Examining the Research Gap in Afrofuturism as a Critical Framework for Contemporary Nigerian Visual Art

Afrofuturism, as a cultural, aesthetic, and critical theoretical framework that reimagines African and diasporic futures through speculative creativity, has been extensively applied in North American and West African literary contexts but has received limited systematic application as a critical framework for analysing contemporary Nigerian visual art practice. This study examined the research gap in Afrofuturism's application to Nigerian visual art through systematic literature review and analytical case study. A mixed-method design was employed, combining a systematic review of 85 publications from 2019 to 2024 on Afrofuturism and African visual art, with critical visual analysis of 30 contemporary Nigerian artworks from artists including Odili Donald Odita, Ndidi Dike, and Chidinma Nnoli that engage with speculative, technological, or futurity themes. The systematic review confirmed that only 11 of 85 publications specifically addressed Nigerian visual art within Afrofuturist frameworks, compared with substantially higher coverage of music, literature, and film. Visual analysis of selected works revealed consistent engagement with themes including cosmological speculation, technological mythology, decolonised futures, and Pan-African world-building, suggesting that the conditions for Afrofuturist reading of Nigerian visual art are present and generative. The study identifies the absence of Nigeria-specific Afrofuturism critical vocabulary as the primary theoretical gap and proposes a critical framework adaptations drawing on indigenous cosmological traditions from Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa spiritual philosophy as the foundation for a Nigeria-inflected Afrofuturist art criticism.

Keywords: Afrofuturism, Nigerian visual art, critical framework, speculative aesthetics, research gap