Hassan Aliyu, FRSA, is the President of Nigeria Art Society UK (NASUK), a company he co-founded in 2013 to bring together artists of Nigerian descent working in the diaspora.
Aliyu was born in Hertfordshire in Britian but completed his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in Nigeria in 1986. As a student in Nigeria, Aliyu used recycled materials to explore the ban on imported art materials during Nigeria’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the 1980s and examined the colourful packaging of ‘essential commodities,’ used by the colonial monopolies such as Tate & Lyle, Nestlé, Cadbury’s. Today Aliyu is known for his large-scale collaged paintings highlighting the African diaspora experience of racism. He examines issues relating to destabilisation and anti-blackness derived from the legacies of enslavement and colonialism.
Hassan Aliyu has exhibited his work at Russell Coates Museum & Gallery, Bournemouth in 1997, 198 Gallery, London in 1995, The National Museum, Lagos in1988, The Bronx Museum, Studio Museum, Harlem, Caribbean Cultural Centre, New York in 1998 and Yaduza Gallery artists, Westermarkt, Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1996 – 1999.
Refs: Hassan Aliyu biography hassanaliyu.com
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