Will Rea
- Position
- Senior Lecturer of African Art
- Areas of expertise
- Art history, Heritage, Anthropology
- [email protected]
- Faculty
- Arts, Humanities and Cultures
- School
- Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
- Website
- Faculty profile
Countries
I was born in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Between 1990 and 1992 conducted research in the small town of Ikọle-Ekiti, an engagement that remains ongoing.
The main focus of my work has been on Yorùbá masquerade and also the woodcarving traditions of the Ekiti region.
This work has now extended to an understanding of Yorùbá visual logics and modes of counting.
Curatorial work
I have curated a number of exhibitions in Leeds (ULITA - African textiles) and elsewhere and over the past ten years I have been working within the Heritage sector in Nigeria, specifically as co-ordinating curator on the John Randle Centre for Yorùbá Culture and Heritage in Lagos.
Work with the Nigerian heritage institutions is ongoing.
I am currently working on the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 using this research to examine modes of reparative justice around colonialism and am involved with African Heritage groups in Leeds and with the development of the Ṣoyinka archive in the Brotherton special collections.
Explore The Guardian’s article about the John Randle Centre: "Noisy, performative and unapologetically non-European: Nigeria welcomes a museum like no other".