It is home and workplace. It sustains communities and livelihoods, connects people by water, receives ships and trade, and provides the setting for ports, fisheries, tourism, energy, industry and infrastructure.

It is also a landscape of memory, history, culture and change.

In Nigeria, these worlds exist side by side. Coastal and waterfront communities live alongside ports and industries. Fishing boats share maritime spaces with commercial vessels. Commerce, culture, environment, heritage and development continually intersect.

Blue Begins at the Coast invites artists and audiences to look again at this space – at the people who live and work there, the activities it sustains, the histories it carries and the possibilities it holds.

Using Nigeria as its immediate lens, AMAE 2026 opens a wider African conversation about our relationship with the coast and our shared ocean.

Through contemporary visual art, AMAE explores the human, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions of our relationship with the water.

The fifth edition brings together invited contemporary artists, selected works responding to Blue Begins at the Coast, the best of Paint Your Coast 2026, and live artistic creation through Blue Possibilities.

Across three days, visitors can encounter original art, meet artists, join guided experiences and acquire works for personal, corporate and institutional collections.

Opening ceremony, industry networking, education, community engagement, live art, guided tours and art acquisition.