeed, the mythology of discovery is particularly problematic for African artists because it reproduces an old structure of dependency.
It assumes that somebody else possesses the authority to make the artist visible.
The artist produces, but someone else discovers, someone else exhibits, someone else writes, someone else publishes, someone else validates.
And eventually, someone else establishes the market value of the work.
The important question is this: Why should the African artist surrender so much power?
Marketing Is Not Selling
The first thing we must do is distinguish marketing art from selling art.
Selling asks: Who will buy this painting?
Marketing asks: Who knows this artist exists?
And then it asks much more.
What does the artist’s name signify?
What ideas are associated with the work?
Can someone recognize the artist’s work without seeing the signature? Is the work properly photographed?
Is there a biography?
Is there an artist statement?
Is there a website or reliable digital presence?
Can a curator find accurate information about previous exhibitions?
Who owns the work?
Who has written about it?
Where has it been exhibited?
Most importantly: What appears when someone searches the artist’s name?
These questions are not separate from professional artistic practice. They are increasingly part of it.
Your Studio Has Become Larger
The contemporary artist’s studio is no longer simply the room containing brushes, pigments, clay, cameras, computers, welding equipment or carving tools.
The studio has expanded.
Your telephone is part of your studio.
Your archive is part of your studio.
Your Instagram page may be part of your studio.
Your website is part of your studio.
The photographer documenting your work is part of your studio.
The conversations you have with other artists are part of your studio.
Even the words you use to describe what you are doing have become part of the expanded studio.
This does not mean that artists should become advertising agencies.
It means that artists must become conscious custodians of their own careers.
The Danger of Silence
Consider two equally talented artists.
Both produce twenty excellent works over five years.
Artist A carefully photographs every work. Dates them. Records dimensions and materials. Writes periodically about the ideas behind the work. Maintains relationships with collectors. Posts intelligently about the creative process. Keeps exhibition records. Builds a mailing list. Responds professionally to inquiries.
Artist B simply makes the work.
After five years, they do not possess the same career.
They may possess equally good art.
But they do not possess equally developed artistic infrastructures.
This distinction becomes increasingly important over time.
Twenty years later, researchers may be able to reconstruct Artist A’s development almost year by year.
Artist B may have produced extraordinary work, yet much of the history has disappeared.
Marketing, therefore, is not merely about money.
Marketing is also about memory.
From Object to Artist
An artist who thinks only about selling objects may ask:
“How can I sell this painting?”
An artist building a career asks:
“How can I build a body of work whose significance increases over time?”
The difference is enormous.
A painting can be sold once.
An artistic identity can generate exhibitions, commissions, publications, residencies, lectures, collaborations, museum acquisitions and generations of collectors.
The ultimate product is therefore not simply the object.
Paradoxically, the artist is also creating the artist.
Every exhibition contributes to that creation.
Every photograph contributes.
Every interview contributes.
Every studio visit contributes.
Every intelligent social-media post contributes.
Every collector contributes.
Every publication contributes.
Every work contributes.
Gradually, a name begins to signify something.
That is what we call a career.
Stop Waiting
African artists today possess instruments of self-representation unavailable to previous generations.
An artist working in Ibadan, Kumasi, Nairobi, Dakar, Johannesburg, Harare or Addis Ababa can photograph a work this morning and place it before audiences across several continents this afternoon.
This does not mean that galleries, museums, critics, curators and collectors are no longer important.
They remain enormously important.
But the relationship can change.
The African artist need not sit silently waiting to be discovered.
Produce the work.
Document the work.
Name the work.
Write about the work.
Photograph the process.
Build the archive.
Cultivate your audience.
Maintain your relationships.
Tell your story.
And allow galleries, curators, museums and collectors to encounter an artistic practice that is already actively constructing its own history.
Nobody owes the African artist discovery.
Fortunately, the African artist no longer needs to wait for permission to become visible.
— Moyo Okediji
President, University of African Art
Next: Who Are You? Building an Artistic Identity Before Building a Market
