Art, Ecology, and the Anthropocene: Nigerian Artists and the Visual Representation of Environmental Crisis

The global environmental crisis associated with the Anthropocene has generated new forms of artistic engagement with ecological themes, but the ways in which Nigerian artists are responding to and representing environmental crisis, from Niger Delta oil pollution to Sahel desertification and coastal erosion, remain undertheorised and empirically underexplored. This study develops an original theoretical framework for ecological art practice in the Nigerian context and analyses it through comprehensive empirical investigation. The theoretical contribution is a model of ecological aesthetics that situates Nigerian artists within both global environmental crisis discourse and the specific ecological conditions of their geopolitical context, arguing that Nigerian ecological art constitutes a distinct tradition shaped by the intersection of resource extraction politics, indigenous ecological knowledge, and postcolonial environmental justice claims. The empirical component combines systematic visual and critical analysis of 80 artworks by 30 Nigerian artists who engage with ecological themes, gathered from exhibition records, galleries, and artist portfolios from 2019 to 2024, with in-depth interviews with the artists. The geographic scope covers works addressing the Niger Delta (South South), Lake Chad basin (North East), coastal erosion in Lagos (South West), and Sahel desertification in Sokoto and Kebbi (North West). The study examines the visual strategies, activist dimensions, and aesthetic innovations through which these artists represent environmental crisis. The theoretical framework draws on ecocriticism, postcolonial environmental humanities, and the political ecology of art. Findings contribute to ecocriticism, environmental humanities, and the growing field of climate art studies with a specifically African empirical grounding. Keywords: ecological art, Anthropocene, Nigerian artists, environmental crisis, ecoaesthetics