After Tiwani: The New Economics of African Gallery Spaces

When Tiwani Contemporary closed its galleries in London and Lagos last month, its founder, Maria Varnava, cited rising operational costs and a changing art market in the UK, signalling that it had fallen prey to the same financial pressures plaguing dealerships worldwide. Much of the ensuing conversation stopped at the announcement itself. However, to me – having reviewed many exhibitions at Tiwani’s twin galleries, from early shows by Phoebe Boswell and Manuel Mathieu in 2017 to Ayotunde Ojo’s A Life of Its Own, the final presentation at the Lagos space this spring – the closure was less of a news story than the end of a fifteen-year experiment connecting Lagos, London and a wider Black Atlantic artworld.

Tiwani championed artists such as Simone Leigh, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Joy Labinjo, and brought them to a wider audience, but its influence extended beyond the artists it exhibited. The gallery was shaped in its early years by the mentorship of the late Nigerian curator, Bisi Silva, who encouraged Varnava (a Greek Cypriot who grew up in Lagos) to establish the venture and proposed its Yoruba name.

Tiwani’s legacy

Over time, Tiwani became a conduit within a wider institutional network. Eva Langret, now director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Frieze, previously spent five years as a director at Tiwani, while the gallery’s last curator, Adelaide Bannerman, brought experience and curatorial rigour accumulated from her time at Tate, Iniva, Autograph and the International Curators Forum.

It is also visible in the curators, directors and cultural decision-makers who passed through its orbit and went on to shape the wider contemporary art world. What has disappeared with Tiwani’s closure are the networks, institutions and professional relationships fostered across fifteen years. It became one of the few galleries with a sustained presence across both cities, helping to establish a critical corridor between London and Lagos at a moment when international interest in African and diasporic art was accelerating. The gallery’s Lagos opening in 2022 arrived amid widespread optimism. That same period saw the launch of British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Artists Space Foundation in Lagos, and a Sotheby’s benefit auction that raised more than £1.3 million for the renewal of CCA Lagos following the death of Silva, its co-founder and director.

Yet Varnava also sounded a note of caution in a 2022 interview, warning of the dangers of market speculation, and stressing the need for long-term structural support if the momentum was to endure. “We need more rigorous support, and for collectors to support older but also a younger generation of artists,” she told me. “That is very necessary for the longevity of this moment.”

G.A.S. Farm House, Ikise © G.A.S. Foundation and Andrew Esiebo. Photo: Andrew Esiebo. Courtesy Yinka Shonibare Foundation

What went wrong?

Changes to its operational structure and, to a lesser extent, its artist roster suggest clues as to why the gallery found itself in this predicament. After a decade as a commercial entity limited by guarantee without share capital, the company that traded as Tiwani was dissolved in 2022, the same year it expanded into Lagos and London’s Cork Street. Did the physical expansion come at the wrong moment?

This appears to have been the case for Stephen Friedman, the thirty-year-old gallery that moved to Cork Street in the same year as Tiwani and went into administration in February. Available accounts show a £1.7 million loss at Stephen Friedman in 2023, attributed to holding two properties simultaneously: rent on the new space before the move, while the old locations underwent refurbishment.

The current state of gallery economics further explains the collapse of Tiwani, Stephen Friedman and others now facing a similarly bleak scenario. Revenue from primary sales is split roughly half to the dealer, and against this, operational costs – rent, staff, art fair booths, shipping, insurance and travel – run into the tens or hundreds of thousands, and all these elements have undergone significant inflationary pressure.

A new model emerges

Yet if London galleries are buckling under this cost structure, those in Lagos survive in part by refusing to inherit it – though not without structural pressures of their own. Tiwani’s decision to restructure rather than close its Lagos gallery suggests it is not wholly reliant on the same model as its London operation. The gallery is understood to occupy a building owned by the Varnava family, a model echoed elsewhere in the city’s art ecosystem.

Wunika Mukan Gallery operated from rented commercial spaces for three years, showing artists including the Edinburgh-based Adulphina Imuede and British-Nigerian painters Sola Olulode and Paul Majek, before high operational costs cut into already thin margins. The solution was both bold and simple. “I looked around my own home and realised I was sitting on unused square footage,” says founder Wunika Mukan. “I pivoted, converted my living and dining room into a small gallery space and never looked back.” Mukan considered and rejected pop-up spaces as too short-term, and limited in terms of brand and community. Likewise, she decided against the path of online-only sales. “Art is visceral,” she says. “People need to stand in front of a piece.”

Works by Ifeoluwase Taiwo and Suchet Baba in Young, Fresh N' New, 2026 (installation view, Wunika Mukan Gallery). Courtesy the artists and Wunika Mukan Gallery

Her most recent show featured eight early-career artists whose profile places them at the accessible end of the pricing spectrum while introducing new names to a broader audience. “We call it cutting our trousers to our size,” she explains, describing the conversion as “the ultimate sweet spot: total creative freedom without forcing us to inherit the crushing financial liabilities of a standard gallery”.

Jide Ogunsanya, who has run AMG Projects in Lekki, a city southeast of Lagos, for more than four years, is direct about the underlying problem. “It’s not the distance,” he says. “It’s the appetite.” The structural arithmetic is stark. Even with 200 collectors in his contacts, his conversion rate is 2 percent per show for works priced at around six million naira, roughly £4,000. The data suggests converted domestic spaces and self-owned property are structural necessities rather than a stylistic or social choice. Overseas fair circuits, for long the primary revenue stream sustaining AMG Projects, offer little rescue: “You pay $20,000 for a booth. Even if you sell out, you break even, at best.”

Ogunsanya’s current show – staged as the gallery looks at new models – is Joy Adeboye’s The Religion of Love, featuring muted watercolours on paper that muse on love and melancholia, signalling a departure from the brightly coloured figurative paintings dominating gallery exhibitions in Lagos. His predicament mirrors a global one, but he is less sentimental than pragmatic: “The art market globally is struggling. I’m exhausted with this aspect of it. But the reason I went into this, that passion still remains. I still believe strongly in the potential of contemporary African art,” he adds. “It’s our time.”