The sun is rising over my home in Northeast Los Angeles as I call gallerist and curator Adenrele Sonariwo on Zoom. She answers me from her office in the bustling West African city of Lagos, Nigeria, where her day is already in full swing, crescendoing toward the familiar buzz of a workday afternoon. Dressed in a classic black blouse, she fills the frame of my screen with a steady and warm presence, inviting an immediate sense of oneness to our interaction. This unlikely meeting across continents and time zones seems to reflect something uniquely true about African diasporic kinship; we are worlds apart and yet, powerfully united by the resonance of shared experience.

Self-described as a woman of many worlds, Sonariwo is no stranger to that global Africanist consciousness. Earning her BA from Washington D.C.’s Howard University, MA from San Francisco’s Academy of Art University and a certificate in Curating Contemporary Art Exhibitions from the University of the Arts London, Sonariwo is uniquely in tune with Blackness as a worldwide phenomenon, an inclusive lens which fuels her work as the founding director of Rele Gallery.

A pervading sense of peace and purpose surrounds Sonariwo, who is inspiring because she is so profoundly inspired. Formerly a successful accountant, her journey to the art world was unprecedented and not without risk. Her daring pivot from the safety of a secure job to the unpredictable world of contemporary art was motivated by a simple yet powerful vision: “I was working here in Lagos, and I was seeing a lot of young artists that weren’t given platforms,” she tells me, her face bright with enthusiasm. “I thought, how do we make art accessible? How do we give these young artists a space where they can express freely? How can we trigger a new audience into appreciating, collecting and engaging with the art?” Founded in Lagos in 2015, Rele Gallery does just that, focusing its efforts exclusively on uplifting African artists and centering their perspectives within the international landscape of contemporary art.

What began as a heartfelt mission has since led Sonariwo to noteworthy professional milestones. She served as lead curator of the first-ever Nigerian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, infusing the massively important event with West African culture and history. She has organized exhibitions at Art Basel Miami, Art Dubai and New York City’s Armory Show. In 2015, she established the Rele Arts Foundation, Rele’s nonprofit component which mentors emerging African artists. The Foundation’s nine-month annual residency has catapulted several of its artists to gallery representation and exhibitions on and beyond the African continent.

Adenrele Sonariwo. Image courtesy of Rele Gallery.

Rele’s West Hollywood outpost, opened in 2021, augments her far-reaching mission, bringing a dynamic community of
African artists to the international stage. “In my first exposure to LA, I spent a lot of time going to the museums. I went to MOCA, LACMA, The Broad. I went to Hauser & Wirth. I went everywhere. I was enjoying how related I felt,” she says wistfully. “I was so inspired by the space. It was a no-brainer for me. I thought, when I do an international location, it will be somewhere that my spirit is in tune with.” Since that momentous encounter with the city, Rele Gallery Los Angeles has curated an impressive 12 solo and group exhibitions, covering topics from gender norms to spirituality from an African perspective.

Rele Gallery hits the Los Angeles art scene at a pivotal cultural moment, as galleries and museums welcome a wide range of Black artists to their halls. Still, even this significant uptick in representation may not speak to the fullness of the diasporic experience. “When I go to museums, I’m very excited to see stories that are not about struggle, stories that are not necessarily what people would expect to be coming from a Black artist or an African artist.” For Sonariwo, the work of representation is far from monolithic, requiring an unapologetically diverse gaze on African artistry.

I witnessed that versatility firsthand during my visit to the gallery this summer. In its group exhibition, “Present Minded,” African subjects soar through the air and emit X-ray vision in a timely commentary on technology, impermanence and the afterlife. I recall the show feeling like a breath of fresh air, in which African cultures were represented so colorfully, depicted beyond oppressive colonial histories. Rele’s November exhibition, “Poetics of Material,” on view in both Lagos and Los Angeles, is similarly expansive, meditating on organic and manufactured objects as repositories for cultural memory. I wonder, is this departure from mainstream racial discourse intentional? Sonariwo answers with a resounding yes. “It is very deliberate for us. Even within the challenges of race, or in Nigeria, people are still living day to day. You’re still human. You’re still living. It’s very important for me to have a balanced approach to the way we are showing art.”

Showcasing artwork that unifies the personal and the political, the educational and the expressive, Sonariwo’s mission counteracts Western narratives that often relegate African art to false prehistoric mythologies and reductive stereotypes. Through this illumination of the continent’s vital creative contributions, her work with Rele Gallery both amplifies and transcends the discourse around representation in the Los Angeles art world, allowing artists of the African diaspora space to breathe into their full humanity. This, across time zones and oceans, languages and tribes, is the invaluable work of African diasporic representation in the arts.