Yinka Elujoba is a Nigerian writer, and editor who works as an art critic for The New York Times. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
He was awarded the Rabkin Prize in 2021.
He received the Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant in 2023
Personal life and education Elujoba was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria to civil servant parents. He has an Engineering degree from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and in 2020 received an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York.
Career Elujoba has worked as a writer, editor, and art critic since 2010.
Elujoba has written two chapbooks, Collective Truth (2016), which is permanently collected at the Smithsonian Institution and Images of the Disconsolate (2017) as part of his work with the Invisible Borders' Trans-African Project.
In 2018, Elujoba and Innocent Ekejiuba won the Apexart International Exhibition grant, with their exhibition "Re-imaging Futures: A Trans-Nigerian Conversation" selected out of 538 eligible entries from 66 countries, their work was selected by an international panel of over 300 jurors and subsequently also selected by a nomination of over 13,000 public votes, as the best entry to receive the grant.
The exhibition, which took place from February 9 – March 9, 2019, at the Old Engine Test House, Nigeria Railway Corporation Compound, Ebute-Metta, Lagos was described as "explor(ing) the concept of Nigeria as a cartographic construct by colonial forces and its implications in contemporary Nigeria"
His essays and art criticism have been published in Harper's Magazine, ArtReview, Saraba Magazine The Brooklyn Rail and The New York Times, where he writes art criticism.
In 2020, Elujoba co-founded A Long House with Kechi Nomu and Gbenga Adesina.
Works
2016 Collective Truth 2017 Images of the Disconsolate 2017 In History to My Barest Marrows conversation with Emmanuel Iduma for World Literature Today 2019 Re-imaging Futures: A Trans-Nigerian Conversation
Awards and recognition
2021| Rabkin Prize from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. 2020| School of Visual Arts Faculty Award for MFA Thesis 2018| Apexart International Exhibition Grant (with Innocent Ekejiuba) for "Re-imaging Futures"
References