Peju Layiwola

• Name — Peju Layiwola • Birth Name — Adépéjú Olówu • Born — 29 September 1967 • Birthplace — Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria • Education — University of Ibadan University of Benin • Alma Mater — University of Ibadan, University of Benin • Occupation — Artist, sculptor, professor • Parents — Babátúndé Ọlátòkunbọ̀ Olówu, Princess Elizabeth Olowu (née Akenzua) • Website — pejulayiwola.com

Born Adepeju Olowu, Layiwola is the daughter of Babatunde Olatokunbo Olowu and Princess Elizabeth Olowu (née Akenzua). Her paternal grandfather was a business magnate who established the first cinema and printing press in Benin and the Delta region in the old Midwestern state. Her maternal grandfather, meanwhile, was Oba Akenzua II, king of Benin, who reigned from 1933 to 1978. Layiwola has built on the artistic tradition of her mother, Princess Elizabeth Olowu, the first female bronze caster in Nigeria, a status she achieved through resilience in a culture that is very patriarchal. Her dual Yoruba and Edo heritage and history has inspired her professional practice.

Layiwola started her primary education at Emotan preparatory school, had a length of time at St Maria Goretti College and graduated. She began her secondary education at the Federal Government girls college at Benin city, she proceeded to the University of Ibadan where she studied Art History and University of Benin (Nigeria) where she studied Visual art history.

Layiwola received a BA (Metal Design) from University of Benin in 1988, and an MA and PhD (Visual Arts) from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 2004. She is the founder of the Women and Youth Art Foundation, an organisation committed to empowering women, young girls and youth through the arts. She has also served on art juries. Layiwola, who initially began working with metal, now explores a broad range of media that engage with history, memory and cultural expropriation. Her focus is on personal and communal history with the Benin kingdom's dual status as both ancient and modern as a focal point. Much of her work emphasizes themes such as the colonization of sacred assets from the Benin kingdom and asserting her place in the male dominated field of bronze casting. Layiwola is also an advocate against artifact pillaging, and argues in favor of repatriation and restitution. In her most ambitious solo exhibition, Benin1897.com:Art and the Restitution Question (2010), Layiwola's return to the punitive expedition to Benin in 1897 and the looting of prized cultural artifacts from the bedchamber of her forebears brings together her personal and communal history. Her other collaborative public project, Whose Centenary? (2014) is also informed by history and the archives. She gave a talk at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019, and one at the CAA-Getty International Program in 2018 on her work. Of her work and inspiration, she says "I got a lot of inspiration from my mother, having seen her as a young girl casting in metal. So, I opted for metal design at the University of Benin, which was broader spectrum from what she studied because she did metal casting under sculpture. But I specialize in metal design, which incorporates jewelry production, metal casting etc." As a feminist Layiwola has dedicated her time to empowering women through education in the arts. Layiwola's art projects and mentorship programs have been described as having had an impact on generations of younger artists around Nigeria. Layiwola currently hosts workshops on a traditional form of tie dye called adire, which involves dying cotton cloth an indigo color using a starch resist made of cassava flour. Layiwola would go on to launch a solo exhibition titled "Indigo reimagined" in 2019, that highlights different types of traditional Yoruba and Edo crafts such as poetry, metalwork and various dyed textiles.

Layiwola started her career at University of Benin in 1991 and went on to the University of Lagos in 2002. She rose to the role of Acting head of Creative Arts at the University of Lagos from 2013 to 2015 and the head from 2017 to 2020. She pushed for an overhaul in the curricula and edited the first journal of the department. Under her tenure, the Lagoon gallery was established a contemporary community engagement platform at the University of Lagos.

Layiwola has led public advocacy for the return of art works stolen from Benin during the Punitive Expedition of 1897.

• Artificial Facts and Boundary Objects, 20 June – 20 September 2015, Kunsthaus Dresden, Municipal Gallery of Arts, Dresden, Germany/Objectas Fontera at CA2M in Madrid, Spain 4 November 2015 to 28 February 2016; Group travelling exhibition: • Whose Centenary? Collaborative Public Art Project, Igun Street, Benin City, 6/7December 2014. Group public art performance and exhibition. Supported by the University of Lagos Research Grant • Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question, a Solo Traveling Exhibition by Peju Layiwola, Lagos, 8 April-30 May 2010, Main Auditorium Gallery, University of Lagos/The Museum, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Ibadan, 20 August-10 October 2010 • Joint show: Identities and Labels: Eight Contemporary Nigerian Women Artists, Pan African University Lagos, 24 September-8 October 2005 • Of Bronzes and Prints: a Mother/Daughter Perspective: an Exhibition of Sculptures, Reliefs and Prints. Goethe Institute Lagos, Two-person exhibition by Princess Elizabeth Olowu and Peju Layiwola. 14–25 June 2003. • Solo Show: 'The African Woman: An Exhibition of Bronze Sculptures,’ Flowerfield Arts Gallery, Portstewart, Northern Ireland, U.K, May 1996. Women, Art and Society: Queen's University of Belfast, Armagh Campus. N. Ireland, UK, September 1996 • Orimipe, performance at the opening and close of the Exhibition. Performed by Sixteen males to register the entry of males into the art of indigo dyeing which was predominantly a female preserve. The men developed the use of stencils for mass-producing these textile patterns. University of Lagos 2018-2019

• The Raw Residency, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, 15 April- 15 June 2018. • Artist-in –Residence, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany. 8 October-8 December 2017.

• Tobenna Okwuosa (2017) Peju Layiwola's Art: An Engagement with Benin History and the 1897 Tragedy in The Art of Nigerian Women, Ben Bosah Books, USA. pp. 278–28. • Antawan Bryan (2014) 'Peju Layiwola', Art Cities of the Future: 21 st Century Avant-Gardes, Phaidon Press, London pp. 178–179. • Barbara Winston Blackmun (2013) Contemporary Contradictions: Bronzecasting in the Edo Kingdom of Benin', A Companion to Modern African Art. First Edition, Eds. Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visona, John Wiley Blackwell and Sons, Inc. pp. 389–407. • Freida High (2010) Benin1897.com: 'Peju Layiwola's Metamonument', Benin 1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question, Eds. Peju Layiwola and Sola Olorunyomi, Wy Art Editions, Ibadan, pp. 1–12 pp15–40

• The Challenges Visual Art Face in Nigerian Universities – Peju Layiwola (Premium Times)