Lagos’ new culture space: familiar and yet entirely new

Rooted in African lineages yet refusing replication, Mbari Kola is Nigerian curator and art collector Ugoma Ebilah’s striking new cultural institution in Lagos. It is a living space where art, ideas, community and hospitality converge, writes Toni Kan .

When you step into the grounds of curator, art collector and cultural convener Ugoma Ebilah’s beautifully intriguing cultural space, Mbari Kola, in Ikoyi, Lagos, you are struck by a sensation that is difficult to articulate. The exterior and interior feel familiar yet entirely new, rooted in history but not beholden to it, intimate yet expansive.

Asked whether she agrees with this sense of déjà vu, of something new, something old, something borrowed, she smiles at the suggestion but offers a more nuanced interpretation. “I understand that feeling, although I might describe it slightly differently. I think what people are responding to is familiarity without imitation.”

That phrase – familiarity without imitation – becomes the key to understanding Mbari Kola. It is not a replica of anything that has come before, nor is it a nostalgic reconstruction of a cultural moment. Instead, it is the physical manifestation of Ebilah’s long personal journey in the world of art.

“There are elements of Mbari Kola that may evoke things people have encountered before,” she concedes, “But Mbari Kola is not an attempt to recreate any place or period. I am interested in lineage, but I am not interested in replication.”

Ebilah’s journey through art and culture has always been animated by a central question: how can culture bring people together? Mbari Kola is her answer; a contemporary house of art, culture, ideas and belonging. “It is all really the physical expression of a long personal journey for me… as someone who has spent a great deal of their life thinking about how art and culture can bring people together.”

The name itself carries layers of meaning. ‘ Mbari ’ echoes across African languages – Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo – but for Ebilah, its deepest resonance comes from the Owerri Igbo tradition. “The Mbari that speaks most directly to me comes from the Owerri Igbo tradition: sacred communal structures created as offerings through art, storytelling, and devotion.”

She is equally inspired by the post‑independence Mbari Clubs, where writers, artists, and thinkers gathered to imagine new cultural identities. Yet she insists Mbari Kola is not a recreation of those spaces. “I am interested in what those traditions reveal about the possibilities of culture, rather than in reproducing their forms.”

Then there is ‘kola’, the kola nut. “Across Nigeria, the kola nut is such a powerful symbol of welcome, peace, hospitality, and shared humanity. As the Igbo people say, he who brings kola brings life . That is very close to my understanding of what this place should be.”

The kola nut, she explains, is a gesture that cements the intentional act of gathering. “It is a space where art can be an offering, but also a conversation… where you can come to see an exhibition, hear music, encounter an idea, meet an artist, have dinner, read a book, make a connection or simply sit with other people.”

A sacred space

Culture, she insists, is most powerful when lived. “Mbari Kola is a sacred space in the broadest sense – not because it is religious, but because we have made the act of gathering, creating, sharing and belonging important again.”

The building itself is 800 square metres and nestled by the waterside. “I think its character is better understood through the different experiences it contains rather than simply its footprint.”

It contains the Magic Room – intimate and mysterious – and the Great Gallery, the principal exhibition space, designed for museum‑quality shows. There are areas for reading, conversation, hospitality, and a residency cottage that extends the institution’s purpose beyond exhibition into creation.

Movement, networking, and conviviality are central to the experience. Visitors may come for art and stay for conversation, arrive for dinner and encounter an idea that shifts something within them.

Stepping inside Mbari Kola, one of the first things the visitor notices is a wall featuring framed portraits of Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe, and J.P. Clark, literary figures associated with the original Mbari Club.

Ebilah clarifies that this is not a curated Hall of Fame: “Those works came together much more organically through my own history as a collector.”

It is not a historical pantheon but a personal constellation – artworks she loved, collected and carried with her, now finding a home where they can speak to one another. “If I were constructing a pantheon, then the question would quite rightly become, ‘Where is this person? Where is that person?’ That isn’t the exercise.”

Many Lagosians remember The Life House, Ebilah’s earlier cultural space. Mbari Kola may evoke echoes of it, but she is clear: “Mbari Kola is not The Life House 2.0.”

The Life House was one expression of her journey; Mbari Kola is another, with different ambitions and architecture. “The true precursors are much broader… The Life House was an experiment… Mbari Kola is intended to have longevity. The Life House was an important chapter… but Mbari Kola is not looking backwards at that chapter. It is looking forward.”

Striking architecture

Mbari Kola is a membership society, but not in the transactional sense. “Membership is deliberately more meaningful than simply paying for access to a beautiful space.”

Members gain access to exhibitions, salons, performances, programmes, and cultural concierge services. But the deeper benefit is belonging. “You become part of a network of patrons… interested in the arts, ideas, culture, collecting, creativity, and the broader question of what we are building and leaving behind.”

Mbari Kola’s architecture is striking – oblique, futuristic, yet grounded in African textures and colours. It features a stained‑glass porthole by Victor Ehikhamenor, with the burnt orange palette of its exterior walls recalling the walls of houses in Marrakech, Morocco.

Working closely with architect Kelechi Odu to translate her vision into an architectural language, she says: “I didn’t want a building that looked like it belonged to a single historical or architectural category… I wanted it to be African without being trapped by the expectation of what an ‘African’ building should look like.”

Ultimately, she wanted the building to behave like the institution: “unexpected, layered, warm, contemporary and deeply rooted without being nostalgic.”

Ebilah is famous for Bloom Art, her gallery and curatorial practice. She holds the distinction of being the first Nigerian curator and dealer to successfully sell a modern art piece valued at $1,000,000 – a feat only previously achieved by international auction houses.

But “Bloom Art is not moving into Mbari Kola… Mbari Kola isn’t a commercial gallery, and Bloom Art isn’t being absorbed into it.”

Instead, the two will coexist within a broader ecosystem, each retaining its identity while benefiting from synergies. “What you are seeing instead is an ecosystem in which different aspects of my work can coexist while retaining their own identities.”

Activities include exhibitions, salons, music, readings, performances, private collections, artistic engagements, residencies, publications, and educational initiatives.

Following a soft launch in May 2026. Mbari Kola is already very much alive and operating. The focus now is on expanding programming, growing membership, strengthening partnerships, and deepening outreach. “For me, the most exciting thing is that Mbari Kola isn’t a project waiting to begin. It has begun.”

What comes next is the full expression of its cultural ambition – a living institution rooted in history but oriented toward the future, a place where art, ideas and people meet in ways that feel both familiar and entirely new.

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