Reconfiguring the Epistemic Map: Bisi Silva and the Construction of Intellectual Authority in African Art

Bisi Silva reconfigured the epistemic foundations of contemporary art from Africa by building institutions that relocated intellectual authority to the continent itself. Through CCA Lagos and Àsìkò Art School, she created the conditions under which African art could be researched, taught, archived, and exhibited beyond the mediating frameworks of the Global North. Drawing on fieldwork in Lagos and engaging strategic Southernness and epistemologies of the South, the paper argues that epistemic authority is sustained through institution building, pedagogy, and curatorial practice. It advances an institutional framework for understanding knowledge production in African studies.