UW-Madison’s Faisal Abdu’Allah, an associate professor with the School Education’s Art Department and faculty director of The Studio, was mentioned in Muse’s memoriam of well-known art curator Olabisi Obafunke Silva (known as Bisi), who Abdu’Allah credits with launching his art career in London.
After working in London, Silva left the UK in 2000 to champion global arts of the African diaspora. Muse names Silva “one of the most important independent curators based within the continent of Africa and working across the continent and beyond.”
Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1962, Silva earned her undergraduate degree in France, with her formal training as a curator taking place in the mid-1990s, when she was a part of the first cohorts to enroll in London’s Royal College of Art Visual Arts Administration Master of Arts Program.
She established a project known as Fourth Dial Art, “a non-profit intercultural organization committed to the development, production, presentation, and distribution of the visual arts.” This program was responsible for Abdu’Allah’s solo touring exhibition, “Heads of State.” Muse names Abdu’Allah as “one of the most fascinating and accomplished artists to emerge from the London art world of the mid-1990s.”
In addition to Silva’s success in the UK, she established the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, which functioned as a gallery, library, archive, and center of learning, debate, conversation, and exchange. According to Muse, Silva single-handedly took on this work, reflective of her drive, energy, commitment, and heightened sense of intellectual engagement.
Read Muse’s memoriam here.