Africa passage
AFRICA PASSAGE: AN INTRODUCTION
By Jahman Anikulapo
Passage throws up imageries of motion, movement, dynamism; a ritual of transiting from one position to another; one status to a newer status; space to space; ethos to ethos. And yet this is the story of Africa, which has for centuries being in perpetual passage; journeying from one social, political and cultural experience to another. Particularly, the dynamics of its being has been most eclectic; sometimes defying regular rhythm of action; at other times confounding logicality and seemingly incoherent in temperament. Yet, this inconstant mood of motion is what has frustrated most observers of the passage of the continent and its people. To most critics, especially in the West, Africans lack capacity for logic and cultural sophistication to be able to master their space in its entire connotation. They may never be able to master their environment. This conclusion perhaps, explains the attitudinal approach to the cultural — material and non-material — emanating from the continent. It is one of the reasons African culture producers have been eternally dumped in the age of (as popularly propounded by some critics) primitivism in ideation and production. However, recent attitudinal shift in some more patient and objective critics have begun to liberalise understanding of the dynamism of Africa's cultural space.
The Western intelligentsia can see Africa Passage as an exhibition concept from the perspective of the currency of shift in attitude; and relaxation of the shackles of perception noosed around the being of Africa. The exhibition is thus, another major attempt by the Western elite to interrogate the fundaments of the dynamic cultural experience of Africa. The success of a delicate venture such as this, premised conceptually, on debunking certain mindset and entrenched sensibility about the continent, will depend on a set of paradigms. Prominent among these is sincerity of vision and purpose of the sponsors of the project and, thorough grasp of the missionary undercurrent of the project by the participating artists.
The collective of artists itself is reflective of the very idea which Passage as a word-concept represents. These are six individuals from same country that is deceptively culturally homogenous. Also, the artists in their divergent perception of passage and stylistic rendition of the thematic objective of the show, have explicated the authenticity of the vast cultural milieu of Africa that cannot be strait–jacketed into one linear concept. In other words, does there exist the concept African Art? Isn’t the term a convenient description of a confoundingly expansive experience that is beyond easy comprehension to a non-initiate? Some critics have indeed argued that the idea African Art is an illusion. Perhaps, indeed, it is a fraud. Maybe, a floating reality. This, however, is a subject of on-going discourse.
Africa Passage connotes dating as in the passage of a given period of time. It also tends to blow stress Africa as a mono cultural entity. It is indeed, a fact that outside the shores of Africa, many people including anthropologists, art critics, historians, and curators still see the continent as a unitary cultural tendency.
Although findings and facts of history have proved this view wrong, their counter arguments are documented mainly in textbooks and research journals.
But the consequences of the critical misconception about the correct status of arts from Africa, are more felt in contemporary arts practice where inadequate research, colonial hangover and insufficient participation of post-colonial African artists in global meet, help perpetrate the notion that not much quality art happens within the continent.
That is how much the title African Passage gives in to an aberration. The error here is that archeological findings have made ancient African artifacts special treasures in many of world’s public and private art collections.
Since the later half of the 20th century, many experts, especially Africans have argued (though without much weight) that the phenomenal fame of those rich treasures have largely overshadowed other arts coming out of the continent. In other words, not much is recorded or acknowledged of modern artists’ works.
The tendency heads in the direction of old argument that the looted and acquired ancient African artifacts represent the permanent visual art experience of Africa. And these works are preponderantly spread around world’s collections.
The experience of most modern African artists in the quest for global acceptance has been sometimes traumatic albeit, killing self to assume an expected character that bothers on the stereotypes. The artist either apes the ancient forms, contents and styles and win instant acceptance or, deviate and dare to win critical opprobrium for having been so sucked into western techniques that he lacks authenticity of vision and production.
The African artist who is successful on the global stage is quickly seen as having been civilised by his encounter with colonialism and Western (art training) institutions. The result is a profusion of productions of paintings, potteries, and sculptures, designs and installations that regurgitate the aesthetics of the past (in order to be relevant to so-called Western aesthetic taste). This explains why in many of the world’s collection or shows, what often features in the African art section are mostly sculptures, because they easily capture the aesthetic properties in antique pieces as well as fall into the expectation of global art viewer-ship.
Artists who appear to challenge these status quos are seen as rebels. They are rebels because they seek to capture contemporary realities of modern Africa. Why would they paint landscapes of skyscrapers, boulevards and sports cars in a continent assumed to be a jungle of huts, camel rides and footpaths?
Western Art historians tend to ignore such artists. This may explain why many writers tend to box the history of African art into two over-bloated confines: Ancient African Art and Contemporary African Art.
The allusion to existence of modern, postmodern, traditional, prehistoric art in the continent, to some critics, is abnormal.
But what else could justify the exclusion from history books of the phenomenal developments in art movements than the theme of the current show? The dynamism of trends and epochs in the art of each of the over 54 nations of Africa are buried in the definitive tag — Africa Passage?
The ‘Passage’ thus needs explication.
Hopefully, this is what this show has set out to do. This is a delicate subject, compounded by the word ‘Africa’. Indeed, for example, why not another word for ‘Passage’?
If every artist from the continent inserts Africa in his exhibition title, the position of researchers and historians who discuss African art as a one-headline-subject might eventually be legitimised. It may also justify the assumption that there is one way African art must appear – resembling the artefacts in Louvres and the British Museums.
In spite of its lofty objectives, there is a sense in which Africa Passage sounds a conceptual error, when viewed in the context of divergent orientation and character of African treasures. For instance, the Ethiopian Obelisk in North Africa and the Benin bronze heads in West Africa do not bear any semblance. And the Crypts on Egyptian tombs and the rock paintings in Zimbabwe are different in aesthetics and cultural context. Even the artifacts from neighbouring geographical locations are different in aesthetics. The Nok teracotta found in areas within the Middle Belt region of Nigeria and the Igbo Ukwu findings from the East of the same country, bear little visual correlation.
In spite of its seeming contentious philosophical base, Africa Passage is however, a reality. It is a major statement in the current argument. The artists believe (see appendix) they are participants in the dialogue on the dynamism of the cultural milieu that define their essences and being.
Significantly, the artists perceive themselves as the voices of Africa at the Globalisation forum, seemingly already appropriated and annexed by the scientific, technological, industrialised-muscled West with its huge economic wealth.
What the artists want to bring to the table is their identity, which though not homogenous in contents and forms and techniques are shared values and ideas. It should, therefore, be understood when each of the works, each of the artists displays here reaches deep into the innards of sensibility of each guest at this show.
The idea is to interrogate sitting perceptions, open up closed prejudices and radiate new vision in our individual understanding of the mystery that is Africa.
PREVIEW
Harvest Of Statement
The six artists in African Passage share a coincidence of circumstances in many respects. But the most germane to this discourse is the circumstance of their birth. They were born either a few years before or after the surge of Independence for colonised nations of Africa. Nigeria, their country of birth only became an independent state in October 1960.
The artists were thus born into an atmosphere of hope, an era of unfettered imagination when the former ‘slaves’ (colonialism was itself a sort of moderated slavery) began to emerge from the shackles of debasing psychological, moral and cultural impositions and, notched up to being ‘real’ human beings by taking up the driving of their own destiny. It was a time of high hope for socio-cultural and economic boom.
Even if they were minors at the time of the oil discovery and wealth of the late 60s and 70s, the artists participated by accessory in the petro-naira boom of the mid 70s to 80s that was finally aborted with the advent of the International Monetary Fund, IMF in 1985. And they had then been unwilling witnesses to the waste of the political and economic fortune of the nation in the last two decades and half. Thus the undercurrent of forlorn hope and despondency in their visioning process can be understood. Otherwise, the artists are vibrant in their forms, colour schemes and stylistic deportment. They are of course, products of the Western art institutions, hence their approach to techniques.
Notably, however, each of the artists is competent in experimentation, thus offering a tapestry of harvests of studies and daringness.
However, in an exhibition of this nature, 'visual appeal' cannot suffice as the only standard of assessment. The aesthetics is as significant as the content and title, theme, technique and other factors chosen by the each artist count.
The artists -- Nsikak Essien, Ndidi Dike Onyema Offoedu-Okeke, Obi Ekwenchi, Sam Ovraiti and Tony Enebeli -- are all professionals with good degree of accomplishment. They belong to a generation that can unequivocally be branded the 'modernists`. Yet they have always sourced their materials and inspiration from the indigenous cultural properties and ideas. They have always been challenged to interpret these indigenous ideas and inspirations in the context of modern forms and techniques.
Though trained at different institutions thus acquiring divergent practical orientations, they share similar objectives, techniques and themes.
Essien, perhaps the oldest in the group, was a founding member of the phenomenal AKA Group of (13) artists, which since the late 80s has manifest as a key tendency in the determination of the direction of the current art production in Nigeria.
The group was reputed for unpredictable experimentation with the media and, Essien was about the most eclectic of the lot, which also include the internationally renowned sculptor, El-Anatsui and Obiora Udechukwu.
Essien's experimentation is sometimes eccentric but mostly expansive in scope. He would fold rigid wooden panels into scrolls, lay thick pastes of colour rings on his board, and indent his pieces with layers of strange motifs. These are evident in such titles as Heritage, Mirage, Nostalgia, and Eternity, featuring in this show. In Sovereign National Conference he brings these attributes into his commentary on the contemporary political question in Nigeria.
Ovraiti is reputed for his brilliant colour scheme and beautiful pictures. He belongs to a group of young idealist painters that emerged in the late 1980s. Known as ‘The Colourists’, the group’s hallmark is expressive use of pigments. Ovraiti in particular, however, blurs the edges of the 'colourist’ movement by presenting pictures that are as impressionistic as they are expressionistic. His works sometimes combine the aesthetic virtues of watercolour and oil paintings.
In Ovraiti’s Portrait of Kano City, Rising Generations is representative of this approach. In The Call, Defaced by Incision and Two Musicians, he employs elements of cubism that create illusion of multitude from the few figures on the canvas.
Enebeli is a product of the famous master printmaker Bruce Onobrakpeya, reputed to have invented the Plastograph form of printing. Enebeli`s Ipu Afia series (a set of three pieces narrating the tale of a princess going to the market), Ikpu Ite, Egwu Ukwata III among others, are sourced from his folklore heritage. Like his master, Onobrakpeya, Enebeli's prints and their blocks are produced in a way that both can be served as art pieces. Every of his works is like a script with many chapters of motifs and stories.
Dike and Offoedu-Okeke are products of the Uli art movement later domiciled at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Uli art uses principally cryptic insignia and motifs with philosophical (and sometimes mythological) meanings.
The only female in the group, Dike has over the years extended the experimentation frontiers of the Uli design concept. She has taken the form beyond its mere decorative functionality to technical experimentation. In producing Totem Poles and Staffs, she locates the Uli in part of its traditional domain — shrines and palaces. But she implants certain modern elements like metal and deft colour patterning.
Though Offoedu-Okeke’s seeming predilection for blues and the purple appear strange to African pictures (indeed an error of conception by some critics), he engages symbols and signs that celebrate the mask tradition, totems and festivals in the deep of Africa.
His titles — Maiden Dancers, Oracular Gisting, Throngs of Expectation explicitly indicate his direction — homeland. Yet he paints Morning Cloth and Evening Weather which reflect his vast repertory of inspiration. But his colour scheme, which taps design motif from pointillism, exposes the infinite possibilities of his style.
Ekwenchi’s antecedent is in producing awesome public sculptures. This pins him in realism. But in his paintings, the artist is capable of variegated stylistic dimensions. His paintings often very simple without being simplistic come in rich, fresh colours and are laden with symbolic figures and motifs. These attributes are proficient in Rhythm, From the Spirit and Nomadic Life, which feature in the current show. As usual, he celebrates the African (often women) anatomy showing the poise, grace and elegance of the figure in an elegant picture. His sculptures often bear complicated and distorted forms. Benediction and Dialogue are just two examples.
o Research Assistance: CHUKA NNABUIFE
ARTISTS FORUM
OUR MISSION ON AFRICA PASSAGE
As part of preparation for the current show, the artists mounted a forum to dilate ideas on the theme and concept of the exhibition. For reasons of logistics (mainly location of individual artist), only Onyema Offoedu-Okeke, Ndidi Dike, Tony Enebeli and later Sam Ovraiti made the informal forum. The session however served to explore the perception of individual artist, as regards the current show as well as examine certain existing conceptions about Arts and Artists in Africa.
The session was moderated by Jahman Anikulapo.
How do you perceive the theme of the exhibition?
ONYEMA: I think of the theme in terms of features of the African society -- the lifestyle of the people, the festivals, languages, dance and other such authentic symbols and materials. To me, Africa Passage presents images that remind viewers abroad where Africans are and how they got there. I believe that even as we embrace the so-called western civilisation, we should still retain that Africanese, especially our cultural values. In my works, I intend to show those authentic African values and how they have passed through the various phases of human development.
ENEBELI: I see the theme as encapsulating the way we are: living, dress, walk, and work cultures that are peculiar to the African people. I shall show that African art today has changed in the sense that people are beginning to be fed up with the same kind of arts we met or have seen in the past years. Art today has changed for the fact that we are now using it to correct the mistakes of yesteryears. I see this exhibition therefore as a way of promoting our traditional heritage and its various transformations over the years to the outside world.
NDIDI: We shall use this show to help correct some of those stereotype views of the African art through the parameters of Western aesthetics, criticisms and history, which are written by the people I prefer to call ‘outsiders’. We should make bold statement for instance, that there is indeed contemporary art coming out of Africa or Nigeria. We should use this opportunity to tell our own story. Africans have not done enough research, enough writings on what we consider to be our own kind of aesthetics. We should begin to provide answers from our own perspectives, when people ask the question: what is African art? Is there African art?
We cannot deny the fact that we are Africans and therefore, we are aware of certain characteristics that define our contemporary art; that signify this is African art or Nigerian art.
MODERATOR: You spoke about challenging certain stereotypes; I thought this has been done overtime by African scholars, researchers and artists…
ONYEMA: Yes, much has been done but there is a lot more in terms of uprooting the idea that African art is still primitive.
Besides, most of the books on African art are on the antiques, the arts of old Africa. But today, we we ought to be talking about African renaissance just like the Italian renaissance. I think with what we have today, we have more than enough to inspire us. We are going to challenge the stereotypes by raising arguments on how far we have adapted what we have to modern artistic culture; how differently we have adapted the same old tradition through different means and methods to modern expectations.
They ask us how do we relate the African inspirations to the western products forgetting that even aspects of western (modern) art today were inspired by African art. So today, we are very free to use whatever products we come across as ours.
MODERATOR: How effectively can you challenge a culture that is so deeply etched in Western sensibility through a single show in Britain?
ONYEMA: This is just a part of a long-debate that has been on for a long time. We want to contribute our voices to the discourse. But we are a bit different in our approach. We are more interested in raising questions. We want to raise questions such as: who we are? What are our visions? What are our perceptions? How do we look at ourselves? How do we look at our art? We intend to start the process of challenging these stereotypes with this show. We know that it is not going to change overnight, because we are fighting an existing institution but this is just the beginning of a challenge to change those perceptions of Africa. We know that we do much of that challenging of status quo a lot regularly in Africa, in Nigeria but how much of that information gets outside of Nigeria?
We've been doing it for quite sometime but now that we are on international stage, where our art is going to be the focus of an international gathering, we can begin to hopefully, change that perception of how the West think Africa ought to be.
NDIDI: The status of our Art has changed; we are beginning to assert ourselves. And the West is beginning to recognise who we are, appreciate our lifestyle, so we need to consolidate on this new consciousness. We don't need to wait until an Oyinbo (Westerner) man comes to tell us that what we have here is good. What I mean by that is that the artist has to go beyond repeating the same thing that his public had seen in the past years. There is need to change his perception of his role in the society.
We are now trying to change the system. By allowing our immediate environment to influence our creativity and perception, using what we experience daily to influence our creative work, we are going to correct the wrong impressions of the gone years.
(SAM OVRAITI JOINED THE FORUM)
MODERATOR: But certain critics even Africans, have indeed, argued that some of the so-called African cultural symbols, materials, ideas, do project certain negative values about the heritage of the black people.
ONYEMA: They are not negative. Rather, it is the perception of those viewing them because they subject them to their own cultural experiences and standards of valuation. And much of this deliberate wrong interpretation of those materials and ideas is what the older artists tried to change. And we the younger artists, of the moment, we recognise these facts; it is not that we are writing off the efforts of the older artists; it is a continuation; we are continuing from where the older artists have stopped.
OVRAITI: We have to be sensitive to how we put this across. We don't want to be antagonistic but at the same time we want to challenge or correct misconception that has been put out about us maybe in the past.
In fact, I thought that when Onyema used the word challenge — the way I understand the word challenge — he was actually referring to perception of Western people.
Let me say something here; you know we're talking about international politics, international art perspective, and politics, there are so many things that come into play.
We know that even some of our people -- researchers, and historians have not been sincere and thorough in their vocation. Some of them have had to misrepresent or deliberately distort information about what is going on here so that they can get the acknowledgement from their Western colleagues and sponsors.
They now want to come to Africa to make certain statement so that they will make their papers, their qualifications and their PHD. Again, most of people who write these things are scholars, they are not even artists. They only came in to study African culture and the only things they have to look into are the wood carving, the stone carving and maybe, metal works that our forefathers produced.
I think with this show, we should be looking at redirecting the understanding of the history of African Art. When you say African art, there is one direction they always look at — mask, shrine designs, body adornments etc, but a contemporary artist has gone beyond that level. It does not mean that we don't have spirit; we have the same spirit and experience, but our focus has changed. We are now creating arts, not for the use in the shrine, but art that are both functional and aesthetically relevant to our contemporary experience. This is what we have to stress in the current show.
NDIDI: Even in terms of practice, we are expanding our space of operations. We are looking at the various opportunities available to exhibit in the right place, to make a point. That is why this show is very important.
MODERATOR: There is a very important point we have to also stress. How do we want to be placed in the global art discourse? Are we trying to place ourselves as modern artists, post modern artists, artists in Nigeria… because there is a difference between Nigerian art and artists from Nigeria? So if we are going to place ourselves we should know where we want to place ourselves and we should be very focussed in our presentation.
Where do you want to place yourself?
OVRAITI: I wrote a poem in 1998 that I am not an impressionist yet I am. I am not a realist yet I am. I am part and pieces of all these things that have been before my experience and me. This question of labeling or categorization is sensitive, so the question is very germane.
ONYEMA: I would rather we stress that we are artists from Africa and not African artist.
NDIDI: Oh yes, the term 'African Artist' is sometimes used in derogatory terms at global forums. You are either an Artist or you are not. So, we would like to be seen at this show as Artists from Africa.
ENEBELI: The only difference between us and any other artist from any other part of the world is the matter of where we come from.
I detest labeling as Nigerian or African Artist. I am an Artist. That is what I am.
MODERATOR: Could we say we as artists, that we still transiting or…?
NDIDI: There is a sense in which we can say we are still transiting, yes, because we are still exploring new ideas, new forms…
OVRAITI: Transition is the period of instability as in government. In the life of a person whether in social or business life, any time of transition is a time of upheavals. It is not steady. For anyone to aspire to the fact that he is part of development in transition is to bow to instability. Transition is instability. I don’t believe we are transiting.
ONYEMA: I believe that transiting is not instability; it is part of a process of growth; it’s part of the evolution!
By Jahman Anikulapo
Passage throws up imageries of motion, movement, dynamism; a ritual of transiting from one position to another; one status to a newer status; space to space; ethos to ethos. And yet this is the story of Africa, which has for centuries being in perpetual passage; journeying from one social, political and cultural experience to another. Particularly, the dynamics of its being has been most eclectic; sometimes defying regular rhythm of action; at other times confounding logicality and seemingly incoherent in temperament. Yet, this inconstant mood of motion is what has frustrated most observers of the passage of the continent and its people. To most critics, especially in the West, Africans lack capacity for logic and cultural sophistication to be able to master their space in its entire connotation. They may never be able to master their environment. This conclusion perhaps, explains the attitudinal approach to the cultural — material and non-material — emanating from the continent. It is one of the reasons African culture producers have been eternally dumped in the age of (as popularly propounded by some critics) primitivism in ideation and production. However, recent attitudinal shift in some more patient and objective critics have begun to liberalise understanding of the dynamism of Africa's cultural space.
The Western intelligentsia can see Africa Passage as an exhibition concept from the perspective of the currency of shift in attitude; and relaxation of the shackles of perception noosed around the being of Africa. The exhibition is thus, another major attempt by the Western elite to interrogate the fundaments of the dynamic cultural experience of Africa. The success of a delicate venture such as this, premised conceptually, on debunking certain mindset and entrenched sensibility about the continent, will depend on a set of paradigms. Prominent among these is sincerity of vision and purpose of the sponsors of the project and, thorough grasp of the missionary undercurrent of the project by the participating artists.
The collective of artists itself is reflective of the very idea which Passage as a word-concept represents. These are six individuals from same country that is deceptively culturally homogenous. Also, the artists in their divergent perception of passage and stylistic rendition of the thematic objective of the show, have explicated the authenticity of the vast cultural milieu of Africa that cannot be strait–jacketed into one linear concept. In other words, does there exist the concept African Art? Isn’t the term a convenient description of a confoundingly expansive experience that is beyond easy comprehension to a non-initiate? Some critics have indeed argued that the idea African Art is an illusion. Perhaps, indeed, it is a fraud. Maybe, a floating reality. This, however, is a subject of on-going discourse.
Africa Passage connotes dating as in the passage of a given period of time. It also tends to blow stress Africa as a mono cultural entity. It is indeed, a fact that outside the shores of Africa, many people including anthropologists, art critics, historians, and curators still see the continent as a unitary cultural tendency.
Although findings and facts of history have proved this view wrong, their counter arguments are documented mainly in textbooks and research journals.
But the consequences of the critical misconception about the correct status of arts from Africa, are more felt in contemporary arts practice where inadequate research, colonial hangover and insufficient participation of post-colonial African artists in global meet, help perpetrate the notion that not much quality art happens within the continent.
That is how much the title African Passage gives in to an aberration. The error here is that archeological findings have made ancient African artifacts special treasures in many of world’s public and private art collections.
Since the later half of the 20th century, many experts, especially Africans have argued (though without much weight) that the phenomenal fame of those rich treasures have largely overshadowed other arts coming out of the continent. In other words, not much is recorded or acknowledged of modern artists’ works.
The tendency heads in the direction of old argument that the looted and acquired ancient African artifacts represent the permanent visual art experience of Africa. And these works are preponderantly spread around world’s collections.
The experience of most modern African artists in the quest for global acceptance has been sometimes traumatic albeit, killing self to assume an expected character that bothers on the stereotypes. The artist either apes the ancient forms, contents and styles and win instant acceptance or, deviate and dare to win critical opprobrium for having been so sucked into western techniques that he lacks authenticity of vision and production.
The African artist who is successful on the global stage is quickly seen as having been civilised by his encounter with colonialism and Western (art training) institutions. The result is a profusion of productions of paintings, potteries, and sculptures, designs and installations that regurgitate the aesthetics of the past (in order to be relevant to so-called Western aesthetic taste). This explains why in many of the world’s collection or shows, what often features in the African art section are mostly sculptures, because they easily capture the aesthetic properties in antique pieces as well as fall into the expectation of global art viewer-ship.
Artists who appear to challenge these status quos are seen as rebels. They are rebels because they seek to capture contemporary realities of modern Africa. Why would they paint landscapes of skyscrapers, boulevards and sports cars in a continent assumed to be a jungle of huts, camel rides and footpaths?
Western Art historians tend to ignore such artists. This may explain why many writers tend to box the history of African art into two over-bloated confines: Ancient African Art and Contemporary African Art.
The allusion to existence of modern, postmodern, traditional, prehistoric art in the continent, to some critics, is abnormal.
But what else could justify the exclusion from history books of the phenomenal developments in art movements than the theme of the current show? The dynamism of trends and epochs in the art of each of the over 54 nations of Africa are buried in the definitive tag — Africa Passage?
The ‘Passage’ thus needs explication.
Hopefully, this is what this show has set out to do. This is a delicate subject, compounded by the word ‘Africa’. Indeed, for example, why not another word for ‘Passage’?
If every artist from the continent inserts Africa in his exhibition title, the position of researchers and historians who discuss African art as a one-headline-subject might eventually be legitimised. It may also justify the assumption that there is one way African art must appear – resembling the artefacts in Louvres and the British Museums.
In spite of its lofty objectives, there is a sense in which Africa Passage sounds a conceptual error, when viewed in the context of divergent orientation and character of African treasures. For instance, the Ethiopian Obelisk in North Africa and the Benin bronze heads in West Africa do not bear any semblance. And the Crypts on Egyptian tombs and the rock paintings in Zimbabwe are different in aesthetics and cultural context. Even the artifacts from neighbouring geographical locations are different in aesthetics. The Nok teracotta found in areas within the Middle Belt region of Nigeria and the Igbo Ukwu findings from the East of the same country, bear little visual correlation.
In spite of its seeming contentious philosophical base, Africa Passage is however, a reality. It is a major statement in the current argument. The artists believe (see appendix) they are participants in the dialogue on the dynamism of the cultural milieu that define their essences and being.
Significantly, the artists perceive themselves as the voices of Africa at the Globalisation forum, seemingly already appropriated and annexed by the scientific, technological, industrialised-muscled West with its huge economic wealth.
What the artists want to bring to the table is their identity, which though not homogenous in contents and forms and techniques are shared values and ideas. It should, therefore, be understood when each of the works, each of the artists displays here reaches deep into the innards of sensibility of each guest at this show.
The idea is to interrogate sitting perceptions, open up closed prejudices and radiate new vision in our individual understanding of the mystery that is Africa.
PREVIEW
Harvest Of Statement
The six artists in African Passage share a coincidence of circumstances in many respects. But the most germane to this discourse is the circumstance of their birth. They were born either a few years before or after the surge of Independence for colonised nations of Africa. Nigeria, their country of birth only became an independent state in October 1960.
The artists were thus born into an atmosphere of hope, an era of unfettered imagination when the former ‘slaves’ (colonialism was itself a sort of moderated slavery) began to emerge from the shackles of debasing psychological, moral and cultural impositions and, notched up to being ‘real’ human beings by taking up the driving of their own destiny. It was a time of high hope for socio-cultural and economic boom.
Even if they were minors at the time of the oil discovery and wealth of the late 60s and 70s, the artists participated by accessory in the petro-naira boom of the mid 70s to 80s that was finally aborted with the advent of the International Monetary Fund, IMF in 1985. And they had then been unwilling witnesses to the waste of the political and economic fortune of the nation in the last two decades and half. Thus the undercurrent of forlorn hope and despondency in their visioning process can be understood. Otherwise, the artists are vibrant in their forms, colour schemes and stylistic deportment. They are of course, products of the Western art institutions, hence their approach to techniques.
Notably, however, each of the artists is competent in experimentation, thus offering a tapestry of harvests of studies and daringness.
However, in an exhibition of this nature, 'visual appeal' cannot suffice as the only standard of assessment. The aesthetics is as significant as the content and title, theme, technique and other factors chosen by the each artist count.
The artists -- Nsikak Essien, Ndidi Dike Onyema Offoedu-Okeke, Obi Ekwenchi, Sam Ovraiti and Tony Enebeli -- are all professionals with good degree of accomplishment. They belong to a generation that can unequivocally be branded the 'modernists`. Yet they have always sourced their materials and inspiration from the indigenous cultural properties and ideas. They have always been challenged to interpret these indigenous ideas and inspirations in the context of modern forms and techniques.
Though trained at different institutions thus acquiring divergent practical orientations, they share similar objectives, techniques and themes.
Essien, perhaps the oldest in the group, was a founding member of the phenomenal AKA Group of (13) artists, which since the late 80s has manifest as a key tendency in the determination of the direction of the current art production in Nigeria.
The group was reputed for unpredictable experimentation with the media and, Essien was about the most eclectic of the lot, which also include the internationally renowned sculptor, El-Anatsui and Obiora Udechukwu.
Essien's experimentation is sometimes eccentric but mostly expansive in scope. He would fold rigid wooden panels into scrolls, lay thick pastes of colour rings on his board, and indent his pieces with layers of strange motifs. These are evident in such titles as Heritage, Mirage, Nostalgia, and Eternity, featuring in this show. In Sovereign National Conference he brings these attributes into his commentary on the contemporary political question in Nigeria.
Ovraiti is reputed for his brilliant colour scheme and beautiful pictures. He belongs to a group of young idealist painters that emerged in the late 1980s. Known as ‘The Colourists’, the group’s hallmark is expressive use of pigments. Ovraiti in particular, however, blurs the edges of the 'colourist’ movement by presenting pictures that are as impressionistic as they are expressionistic. His works sometimes combine the aesthetic virtues of watercolour and oil paintings.
In Ovraiti’s Portrait of Kano City, Rising Generations is representative of this approach. In The Call, Defaced by Incision and Two Musicians, he employs elements of cubism that create illusion of multitude from the few figures on the canvas.
Enebeli is a product of the famous master printmaker Bruce Onobrakpeya, reputed to have invented the Plastograph form of printing. Enebeli`s Ipu Afia series (a set of three pieces narrating the tale of a princess going to the market), Ikpu Ite, Egwu Ukwata III among others, are sourced from his folklore heritage. Like his master, Onobrakpeya, Enebeli's prints and their blocks are produced in a way that both can be served as art pieces. Every of his works is like a script with many chapters of motifs and stories.
Dike and Offoedu-Okeke are products of the Uli art movement later domiciled at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Uli art uses principally cryptic insignia and motifs with philosophical (and sometimes mythological) meanings.
The only female in the group, Dike has over the years extended the experimentation frontiers of the Uli design concept. She has taken the form beyond its mere decorative functionality to technical experimentation. In producing Totem Poles and Staffs, she locates the Uli in part of its traditional domain — shrines and palaces. But she implants certain modern elements like metal and deft colour patterning.
Though Offoedu-Okeke’s seeming predilection for blues and the purple appear strange to African pictures (indeed an error of conception by some critics), he engages symbols and signs that celebrate the mask tradition, totems and festivals in the deep of Africa.
His titles — Maiden Dancers, Oracular Gisting, Throngs of Expectation explicitly indicate his direction — homeland. Yet he paints Morning Cloth and Evening Weather which reflect his vast repertory of inspiration. But his colour scheme, which taps design motif from pointillism, exposes the infinite possibilities of his style.
Ekwenchi’s antecedent is in producing awesome public sculptures. This pins him in realism. But in his paintings, the artist is capable of variegated stylistic dimensions. His paintings often very simple without being simplistic come in rich, fresh colours and are laden with symbolic figures and motifs. These attributes are proficient in Rhythm, From the Spirit and Nomadic Life, which feature in the current show. As usual, he celebrates the African (often women) anatomy showing the poise, grace and elegance of the figure in an elegant picture. His sculptures often bear complicated and distorted forms. Benediction and Dialogue are just two examples.
o Research Assistance: CHUKA NNABUIFE
ARTISTS FORUM
OUR MISSION ON AFRICA PASSAGE
As part of preparation for the current show, the artists mounted a forum to dilate ideas on the theme and concept of the exhibition. For reasons of logistics (mainly location of individual artist), only Onyema Offoedu-Okeke, Ndidi Dike, Tony Enebeli and later Sam Ovraiti made the informal forum. The session however served to explore the perception of individual artist, as regards the current show as well as examine certain existing conceptions about Arts and Artists in Africa.
The session was moderated by Jahman Anikulapo.
How do you perceive the theme of the exhibition?
ONYEMA: I think of the theme in terms of features of the African society -- the lifestyle of the people, the festivals, languages, dance and other such authentic symbols and materials. To me, Africa Passage presents images that remind viewers abroad where Africans are and how they got there. I believe that even as we embrace the so-called western civilisation, we should still retain that Africanese, especially our cultural values. In my works, I intend to show those authentic African values and how they have passed through the various phases of human development.
ENEBELI: I see the theme as encapsulating the way we are: living, dress, walk, and work cultures that are peculiar to the African people. I shall show that African art today has changed in the sense that people are beginning to be fed up with the same kind of arts we met or have seen in the past years. Art today has changed for the fact that we are now using it to correct the mistakes of yesteryears. I see this exhibition therefore as a way of promoting our traditional heritage and its various transformations over the years to the outside world.
NDIDI: We shall use this show to help correct some of those stereotype views of the African art through the parameters of Western aesthetics, criticisms and history, which are written by the people I prefer to call ‘outsiders’. We should make bold statement for instance, that there is indeed contemporary art coming out of Africa or Nigeria. We should use this opportunity to tell our own story. Africans have not done enough research, enough writings on what we consider to be our own kind of aesthetics. We should begin to provide answers from our own perspectives, when people ask the question: what is African art? Is there African art?
We cannot deny the fact that we are Africans and therefore, we are aware of certain characteristics that define our contemporary art; that signify this is African art or Nigerian art.
MODERATOR: You spoke about challenging certain stereotypes; I thought this has been done overtime by African scholars, researchers and artists…
ONYEMA: Yes, much has been done but there is a lot more in terms of uprooting the idea that African art is still primitive.
Besides, most of the books on African art are on the antiques, the arts of old Africa. But today, we we ought to be talking about African renaissance just like the Italian renaissance. I think with what we have today, we have more than enough to inspire us. We are going to challenge the stereotypes by raising arguments on how far we have adapted what we have to modern artistic culture; how differently we have adapted the same old tradition through different means and methods to modern expectations.
They ask us how do we relate the African inspirations to the western products forgetting that even aspects of western (modern) art today were inspired by African art. So today, we are very free to use whatever products we come across as ours.
MODERATOR: How effectively can you challenge a culture that is so deeply etched in Western sensibility through a single show in Britain?
ONYEMA: This is just a part of a long-debate that has been on for a long time. We want to contribute our voices to the discourse. But we are a bit different in our approach. We are more interested in raising questions. We want to raise questions such as: who we are? What are our visions? What are our perceptions? How do we look at ourselves? How do we look at our art? We intend to start the process of challenging these stereotypes with this show. We know that it is not going to change overnight, because we are fighting an existing institution but this is just the beginning of a challenge to change those perceptions of Africa. We know that we do much of that challenging of status quo a lot regularly in Africa, in Nigeria but how much of that information gets outside of Nigeria?
We've been doing it for quite sometime but now that we are on international stage, where our art is going to be the focus of an international gathering, we can begin to hopefully, change that perception of how the West think Africa ought to be.
NDIDI: The status of our Art has changed; we are beginning to assert ourselves. And the West is beginning to recognise who we are, appreciate our lifestyle, so we need to consolidate on this new consciousness. We don't need to wait until an Oyinbo (Westerner) man comes to tell us that what we have here is good. What I mean by that is that the artist has to go beyond repeating the same thing that his public had seen in the past years. There is need to change his perception of his role in the society.
We are now trying to change the system. By allowing our immediate environment to influence our creativity and perception, using what we experience daily to influence our creative work, we are going to correct the wrong impressions of the gone years.
(SAM OVRAITI JOINED THE FORUM)
MODERATOR: But certain critics even Africans, have indeed, argued that some of the so-called African cultural symbols, materials, ideas, do project certain negative values about the heritage of the black people.
ONYEMA: They are not negative. Rather, it is the perception of those viewing them because they subject them to their own cultural experiences and standards of valuation. And much of this deliberate wrong interpretation of those materials and ideas is what the older artists tried to change. And we the younger artists, of the moment, we recognise these facts; it is not that we are writing off the efforts of the older artists; it is a continuation; we are continuing from where the older artists have stopped.
OVRAITI: We have to be sensitive to how we put this across. We don't want to be antagonistic but at the same time we want to challenge or correct misconception that has been put out about us maybe in the past.
In fact, I thought that when Onyema used the word challenge — the way I understand the word challenge — he was actually referring to perception of Western people.
Let me say something here; you know we're talking about international politics, international art perspective, and politics, there are so many things that come into play.
We know that even some of our people -- researchers, and historians have not been sincere and thorough in their vocation. Some of them have had to misrepresent or deliberately distort information about what is going on here so that they can get the acknowledgement from their Western colleagues and sponsors.
They now want to come to Africa to make certain statement so that they will make their papers, their qualifications and their PHD. Again, most of people who write these things are scholars, they are not even artists. They only came in to study African culture and the only things they have to look into are the wood carving, the stone carving and maybe, metal works that our forefathers produced.
I think with this show, we should be looking at redirecting the understanding of the history of African Art. When you say African art, there is one direction they always look at — mask, shrine designs, body adornments etc, but a contemporary artist has gone beyond that level. It does not mean that we don't have spirit; we have the same spirit and experience, but our focus has changed. We are now creating arts, not for the use in the shrine, but art that are both functional and aesthetically relevant to our contemporary experience. This is what we have to stress in the current show.
NDIDI: Even in terms of practice, we are expanding our space of operations. We are looking at the various opportunities available to exhibit in the right place, to make a point. That is why this show is very important.
MODERATOR: There is a very important point we have to also stress. How do we want to be placed in the global art discourse? Are we trying to place ourselves as modern artists, post modern artists, artists in Nigeria… because there is a difference between Nigerian art and artists from Nigeria? So if we are going to place ourselves we should know where we want to place ourselves and we should be very focussed in our presentation.
Where do you want to place yourself?
OVRAITI: I wrote a poem in 1998 that I am not an impressionist yet I am. I am not a realist yet I am. I am part and pieces of all these things that have been before my experience and me. This question of labeling or categorization is sensitive, so the question is very germane.
ONYEMA: I would rather we stress that we are artists from Africa and not African artist.
NDIDI: Oh yes, the term 'African Artist' is sometimes used in derogatory terms at global forums. You are either an Artist or you are not. So, we would like to be seen at this show as Artists from Africa.
ENEBELI: The only difference between us and any other artist from any other part of the world is the matter of where we come from.
I detest labeling as Nigerian or African Artist. I am an Artist. That is what I am.
MODERATOR: Could we say we as artists, that we still transiting or…?
NDIDI: There is a sense in which we can say we are still transiting, yes, because we are still exploring new ideas, new forms…
OVRAITI: Transition is the period of instability as in government. In the life of a person whether in social or business life, any time of transition is a time of upheavals. It is not steady. For anyone to aspire to the fact that he is part of development in transition is to bow to instability. Transition is instability. I don’t believe we are transiting.
ONYEMA: I believe that transiting is not instability; it is part of a process of growth; it’s part of the evolution!
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