Follow Vogue Man Arabia

Exclusive: Akoje Gallery Opens its Dumfries House Artist Residency to the Middle East

The Akoje Gallery exclusively announces that it is opening up its Dumfries House artist residency to the Middle East, with plans to expand into the region on the horizon.

v

Lebanese gallerist Khalil Akar, Qatar Museums’ Zeina Arida, and British rugby star Maro Itoje 

With sights set on the Middle East, British rugby star and self-confessed art addict Maro Itoje and Lebanese gallerist Khalil Akar are expanding their joint venture, Akoje Gallery. Now featuring a multidisciplinary residency, the evolving endeavor has existed since December 2023 variously as an online gallery and a nomadic pop-up appearing all around the world, from London to Lagos. The impetus behind its creation was to showcase artists with African and Caribbean backgrounds, and with the new residency up and running, Itoje and Akar are announcing exclusively with Vogue Arabia Akoje’s next steps in supporting underrepresented artists: With help from Qatar Museums, the gallery is dedicating two of the eight annual placements in 2025 to rising talents from the region. According to Zeina Arida from Qatar Museums, this partnership is about “looking at building bridges between two important regions in the world that perhaps until now didn’t have enough channels of collaboration.”

akoje gallery

Dumfries House in Scotland

The location for the residency came about serendipitously. Itoje and Akar were looking for a site to host international participants, and it just so happened that Scotland’s stately Dumfries House had a recently renovated Georgian-era cottage fit for two people to live and work independently, complete with their own dedicated studios. All that was missing was the artists. Thus, the Akoje Residency x King’s Foundation Artist in Residence Programme was formed. As Akar puts it, “the dream… is to end up having a legacy-type residency that links so many cultures together. And one big one, obviously, is the Arab world.”

For connoisseurs of British heritage and design, Dumfries House may ring a bell. The 18th-century family home and accompanying 2 000 acres of land were saved quite dramatically by the intervention of His Majesty King Charles III, then Prince of Wales. The house boasted the world’s most extensive collection of furnishings by celebrated British designer Thomas Chippendale, which was due to be auctioned off piecemeal in 2007. A group of charities came together to preserve the pieces in their original setting, but fell short of the £45 million asking price for the entire estate. That is until His Majesty joined the partnership with the additional funds raised via the Prince’s Trust, and literally stopped the trucks in their tracks on the way to the auction house. The resulting collaboration between those charities exists today as the King’s Foundation.

The gallery supports up-and-coming talents from Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora, such as Olawunmi Banjo and Nissi Ogulu, both from Nigeria, and Sarah Knights from Trinidad and Tobago. Their works, some of which are shown here, range from oil paintings of expressive wire fingers to music- inspired, stylized puzzle pieces to mixed-media paintings featuring collage, embroidery, and acrylic that explore the female identity.

akoje gallery

akoje gallery

akoje gallery

Photo: David Wayt

Dumfries House has since been instilled with new life: The land is now open to the public for picnics and dog walks, the estate is home to numerous educational hubs for participants of all backgrounds, and the house itself welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to discover the exquisite interior stylings and original artworks.

As well as private lodgings and studios, Akoje’s artists-in-residence are granted access to all on- site facilities to stimulate creativity. This includes a printmaking studio, fashion and textiles workshops, a teaching farm, a wellness center, building courses, and more. They won’t be pressured into producing a certain quota of work during this three-month stay, the focus instead being on expanding horizons: “One thing we wanted to get out of this residency is to try and get the artists… a bit out of their comfort zone, to try everything that’s on offer and then to see if they would like to incorporate anything into their practices,” says Akar. Though, if they do find time between stained glass tutorials, knitting clubs, and yoga meditations, they are encouraged to leave one original piece behind for the gallery’s collection. The resulting work will be displayed together at an end-of-year group exhibition next September at a gallery in London.

akoje gallery

Itoje wears Middle Eastern brand Qasimi, which recently partnered with Lagos Fashion Week. Photo: David Wayt

The founders hope that the Akoje Residency one day becomes the largest of its kind in the world. “The support of Qatar Museums is a big milestone in the growth of our non-profit,” explains Itoje. With phase one of the partnership already underway with the opening up of the Akoje Residency x King’s Foundation Artist in Residence Programme to Middle Eastern applicants, there’s more to come in 2025 with a Qatar-based residency on the horizon. “We hope we can go deeper and reach further and wider in the Arab world in regards to art,” he adds. “We hope that Akoje will also be a beacon for up-and-coming Arab artists.”

Applications are open from October 4 to November 15 on Gallery.akojegallery.com.

Originally published in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Vogue Man Arabia 

Suggestions
Articles
View All
Vogue Collection
Topics