How the EU helps bring Ukrainian art to new audiences at the Lagos Biennial
Since its first edition, the Biennial has explored themes shaped by pressing social and political realities. It has created room for artists to reflect on history, identity, migration, and power, connecting local experiences in Lagos with wider global debates. In doing so, it shows how contemporary art can respond to the world around it in urgent and meaningful ways.
The city as exhibition space
Lagos Biennial uses alternative and public spaces across the city, to make contemporary art more accessible to a wider audience. This allows Lagos itself to become part of the experience and helps the Biennial stand out as both a cultural event and an important public platform.
Lagos Biennial 2026: The Museum of Things Unseen
The Lagos Biennial’s fifth edition, titled The Museum of Things Unseen, is scheduled to run from 14 November to 6 December 2026, curated by Furen Dai, Chinyere Obieze, and Sam Hopkins. This edition imagines a speculative museum built around artworks that have rarely, if ever, been seen. It examines how cultural bias, financial power, political influence, curatorial decisions, and market forces determine what is made visible and what remains hidden. Contemporary artists will reinterpret these works, opening new perspectives and challenging the systems that keep certain histories and artistic practices out of view.
Home Beyond the Dawn: a project supported by the EU
The European Union is supporting Ukraine’s participation in the Lagos Biennial through Home Beyond the Dawn, an installation that brings Ukrainian artistic perspectives to new audiences in Lagos. At the heart of Home Beyond the Dawn is a 29-minute multichannel video installation that travels across Ukraine, tracing regions resisting Russia’s war of aggression through the perspectives of contemporary Ukrainian artists. Exploring home as a space of loss, preservation, and reconstruction, the work reflects on shared values, solidarity, resistance, and the role of art in wartime. Its immersive format draws viewers into digital recreations of Ukrainian spaces marked by conflict, tragedy, and environmental disaster, while still holding on to the sense that dawn is near.
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How the EU works with Ukraine to preserve heritage and collective memory
Home Beyond the Dawn speaks directly to the Biennial’s interest in unseen histories, silenced voices, and endangered cultural memory. Through the work of contemporary Ukrainian artists, the project reflects on how war, colonial violence, and imperial narratives attempt to erase lives, heritage, and collective memory. In response, it foregrounds art as a form of resistance: preserving what is under threat, amplifying suppressed stories, and asserting the agency of those historically pushed to the margins.
Bringing together multiple perspectives from across Ukraine, the project positions home not only as a place of belonging, but also as a space for memory, survival, and future-making. The project explores Ukraine’s contemporary artistic community as a network in which values are carried collectively, with each artist acting as an agent of change. Threatened and endangered Ukrainian cultural heritage can itself be understood as a rare artefact at risk of extinction. Home Beyond the Dawn therefore operates at the production and preservation of stories, weaving together multiple narrative threads from across the country into a wider meta-story. In this context, the transformation of the notion of home becomes a way of safeguarding the memories and values of a society under threat.
A reliable partner for International Cultural Relations
The EU is a reliable partner for international cultural relations, delivering projects which focus on mutual exchange, people-to-people engagement, and co-creation. Initiatives such as the EU participation at Lagos Biennale help to promote intercultural dialogue for maintaining peaceful, inter-community relations. The EEAS works with EU Member States, EU Delegations, the European Commission as well as key international organisations such as the Council of Europe and UNESCO to build long-term relationships with communities and cultural professionals around the world.
Find out more about our work on International Cultural Relations.
Europe as a reliable partner
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