Application deadline: September 15, 2026
Curatorial Lab Lagos—Lagos Biennial 2026: November 16–18
Apply to applications@lagos-biennial.org
The Lagos Biennial is pleased to announce the inaugural Curatorial Lab Lagos—an intensive three-day programme led by Adam Szymczyk. Taking place immediately after the Biennial’s opening weekend, Curatorial Lab Lagos is conceived as an experimental platform to question inherited exhibition models and to imagine new curatorial futures from Africa and beyond. This idea first manifested during the 2019 edition of the Lagos Biennial as a curatorial intensive programme. Responding to the Biennial’s 2026 theme, The Museum of Things Unseen, the programme invites participants to rethink the museum, the exhibition, and the canon itself. Through collective discussion, site visits, presentations, and workshops, participants will investigate how curatorial practice can become a tool for rewriting institutional histories, challenging dominant narratives, and inventing new forms of cultural imagination.
Rather than teaching established methods, the Curatorial Lab asks a more urgent question: How might exhibitions become laboratories for producing new knowledge rather than simply displaying existing histories? How do curatorial strategies adapt to evolving artistic and institutional positions? The programme is open to early-and mid-career curators aged 20–35 from across the world. International return flights to Lagos, local transportation, and participation are fully funded. Participants will be responsible for their own accommodation, visa fees, and upkeep.
Interested applicants should please send a one-page motivation letter and a CV to applications@lagos-biennial.org.
Twelve successful applicants will be contacted on September 22, 2026
