Q+A with Sunshine Alaibe of Shino Arts
At 24, Sunshine Alaibe has invested almost half her life to the Art Industry in Nigeria. For the past three years, she’s been working with the Artist & Clientele Relations at Art Twenty One Lagos.
We felt, having as many as 10 years in the art game her artistic instincts must be pretty strong especially to open up your own art advisory company. Like how does she advise her clients? And as young women how do we invest in art ourselves? So we asked her.
How would you say you became confident enough in your understanding of the art scene to advise clients skilfully?
Well, for me, it was a huge learning curve when I started in the art industry. I was fortunate enough to study History Of Art as my undergraduate degree at University College London. That educational foundation gave me a head start in understanding the basics of the global art industry.
However, when I moved back to Lagos to pursue my desired profession, it proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought. Unlike the UK art scene where there are thousands of independent galleries, art spaces and museums, Nigeria’s art industry is limited to a handful of these art institutions. Not to mention the difficulty in finding a lot of local artists as the majority of these talented individuals are either not well represented, not represented at all or don’t have a social media or internet presence to be discovered.
Initially, it was difficult positioning myself in the industry as I literally did not know anyone. However, in my first year in Lagos, I worked as an account executive at an online art platform where I was able to familiarise myself with a lot of local artists. In that year, I made sure that I attended several art events including exhibition openings, auctions and pop-up art exhibits. I also met a lot of key leaders in the industry who helped in fuelling my desire to become an influential pioneer in the art scene.
I would say, in order to understand the art scene wherever you are, you have to immerse yourself in the industry and do your research. As well as visiting several art events, galleries and artist studios, I also spent a majority of my time on Instagram searching for new artists and reaching out to them for information about their artistic history and their plans for the future. Although it was challenging to acquire so much information, this particularly helped when I opened my art advisory company, Shino Arts, in 2019. Our goal is to provide advisory services focused on the contemporary art scene in Nigeria.
With my research, I was able to offer clients a lot of background information in terms of art history and artist trajectory in terms of the increased valuation of art over time. Understanding the art market in its entirety is very difficult — my advice to anyone that wants to get into this particular profession, is to be specific with the type of art that you would like to work with. It is also important to have mentors in the industry who will assist in guiding your career growth.
