STUDIO PRACTICE AS RESEARCH: ARTISTIC KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION FROM THE ZARIA ART SCHOOL TRADITION IN NIGERIAN ART ACADEMIA

Abstract

Studio practice as research has emerged as a transformative methodological paradigm in contemporary art education, challenging conventional distinctions between creative production and scholarly inquiry. While practice-led doctoral programmes gained institutional legitimacy in Europe and Australia during the late twentieth century, their intellectual foundations in Nigeria can be traced to the pedagogical and philosophical innovations of the Zaria Art School at Ahmadu Bello University. This study critically examines the evolution of studio practice as research within Nigerian art academia and its role in shaping studio-based PhD programmes as alternative models of knowledge production. Using a qualitative interpretive framework that integrates art-historical analysis, visual hermeneutics, and theoretical reflection, the study examines how studio-based doctoral research evolved from Zaria’s synthesis of indigenous cultural consciousness, modernist experimentation, and academic scholarship. The study demonstrates that studio practice functions as an epistemological framework through which artistic production generates, tests, and communicates knowledge. Ajayi’s doodle-based experimentation explores subconscious image formation through Surrealist automatism and psychoanalytic interpretations of creative cognition, positioning drawing as a form of reflective inquiry. Conversely, Gbaden’s kinetic wall installations employ material assemblage and movement to examine sociopolitical concerns relating to race, gender, and power, extending studio practice into critical cultural analysis. The findings indicate that studio-based research repositions artistic production from aesthetic expression toward conceptual investigation, reflexive methodology, and socio-cultural critique. Nigerian studio practice bridges indigenous pedagogical philosophies, locally grounded conceptual frameworks, community-responsive methodologies, and global practice-led research models, contributing to international discourse on artistic practice as scholarly research.