Peju Alatise’s First U.S. Solo Survey Opens at Pittsburgh’s August Wilson Center

A major survey of Nigerian artist Peju Alatise is now on view at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh. Titled Peju Alatise: I Will Belong to Only Me, the exhibition is presented as her first U.S. solo survey, bringing together two decades of work across sculpture, installation, text, and film.

The show opened November 20, 2025, and remains on view through May 31, 2026, at the Center’s 980 Liberty Avenue location in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.

A world built from story, spirit, and structure

Alatise was born in Lagos and trained in architecture at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology. That background shows up in how she builds her narratives physically: immersive environments where materials, symbols, and storytelling share the workload. The Center describes her practice as drawing from Yorùbá cosmology and myth to examine womanhood, spirituality, and belonging, often using materials like resin, glass beads, and textile.

AWAACC President and CEO/Artistic Director Janis Burley describes the work as an invitation to reconsider how Black womanhood and spirituality inhabit space.

“Flying Girls” returns, with company

At the heart of the survey is Flying Girls (2015–16), Alatise’s widely recognized installation depicting young girls suspended in midair. The Center connects the work to a story of a 10-year-old domestic servant who dreams of flight, framing it as a vision of freedom within the exhibition’s larger focus on gender inequality and social justice.

For Pittsburgh, the return lands with added resonance. WESA previously highlighted Flying Girls as a standout of the city’s 2018 visual art season, noting the work’s U.S. debut at the August Wilson Center after it drew attention in Venice.

A recent WESA walk-through of the galleries emphasizes that the survey is built to hold more than a single iconic work. Near the entrance, the mixed-media sculpture Lágbájá, Támẹ̀dù àti Ọ̀gbeni (“Anybody, Nobody, Somebody”) I, II, III presents three seated, life-size figures draped in blood-red fabric punctured to suggest bullet holes, with symbols like a cross, an assault rifle, and a rosary rendered from tiny sculpted figures. Nearby, works such as All Scarves and the vertical panels of Lost pair bright, textile-evoking patterns with torn lower sections that reveal ghostly human forms.

In the Flying Girls room, WESA describes eight life-size figures, each distinct in age, body, and hairstyle, set beneath black birds overhead and black butterflies gathering across the floor, alongside an audio soundscape of girls singing and playing.

The title is a line of self-ownership

The exhibition title is drawn from Alatise’s own writing, presented by the Center as dialogue spoken by Sim, the central figure in the Flying Girls story-world: “I will own myself. I will belong to only me.”

That theme extends across additional works discussed in local coverage, including This Other Side (V) and Omode Meta Nsere (Three Children Play), a film shown across three monitors that confronts the constrained choices available to Nigerian girls.

About the artist

AWAACC describes Alatise as an interdisciplinary artist, architect, and author whose practice spans sculpture, installation, painting, film, and fiction, and notes that she lives and works between Lagos and Glasgow.

The Center also points to a key moment in her international visibility: in 2017, she was selected for Nigeria’s debut at the 57th Venice Biennale, where Flying Girls received broad attention, and she won the FNB Art Prize that same year. Her work has since appeared in contexts including the Venice Architecture Biennale (2020) and Frieze Sculpture (London, 2022), and it is held in collections that include the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Visitor details

• Exhibition: Peju Alatise: I Will Belong to Only Me
• Dates: November 20, 2025 – May 31, 2026
• Venue: August Wilson African American Cultural Center (Benedum Gallery, 2nd Floor), 980 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh
• Tickets: $17 (see AWAACC ticketing)