With artworksnow considered alternative assets, appreciating in value and offering portfolio diversification for investors, art’s role as a significant contributor to economic development cannot be overlooked.

Conceived as a platform to contribute to the development of fresh talents, the Next of Kin Series exemplifies how initiatives in the creative sector can blend artistry and enterprise, ensuring sustainability while fostering innovation.

Inaugurated in 2018 by Thought Pyramid Art Centre, the initiative has been created to plan and prepare the future of visual art in Nigeria. Since its inception, the series has evolved into a powerful catalyst for emerging visual artists in Nigeria and across Africa.

The yearly juried art project that is both a competition and an exhibitionoffers guidance, mentorship and platform to propel emerging artists to the limelight: by discovering from the horde of current emerging visual artists- one who possesses that peculiar artistic originality and creative disruptiveness with transcending futuristic abilities and traits.

The organisers have already made a call to emerging visual artists to explore the shifting identities and changing human conditions that define our times. The call for entries closed on November 31, 2025, of which selected artists would be contacted soon. The finalists’ exhibition will, however,hold from Sunday, April 5 (opening) to Saturday, April 2026, with the main prize winner announced at the exhibition opening..

This year’s event returns with the thought-provoking theme, Fragments Of Being. Through the theme, this edition invites artists to reflect on what remains constant within humanity when everything else changes: to piece together identity, memory, and truth in a world defined by transformation.

As the initiator, Ovie Omatsola, explains:“So many things have been happening recently with people suddenly changing and taking up new characters. Many have forgotten who they are, so we thought to see how our visual artists can interpret that through research.”

Fragments of Being explores the evolving nature of human existence: how experiences, memories, culture, and time continuously shape and reshape who we are. It reflects on how we lose and rediscover parts of ourselves in the process of living, creating, and surviving.

This edition invites artists to examine what it means to be: to exist, to change, and to hold on to meaning amid the fragments that life leaves behind.

Through diverse interpretations, Fragments of Being becomes a mirror to the human condition; a proof to how identity is never fixed but constantly in motion.

This year, the platform will once again spotlight 20 exceptional finalists selected from entries across Nigeria and beyond. From these, one Main Prize Winner will emerge and be awarded a solo art exhibition prize worth #6,000,000 for 2027. This we believe will be a life-changing opportunity to further their artistic journey.

The series is proudly sponsored by Nigeria Machine Tools and Trustbanc, in continued support of emerging artistic excellence and cultural development in Africa.

Previous winners include the Forbes-listed artist Antonia Nneji, Bonhams Auctioned artist Ikechukwu Ezeigwe, Continental dominating Christian Allison, and the recently unearthed Idowu Emmanuel, Cletus Oche, Yakno Ene, and Olalekan Adeyemi Julius.