Black Muse Art Festival Returns to Benin City with New Pavilion and Sculpture Park Exhibition

The four-day festival, themed *For Those Who Astonish the Gods*, will bring together artists and cultural practitioners to explore art, ecology, sound and indigenous knowledge

Angels and Muse will present the second edition of the Black Muse Art Festival (BMAF) from November 7–10, 2026, in Benin City, Edo State. The festival’s programme includes a sculpture park exhibition, a new pavilion, installations, an ecological workshop and a book drive for public schools.

Themed *For Those Who Astonish the Gods*, the festival takes inspiration from Nigerian writer Ben Okri’s novel of the same name. Across four days, it will explore imagination, the limits of perception and the transformative possibilities of art and cultural knowledge.

Following its inaugural edition, BMAF continues Angels and Muse’s work to expand contemporary African art and cultural discourse beyond established metropolitan centres. Exhibitions, site-specific installations, ecological workshops and engagements with plants, sound and indigenous knowledge systems will position Benin City as a hub for artistic experimentation and cultural exchange.

A central feature of the programme is *What Seeks Us Is Better Than What We Seek*, a sculpture park exhibition curated by Ghanaian artist-curator Esinam R. Damalie. Structured around art, sound and plants, the exhibition treats the Black Muse Sculpture Park as a living environment where artistic practices, plant life and sound encounters interact. Visitors are invited to consider how meaning emerges through relationships between human and non-human life.

The exhibition features works by Olumide Onadipe, Temitayo Badru, Jonathan Chambalin, Haneefa Adams, Ephraim Theophilus, Ohiole Ohiwere, Bridget Edheroveno, and Onye & Choir, a loose collective. The artists’ varied practices will bring different ways of making and experiencing art into conversation, presenting the park as an evolving landscape of artistic, ecological and sensory exchange.

The curatorial programme also includes a presentation developed with Bridget Edheroveno, a horticulturist and participating artist. Focusing on the properties and uses of plants, it explores their healing, purifying and other beneficial qualities, as well as the knowledge embedded in plant life and communities’ relationships with their natural environments. The project encourages visitors to consider plants in relation to wellbeing, ecological balance and the preservation of indigenous knowledge—not only as elements of landscape or decoration.

Sound will offer another way to experience the exhibition, encouraging visitors to listen as well as look. Together, art, plants and sound create a framework for engaging with the environment and exploring connections between artistic expression, ecological awareness and the knowledge that shapes everyday life.

The festival will also unveil a new pavilion in the Sculpture Park, extending Angels and Muse’s exploration of architecture, materiality and shared cultural spaces. The pavilion will bring art, nature and public life together, supporting cultural exchange and artistic engagement beyond the conventional gallery.

Two installations will further the programme’s engagement with conceptual practice. Nigerian poet, writer and multidisciplinary artist Wana Udobang will present *Dirty Laundry*, a textile installation. *The House that Words Built*, a conceptual installation by poet Ofem Ubi, whose practice intersects with contemporary art, will also feature.

The projects explore how poetic language can move beyond the page and spoken word to become spatial, material, visual and embodied. Through installation, poetry is presented as an environment visitors can enter, navigate, listen to and experience physically. The works also invite audiences to consider how poetry can inhabit art spaces and take forms beyond conventional literary presentation.

“As we continue to celebrate the works of those who came before us, we also need to ask what we are making possible for those who will come after us. This is what the Black Muse Art Festival by Angels and Muse is about. We are not simply gathering artists and art practitioners for a few days; we are creating a space where knowledge is passed on, new ideas are birthed and nurtured, and another generation is given the freedom to astonish us.”— Victor Ehikhamenor, Convener, Black Muse Art Festival

Beyond the exhibitions and installations, the programme includes an ecological workshop led by Tobiloba Akibo. The session will engage participants with environmental questions through practical, experiential learning, complementing the festival’s focus on ecological awareness and the relationship between cultural practice and the natural world.

A book-drive initiative for public schools in Benin City will connect the festival with young readers and local educational communities, highlighting the importance of access to creative knowledge and cultural participation.

“With this year’s festival, we are interested in what happens when we allow art to encounter the world beyond its familiar boundaries. Through the exhibition’s dialogue between art, plants and sound, alongside installations, ecological engagements and shared learning, we are creating opportunities to experience knowledge in unexpected ways. For us, the festival is not only about presenting artworks, but it is also about creating the conditions for new relationships, questions and possibilities to emerge. We hope visitors leave the festival with a renewed sense of wonder and a deeper appreciation of the many ways art can shape how we see, understand and inhabit the world.”
— Roli O’tsemaye, Programme Director, Black Muse Art Festival

With For Those Who Astonish the Gods, BMAF brings together exhibitions, installations, ecological engagement and shared learning to explore new ways of understanding art and the world around us. The festival places Benin City at the centre of a wider conversation about contemporary art, ecological consciousness and the future of artistic practice across Africa and its diaspora.