BRUSH STROKES OF DECEPTION: AN EXAMINATION OF PLAGIARIZED PAINTINGS IN NIGERIA'S ART ECOSYSTEM

Abstract

The problem of plagiarism in painting is a perennial and yet under theorized challenge to the credibility, financial worth and globalization of the growing visual arts industry in Nigeria. Thematic analysis of this kind is qualitative in nature because it involves identifying and summarizing themes from the text, which is the nature of press reportage, gallery documentation, scholarly analysis and legal literature of the plagiarized paintings in Nigeria between 2017 and 2024. The analysis, which is based on documented cases of artists including Diseye Tantua, Tolu Aliki, Yisa Akinbolaji and Bunmi Babatunde, and the controversy surrounding Golden Heads by Damien Hirst at the 2017 Venice Biennale, highlights six interlocked themes that are emerging as a growing problem in the art market: market-driven incentives, weak legal and institutional enforcement, the double-edged role of digital technology, gallery and intermediary complicity, the contested boundary between inspiration and theft and the psychological toll of creative dispossession on artists. The article puts these themes into perspective in the context of the increasing monetisation of Nigerian art and the relative weakness of the country's IP enforcement system. It concludes that plagiarism in Nigerian painting is not an aberration of professional ethics but a systemic problem in an art eco system which has professionalised more rapidly than it has been able to self-regulate and suggests a multi-level approach of law reform, institutional art registers, self-regulation of galleries and art education as means to a more accountable art economy.