Favour Ritaro is our first 2021 Curatorial Residency Fellowship Recipient

ARAK Collection is happy to announce Favour Ritaro  as our first recipient of the Arak Collection Curatorial Residency Fellowship for 2021, a Nigerian curator whose research and curatorial work is focused on personal and cultural identities. She explores how African artists capture, process, and map their cultural inheritance. Favour is interested in advancing ideas that challenge and enhance our understanding of the past within a curatorial purview that takes a critical view of representations of identity and nationhood and gender.

In 2019, she was selected as a recipient of the Association of Art Museum Curators and AAMC Foundation Mentorship Program. In the same year, she participated in the 2019 TSA Writing Master Class under the tutelage of Prof. Chika Okeke- Agulu. She has previously worked as Associate, Exhibition and Partnerships at Rele Gallery, Lagos, and recently embarked on researching, and documenting the late Bisi Silva’s (a renowned African curator) curatorial archive alongside a group of curators at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos.

We are looking forward to working with Favour and through her gaze and curatorial practice discover/rediscover the collection, hoping to bring to our audience in 2022 her curated exhibition and publish the respective catalogue.

About ARAK Collection Curatorial Residency Program:

The ARAK Collection Annual Residency Fellowship Program aims to promote a better knowledge and understanding of Contemporary Sub-Saharan Art in the Middle East and Beyond through research of the extensive works part of their collection.

The resident guest curator is expected to research the collection with the intention of curating an exhibition and writing the exhibition catalogue at the end of the residency period, after in-depth research and the submission of a curatorial concept to be approved by the ARAK Collection Curatorial Advisory Committee.

The Residency Fellowship Program was created to support ARAK Collection’s Mission of developing and supporting young and mid-career artists and curators through promoting curatorial research, publications and exhibitions of their collection’s works. The exhibitions developed and produced by ARAK Collection aspire to be impactful and are all associated with relevant public programming.

About ARAK Collection:

ARAK Collection is an independent, Qatari-based initiative, that aims to promote through exhibitions, publications, research and educational programs, Contemporary  African Art and Artists.

The collection is a resource for Artists, Curators and Researchers, it hosts in-house and traveling exhibitions, it also lends artwork to regional and international organizations, institutions and museums, producing print and online publications, and impactful public programs associated with the exhibitions it produces and hosts. ARAK Collection is a public platform to foster critical dialogue around contemporary art practices with a focus on  African Artists and educational programs that have an educational and developmental impact in the local community.

The collection consists of paintings, paper and prints of more than 170 young and mid-career artists of  African countries.

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