Kelani Abass explores the material heritage and the archive as a link between past and present. In his three-dimensional works “Casting History, Unfolding Layers” (2024), the artist uses vintage portrait photographs – both original prints and painted reproductions – which he retrieves from the archives of his father’s publishing business. Metal typeface and other elements from the printing world are added to these compositions to bring to light fragile and personal testimonies from Nigeria’s independence era. In Stamping History, Making Time (2016), he recreates the image by repeated imprints applied with an ink pad. In the artist’s study of the “manufactured” nature of the image, he explores its essential function as a support for memory - a fragmentary and multiple memory, rewritten and reassembled by the artist’s hands.

Abass recently exhibited at Tate London and Wereldmuseum Rotterdam in the exhibition A world in Common (2023-2024). His work was exhibited at MoMA in New York in the exhibition New Photography 2023. He has also exhibited at Gropius Bau, the MAR museum in Rio, the 5th Casablanca International Biennale, the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos, and the National Museum in Lagos. He was a finalist for the first James Barnor Foundation Photography Award. He lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

31 PROJECT is a Paris-based gallery dedicated to the promotion of African contemporary art through multidisciplinary exhibitions by artists from the continent and its diasporas.
Founded in 2019 by Clémence Houdart, 31 PROJECT supports and promotes emerging and established artists such as Kelani Abass, Georgina Maxim, Epheas Maposa, M’barka Amor and Léonard Pongo. Since its creation, 31 PROJECT has organized over twenty exhibitions and participated in 25 international art fairs in Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa. The gallery works closely with the world’s leading collections, as well as with a strong institutional network.