Even before the Obi of Onitsha, Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe (Agbogidi), took the stage — flanked by a retinue of dignitaries that included Barbara Kalu, Executive Vice President at Argus Media — the air inside Enugu’s Institute of Management and Technology International Conference Centre felt almost solid: thick with expectation and the low hum of speculation. Artists, collectors, patrons, sponsors, and hangers-on all waited with bated breath for the overall winner to be announced.
The Obi, regal and unhurried, began to announce the winner — then paused, letting the suspense linger a heartbeat longer. And then it came: Segun Victor Owolabi. The hall erupted — applause breaking first like a gasp of relief, then swelling into a jubilant roar. LIMCAF — the Life In My City Art Festival, Nigeria’s largest and most enduring art event — had found its next golden child.
The Elder K.U. Kalu Prize for Young Artist of the Year, formerly known as the Overall Winner’s Prize, comes with a cash award of $2,000. But the real prize was the work itself: Owolabi’s textile piece, Entanglement: Sad Generation with Happy Faces — witty, haunting, and heartbreakingly familiar.
Those smiling faces, stitched from twitchy threads, grin through invisible cracks. It is a piece about pretense — about laughing when one would rather not (reminiscent of Fela Kuti’s legendary Sufferin’ and Smilin) — about holding it together in a country where irony has become a survival instinct. Entanglement hits like a punch, even as the viewer cannot look away from its grin — smart, tragic, and painfully of the moment.
Now in its 18th year, LIMCAF is something of a miracle in a country where most art initiatives barely survive their first press release. Founded in 2007 by Chief Robert Orji, with support from Rocana Nigeria Limited and the French cultural network, it has evolved from a scrappy regional show into a national pilgrimage for painters, sculptors, and digital dreamers. By 2012, it became a registered non-profit — which, in Nigerian terms, means it outlived the politics that often bury good ideas.
This year’s theme — Can We Breathe? — could hardly have been more apt. It hovered over the exhibition like a question no one dared to answer. Curator Erasmus Onyishi sifted through more than 500 entries, shaping the noise into a slow crescendo of rage, reflection, and reluctant hope. LIMCAF exhibitions are rarely smooth-sailing affairs, but they always end up exciting — throbbing with feeling and defiance.
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Among this year’s prize-winners, Abubakar Mohammed from Zaria took the Chinelo Chime Prize for Photography with a work that felt like a still-life of silence. Patricia Ikel Bello from Port Harcourt won Best Painting/Mixed Media for something tender and unashamedly beautiful — a rarity in an age of irony. Mba Ukemba’s Man stood like a bronze prayer, while Ipa Anyaole’s Voices Unheard dragged the digital into the confessional.
And amid the power flickers and applause, other names — Prince David Kembukem, Jesse Kobol — joined the roll of Nigeria’s fast-rising talents.
The top six finalists, including Owolabi, will embark on a fully funded residency at the Dakar Biennale — a bigger stage that will further expose them to the contemporary art world. For many, it will be their first flight out of Nigeria — a literal and metaphorical leap every young artist dreams about.
What is remarkable about LIMCAF isn’t just that it endures, but that it keeps reinventing itself. If it has survived recessions, pandemics, and bureaucratic ambushes, it is because it is rooted in community. Past winners return as mentors; old rivals exchange banter after the show.
And Enugu itself deserves a thumbs up. The city has art in its bones — from the lingering ghost of Uche Okeke to the restless pulse of its new generation. There is something in its mix of history and humidity that keeps creativity fevered and alive. LIMCAF belongs here.
When Owolabi was finally borne up to the stage in the arms of his cheering colleagues, he looked dazed — as though he had just been handed both a crown and a burden of expectations from the art community. The applause that greeted him felt larger than one person. It was the sound of recognition, of collective relief — a nation exhaling.
When the applause faded, what remained was the quiet belief that art here isn’t an escape from life, but a way through it. LIMCAF endures as a kind of controlled chaos — proof that creativity itself is a form of breathing. And for a few bright days every October, Enugu reminds the nation how to breathe again.
