After a Year Off, KAFART Returns as a Biennial — And Bigger in Scope

The Kaduna Fashion and Art Exhibition (KAFART) will hold its sixth edition this October from the 22nd to the 25th involving several creative communities in Kaduna and beyond.. The event, which is organised by the Gazelle Creative Foundation, has returned after a year-long break and is now a biennial event, and continues to be one of the most prominent platforms for art and fashion in Northern Nigeria and the wider region.

This year’s theme, ‘To Have and to Hold’ prompts us to think about what endures, what is lost and what is reclaimed across culture, family, environment, history and identity. The program will bring together artists, fashion designers, academics, and cultural professionals from the region and beyond, staged in four exhibitions: an intergenerational exhibition on identity, heritage, and belonging; an examination of Kaduna Textile Limited as a site of collective memory and national aspiration; an exploration of clay pots and food as vessels of resistance drawing on perspectives from Kaduna, Lagos, and Cairo; and a fashion exhibition on clothing as a carrier of knowledge, history, and family legacy.

Art exhibition at Kaduna Fashion and Art Exhibition

Programming will include a fashion runway show in alongside the fashion exhibition, and film screenings in collaboration with The Critics Company and Clan Yujo Studios, inspired by Majigi, the historic mobile cinema tradition in Hausa culture. Discourse sessions will also explore the global donkey skin trade and its impact on donkey populations and its communities.

KAFART’s vendor fair is also back, this time expanded to include indigenous craft entrepreneurs alongside the small businesses that usually make up a local economy around the festival, highlighting material heritage that stretches into the present.

Join The Moveee as we host a live Ask Me Anything session with the director of the Kaduna Fashion and Art Exhibition, Ganiyat Sani, where she gets to answer all questions about this year’s event as well as clear every misconceptions and myths about the overall event programming and goal.