Faridah Folawiyo

Faridah Folawiyo was born in London in 1993, and grew up in Lagos for the first half of her  life. She then went to boarding school in the UK, but still spent four months a year in Lagos. She enrolled at Princeton University, where she majored in Near Eastern Studies, but by her final year discovered a passion for art history and ended up writing her senior thesis on photography in post-war Lebanon. It was also at Princeton that she studied under and was mentored by Chika Okeke-Agulu who launched her on a path towards an in-depth study of African art history. Whilst at Princeton, she also spent a year studying abroad in both Paris and Istanbul. After graduating in 2015, Folawiyo did a three-month stint at Tyburn Gallery in London, before returning to Lagos to work at the concept store Alara Lagos. Her main role at Alara was managing the restaurant, but as it is a multi-concept project, she also helped with other roles from fashion buying to assisting with the exhibitions that took place in store. For six months in 2016, she was Duro Olowu's assistant curator for LagosPhoto Festival. During this period, Faridah realised that she would like to have a career in curating, finding the research work intellectually fulfilling, and enjoying the practical side of putting a show together.