Portraits of Lampedusa Iv by Burns Effiom

Portraits of Lampedusa are a series of abstract portraits focused on the migrants crossings by land and sea globally. In Europe, most showed up in th island of Lampedusa.

Burns Effiom was a visual and performance artist, and curator. He represented Nigeria at the DAK’ART Biennale 2010 in Dakar, Senegal.  An Alumni of Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation’s Harmattan workshop, he collaborated with the United States of America Department of Information (USIS) and Bronx Museum on an Art and Diplomacy program titled “The Smartpower Initiative”. He is also the Nigerian representative of ‘AFIRIPERFORMA’ – a collective of performance artists of Africa. He has collaborated with the Goethe Institut for the National Pop-Up Theatre Lagos 2013, and was co-curator for the International Art Expo in Lagos 2008 – 2012. He has exhibited at the Africa Regional Summit of Arts (ARESUVA) 2009. He also co-curated “Road to KPAZAA”, a retrospective of iconic ceramicist Ladi Kwali & Uche Okeke at the SKOTO Gallery, New York. Burns co-curated Complexities, Portraiture and Abstract Dialogues in Nigerian Artists for the Calabar Gallery, Harlem USA earlier in 2018. He was the curator for the first and oldest private gallery in Nigeria; Bronze Gallery, Calabar and has been listed as one of 1000 Artists by the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. He was the curator for the Art Galleries Association of Nigeria. He was working on the epic touring exhibition titled ‘100 Years of Modern Art in Nigeria: From 1900s to Contemporary. Burns Efiom passed away in 2022.