I AM Talks with Nigerian filmmaker & founder of online African art marketplace, ArtDey: Chioma Onyenwe.

In the past decade, African art and entertainment has captured international attention like never before; Nollywood is a big hit on Netflix, Afrobeats has gone global and African art can be found curated in amazing spaces all over the world. For Chioma Onyenwe, her love of African art and entertainment literally led her to become a game-changing entrepreneur!

“Growing up in Nigeria as a child, I liked reading a lot and was early on a sort of storyteller. I became passionate about Nigerian TV shows, 1990s Nollywood films, and enjoyed our very rich video rental system,” she says. “I watched local TV very much and was interested in a mix between Hollywood and Nollywood.”

When she started her further education, she knew she wanted to study economics in order to join this industry, as much as she knew she had to start writing stories on the side. And in her final year, she wrote a report on the Nigerian film industry from a financial point of view, while directing her first short films. Then she moved to the UK to study and get some international experience.

Chioma’s life before ArtDey

Chioma studied economics at the University of Lagos, before going on to the Imperial College in London for a Masters in management. In 2013, she worked in investment banking and consulting for firms such as Chapel Hills and Accenture, for a few years. “I did a Masters in finance and started working in consulting. And in 2013, I made the jump!” she continues. “I moved back to Nigeria, I worked for a university then got fired… That’s when I decided to volunteer at the African International Film Festival (AFRIFF, the largest film festival in Africa). At the same time, I worked on my first feature film. It was another sort of education…” she laughs, as it turned out to be much more difficult than she expected. “I learned a lot.”

Luckily, she soon secured a grant from the Nigerian government to write, produce and film a story about a dyslexic musician trying to pursue their career. “I did a lot wrong!” She admits. “And the actors taught me a lot. I had seven days to complete the film, which was not commercially valuable, I knew it. And I learned about the process, so I decided to focus on documentary films after that, and shorts for a little longer.”

For the love of art

With all this experience, from 2015, she was able to work as a film producer. “I had learned to work more slowly and to collaborate with other people”, Chioma says. “I’m now working on my first professional feature film, and I have four projects in development”.

She benefited from the help of Project Act Nollywood, a programme created by Nigeria’s federal government to fund filmmakers for production and distribution and capacity building. She was able to produce her first short film, ‘8 Bars and a Clef’ through her own production company, Raconteur Productions, in 2015.

The same year, she started collecting contemporary African art. “It’s always been a personal liking,” she adds. “And by then I was travelling to cities like Kigali, to Tanzania and Kenya, so I picked up objects from craft and small paintings. And when the pandemic started, I was actually in Nairobi. The day before lockdown was announced, I was in an art market buying artworks… I hesitated between two paintings and intended to come back on the following Monday, but it was announced that on Sunday the airspace would close! I had to go back to Lagos.”

That’s how, back home, she had the idea of an online art market. As the pandemic affected her other plans for the year, she also needed to get something else to work on. “My goal was to help people like me and my family to collect art – friends and acquaintances – through word of mouth. To make art accessible too. So, 70% of our clients are first-time buyers.”

Creating ArtDey

ArtDey was thus co-founded in 2020 by Chioma with her siblings, Emeka and Adaobi Onyenwe. At the end of June, they launched the website to supply art to collectors outside Nigeria. The online marketplace now connects contemporary African artists to a global audience, mostly African-Americans in the USA, the Nigerian diaspora firstly, and some in Europe.

More recently, Chioma contacted the producer of the series and the director Morgan Cooper, and introduced them to ArtDey. They were keen to use artworks for their reboot of ‘Bel-Air’, a re-imagination of the award-winning 1990s sitcom ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’, with Will Smith. “They showcased a lot of our artworks for the series,” Chioma says. ‘Bel-Air’ bought over ten art pieces belonging to artists on the streets of Lagos, such as Bright Osodalor, Abiola Daniel, and Bertha Onyekachi. This gave the website a real boost in the US.”

Exploring the Metaverse with ArtDey

When ArtDey launched mid-2020, it had 3 artists on board and sold 5 pieces in its first week. Now, after being in operation for 20 months, it has sold over 300 pieces. ArtDey also organises physical pop-ups, hoping to introduce art to people who wouldn’t normally go to galleries. Some already took place in Abuja, Lagos, and in Copenhagen. And Chioma hopes to explore online events as well. “I don’t believe in NFTs, but I definitely intend to explore the Metaverse with ArtDey!” she concludes. An inspiring adventure for African art indeed, and for a talented Nigerian woman entrepreneur.