Identity and the Art
Identities & Labels: Deconstructing Traditions And Prejudices
By Jahman Anikulapo
( 2004)
There are just too many tales drawn from the recent history of the Nigerian visual art to serve as background to this comment. Particularly, where the serious issues of identities and gender in art are involved, these tales bear testimony to the fact that discourses had always been very vibrant on very relevant aspects of our art historicity; even if they seem to happen more at informal sites.
Perhaps the very first tale to recall here was that woven by the former director of the Goethe Institut, Lagos, Mrs. Renate Albertson Marton (late). Just a quick reminder: Renate was the amiable lady who served as Deputy Director of Goethe Institut between 1989 and 1995; left for Bremen 1999; and then returned late 1999 as the substantive director of the Goethe. It does not need much retelling that while Renate served here, she was instrumental to what was eventually considered the boom in the Nigerian art. She journeyed round the various centres in the country where arts were being produced, particularly the various schools, and uncovered many hidden talents that probably would have been lost in the maze of the social, political and economic travails that challenged Nigeria at the time. Many of her discoveries are the most discussed artists of today.
So Renate left in 1995 but at the time she returned four years later, she seemed to be in a hurry to top what she had done in the first eight years. Specifically, she had always lamented that much as she had done what she wanted to do, she felt inadequate that she never really gave voice to the 'voiceless'; she felt that Nigeria art was still very much patriarchal. It was peopled by men, practiced by men, promoted by men, patronized by men. The women were too few on the field and even at that, they had such a huge weak voice.
One of her dream then was to have an all-female artistic show. But not just any female. She contemplated women who are stretching their imagination and capacity beyond the usual pedestrianism that pervaded much of Nigeria's national life.
Notably too, she was thinking of female artists who are not necessarily consigned to engaging female related issues, but dealing with themes of man and his environment in all ramifications - politics, philosophy, economy, society in general among others. She was not into 'isms', so she probably was not thinking of an art show to flag such ideation as feminism, womanism or whatever the usually 'lamenters of the female woes' and activists were thinking. As she stressed in an interview she wanted women artists who perceive themselves as creators of artistic and cultural ideas and materials; and not as a set of artists that considers itself deserving of sympathetic hearing from the general visual art viewership .
Though she did quite a few solo showing of certain women artists, her real dream was a large show that will feature a long list of women. "I want to have about 20 female artists in a show that would travel round the country", she said in the interview with this writer. She worked hard at that. But as if she knew that she had indeed very little time to live, she decided to experiment with a select few; just to test the waters. That was when she brought four women to the gallery: (NKECHI PLEASE CHECK THESE NAMES, AM I RIGHT?) Ebele Okoye; Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo; Angela Isiuwe; Juliet Ezenwa. That show, 'Women About Women', which held at the Goethe Institut, Lagos, though not the first all-women show, was definitive of the direction of new art as practiced by the Nigerian women.
In choice of themes, form predilection, style and techniques of rendition, 'Women About Women', perhaps represented a most definitive statement on the question of art and gender equation; of course, with a subtext of art and identity albeit the undercurrent discourse on what constitutes contemporary Nigerian and African art.
A peculiar note from that show was the fact that women artist do not necessarily have to engage issues of gender or use motives that are strictly women in content or context to practice as artists. That women are capable of engaging any subject, form, stylistic or technical options to express their innermost desires. Also it shows that paintings as had been known through the checkered Nigerian art history had been subjective in the hands of the men. That for instance, the 'Fulani Milk Maid'; 'Mother and Child'; or the ubiquitous nude model, which is often drawn to the very details of her precious materials are the whimsical creation of men.
Several of the artworks on display were obvious (even sometimes subtle) reactions to the archetypal portrayal of the female being by the male artist. Not that such reactions had not been attempted in the past, but for many 'Women About Women' was perhaps the first time in recent memory, in this environment, that there was such a robust repudiation of what has almost become a legend in artistic contention. Moreso this was perhaps the first time there was such a multiple of voices interrogating a tradition in local exhibition circuit; or in a single show.
Remarkable in the assemblage was an installation by Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo on woman and labour. In its picturesque depiction of the pain of labour, the work (title), an effigy robed in white, with splatter of blood at the genital part, lying prostrate, spent or perhaps comatose, haunted the viewer's conscience to the realities of the burden the woman bears.
****
"Gender does position me differently from my male colleagues, but does not define or articulate my artistry. First, I am an artist who happens to be female within a social order that has an overwhelming tendency to relegate women. My experiences and perceptions are on a different psychological and emotional plane. I find that women are able to empathise with most of my work while men are often disturbed by their content".
--Chinwe Uwatse
"I see the urge to explore and succeed in my chosen field before I see my strength or weaknesses as a female or human. Being a woman does not lower the expectation and standards of art produced. A good painting is good irrespective of whether done by a male or female artist".
-- Peju Layiwola
The second tale was an accident of history, but it underscores a core objective of the current show on identity i.e that every people or group of people must attempt to develop their own voice(s) and express same in their own originated vocabulary else others would speak or continue to speak for them. And of course, when others speak for you, they engage their cognitive structures constructed out of their own selfish motives, preferences, prejudices and as well subjective definitions and conclusions in depicting your affair. Africa and its people have suffered this debilitating adversity for centuries. And even in the 21st century it is not about to get out of that canyon.
Like Africa, the women have been perennially under that yoke in which -- the men - speak for them. And the effect has been most psycho-somatic, particularly, in a society where certain cultural norms and man-made rules have helped to (almost un-resolvedly) condition the women to be second rate in many respects. This has indeed been a recurrent subject of many decades in art circuits, in classrooms, seminar rooms, among art intellectuals, especially between men and women.
Often, one had pondered what must be going on in the minds of women when they stepped into the exhibition room, and they behold the prurient predilection of male artists celebrated in the famous nude figure, which has been favourite subject for ages. artists. This as said earlier, is at the very core of the question of art and identity, quite equidistant to the cross-borders perspective of the germane question.
But this is pontificating. Back to the accidental shot of history as referenced earlier...
" ... naturally I feel the need to
express issues that affect the woman - issues of child bearing, fertility, and barrenness and overpopulation, women's work and perspectives..."
-- Peju Layiwola
A happy jollificating collection of Nigerian culture elite was recently at a send-forth reception for an expatriate culture worker somewhere on the Lagos Island. Expectedly, discussion drifted to the state, nature and character of Nigerian visual art and performances. This was when a female proprietor of an art centre in the city made a statement that has continued to ricochet in one's consciousness. Spotting a scornful smile, she looked straight ahead - into the eyes of a painter in the group and asked (paraphrase): 'Tell me, if you were a woman would you have been happy to walk into a gallery and see an artwork showing all the details of the genitals of a woman. Would you feel dignified that before you, especially when your husband or children are standing by your side, that you were viewing a painting that shows the female organs...?'
Silence fell on the gathering of all male except the woman flanked by her husband...
The painter attempted an answer... "Well, it is just a painting..."
The woman continued: "Why don't you men draw the male nudes with all the male genital organs intact. Why should it always be the woman's breast, and others that get frequently, without respect, depicted".
Another male painter came in: "Madam, but it is only a piece of artwork; it is the subject that fascinates the painter that he worked on."
"Whatever! It is horrible. You need to see the picture of two women, one in red colour and the other in black, naked in everything. It was too detailed and conferred no respect on womanhood".
"But there have been such other s over the centuries of the female. It is a common subject", offered a journalist in the group.
The woman said, "But it doesn't have to be perpetuated. It may be something of fancy to them in the West, because of their excessive liberal culture, but for us in Africa, we should be very careful. Motherhood and womanhood are still sacred institutions here.' This was another member of the gathering, a teacher.
"For instance, would you have drawn your wife, girlfriend, or daughter in that nude posture. I am sure it has to be someone else's daughter..." continued the woman. She was the only one not smiling through the informal symposium oiled by red wine and small chops.
"The lady is my model; she posed for me. Many artists use such model. It is a profession for many of them", said the painter in the dock.
"Oh yeah, and I am sure that picture was recorded after some other transactions between the artist and his model..." offered the woman spotting mischief on her pretty face.
She continued, "Honestly, there are so many ways that you men abuse the women and help to perpetuate the lack of respect and dignity of women by what you do. That is why you have many young women on the streets who believe that the only thing they have to offer to survive this harsh economic environment is their body; the temple of the Lord".
The talk would not end, but this statement was apparently the fundament of the debate.
"I am an artist who happens to be
female within a social order that has
an overwhelming tendency to relegate
women"
- Chinwe Uwatse
The appropriate response to the male-domino assessment of art by the womenfolk is provided in this (above) response to the poser: 'Does gender position you differently from your male colleagues'.
Specifically, there is a resonance in her conclusion that the object of her artistic production and expression is not to assert her femininity or assure of her femaleness; for she says "My work is an extension of my being".
And there is something indeed instructive in Nneka Odoh's statement on same Identity and Gender vis: "I would prefer to have paintings assessed on their individual strengths or weaknesses as valid statements in art just as one would assess works of my male counterparts".
Remarkably, as it is in the visual art, so in the other disciplines within the art. The Theatre and the film, especially the new Nigerian film culture characterized by the video drama (Nollywood) is suffused with materials that do not hide prejudice against the female being. Especially in the videos, the women are objects of carnal exploitations, and debasement; sometimes tools for the villain to realize his negative actions. In music, whether in video clips or live in performance, the woman is for no other use but to titillate the sexual instincts of the audience. Hence no band or clip is complete without women wiggling their waists or bobbing their boobs. And in a few cases where women lead the band, they merely assist the men to continue the objectification of the female being as a mono-brand: sexual pawns.
But the reassertion of the yearning by the female artist to be seen as artist rather than through any prisms of labeling is carried forcefully in the poet-painter Nwosu-Igbo's submission thus: "I choose for my work to be approached on terms of strength in communication and appeal and I strongly advocate that my art is identified and categorized not by gender but by its message and style (which is what it should be)".
And Layiwola, the painter-sculptor, says "Although gender differentiation exists in the use of materials, I find a rather interesting response to my works. In my chosen use of metal as my medium, I think people make a shift and become more receptive when proven wrong. There appears to be a kind of conflict in perception. Sometimes on one hand, the audiences may view the sex of the artist before appreciating the works, but on the other hand, I see my art before realizing that I am a woman in a male dominated field. In this complex situation I find in my experience that ingenuity and hardwork are commended irrespective of gender affiliation. I have had no discrimination whatsoever in my art practice. If anything my efforts have always been greatly appreciated and commended."
No less instructive of the un-necessary-ness of the male-female dichotomy in artistic production is the experience shared by lara Ige-Jacks thus: "Lara be gentle with your strokes, take it easy, you may not need to do much of this in future..." my male colleagues would go on and on. I was the only female student in a painting class of fourteen and so this foundation did influence my vision as an artist. I never placed myself differently from my male colleagues".
Stella Ubigho's attempt at delineating the cognitive structures of the male and the female in relation to contemplation of creative enterprise, may not be general in all the ramifications of artistic contentions, but it helps to elucidate the fact that creativity for any human being is a function of received stimuli and past experiences as well as the nature of the personality producing.
She states: "Gender has nothing to do with the kind of artwork I produce, my being a woman does not make my artwork less than that of my male colleagues though the man and the woman have different sensibility.
The man promotes reasoning than the woman, the woman is more emotional than the man. The woman displays this emotion occasionally in her works as a result of her nature. While the man passes his message more direct (reasoning) to the people in his works but this does not make the work sing gender".
However, in explaining her choice of motive, Odoh perhaps, offers a fresh perspective to why the female character is obsessive to many male painters: "The choice of the female personality owes its usage to reasons of convenience, flexibility and its readability and not strictly as an advocacy on gender-related issues. However, this does not imply that I may not tackle gender issues if the issue at stake infringes on my rights as an individual".
The patriarch of contemporary Nigerian art himself, Ben Enwonwu, in an interview with The Guardian in the early nineties to mark his 70th birthday, had offered that "the female figure is the most beautiful creation of God, the most perfect form of nature", though he added in same breath, that the pregnant female is "a distortion of form".
Indeed, would women, especially female artist want the old order of portraying women as object of visual mockery, pieces of worthless objects to satisfy the sexual reveling and desires of men to continue? The subtext here is how the female artists engage their talents and skills to redirect societal attitude to the worth of the female being. In the context of Identities and Labels rests an answer to the poser.
For this one could take the final affirmation from Titi Omoighe who says: "The gender issue shouldn't come up in the art profession. An artwork should simply stir the emotions of the viewer".
****
Culture is not fixed and I agree with Eddie Chambers that people who insist on seeing works produced in Africa necessarily reflecting 'africanity' about them is equivalent to these people maintaining that artists who are geographically located in the continent, Africa should live in huts and paint on caves and bodies using indigenous materials and tools. I believe that the term AFRICA makes specific references to geography also and not a strong linkage to a fixed past culture.
--Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo
The third tale backgrounding this comment is rooted in a statement that one had to make few months ago, while writing an introduction to an exhibition of a select group of six Nigerian artists at the Air Gallery in London. Titled Africa Passage, the exhibition in its ambitious albeit patriotic conception re-echoed that ageless poser: what is African art? Is there a contemporary art - just as the interrogative underscore of the current show, Identity and Label?
Following is an excerpt of the statement that one had to make:
"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".
This statement is at the core of the three positions canvassed by Sylvester Ogbechie (Artistic Identity); Dele Jegede (Identity and Tradition), and especially, in Eddie Chambers (African" Identity) -- the three posers themselves being the fundamental objectives of the current show.
As a matter of fact this show, going by the conviction of the individual artists must address the stream of undercurrents, which manifests no matter how subtly, the prejudices of the West about the capacity of the artist that originates and as well operates from the continent.
Hence it should be possible to review the misconceptions that Africa is a monolithic cultural entity, in which case, the arts from the diverse peoples of the continent are often ignorantly or sometimes mischievously lumped under the term 'African Art'. And this in spite of the fact that the multitude of tongues as well as ethnic conclaves suggest that what could successfully encapsulate the art of the continent is art from Africa and never African art.
It should also be possible to challenge the notion that not much quality art happens within the continent.
And more significantly, it is time to assert with authority and substantive creative portfolio that an artist from the continent can participate effectively in the discourse on the global stage. That a 'modern African artist' in the quest for global acceptance does not need to kill his creative being to assume an expected character that bothers on the stereotypes. That he does not need to "ape 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". That to be successful on the international market, the artists need not become a slave to strange influences wrought mostly in the West whose cultural contentions are most times at variance with the African cultural cosmology.
'Identities & Labels' stands at the threshold of affirming that the Female Artist is capable of musing on philosophy, social-political- economic conditions, human triumphs and travails; as well as engaging her art to reflect ideas beyond the mindset of the kitchen, the bedroom, and the baby nursing room.
By Jahman Anikulapo
( 2004)
There are just too many tales drawn from the recent history of the Nigerian visual art to serve as background to this comment. Particularly, where the serious issues of identities and gender in art are involved, these tales bear testimony to the fact that discourses had always been very vibrant on very relevant aspects of our art historicity; even if they seem to happen more at informal sites.
Perhaps the very first tale to recall here was that woven by the former director of the Goethe Institut, Lagos, Mrs. Renate Albertson Marton (late). Just a quick reminder: Renate was the amiable lady who served as Deputy Director of Goethe Institut between 1989 and 1995; left for Bremen 1999; and then returned late 1999 as the substantive director of the Goethe. It does not need much retelling that while Renate served here, she was instrumental to what was eventually considered the boom in the Nigerian art. She journeyed round the various centres in the country where arts were being produced, particularly the various schools, and uncovered many hidden talents that probably would have been lost in the maze of the social, political and economic travails that challenged Nigeria at the time. Many of her discoveries are the most discussed artists of today.
So Renate left in 1995 but at the time she returned four years later, she seemed to be in a hurry to top what she had done in the first eight years. Specifically, she had always lamented that much as she had done what she wanted to do, she felt inadequate that she never really gave voice to the 'voiceless'; she felt that Nigeria art was still very much patriarchal. It was peopled by men, practiced by men, promoted by men, patronized by men. The women were too few on the field and even at that, they had such a huge weak voice.
One of her dream then was to have an all-female artistic show. But not just any female. She contemplated women who are stretching their imagination and capacity beyond the usual pedestrianism that pervaded much of Nigeria's national life.
Notably too, she was thinking of female artists who are not necessarily consigned to engaging female related issues, but dealing with themes of man and his environment in all ramifications - politics, philosophy, economy, society in general among others. She was not into 'isms', so she probably was not thinking of an art show to flag such ideation as feminism, womanism or whatever the usually 'lamenters of the female woes' and activists were thinking. As she stressed in an interview she wanted women artists who perceive themselves as creators of artistic and cultural ideas and materials; and not as a set of artists that considers itself deserving of sympathetic hearing from the general visual art viewership .
Though she did quite a few solo showing of certain women artists, her real dream was a large show that will feature a long list of women. "I want to have about 20 female artists in a show that would travel round the country", she said in the interview with this writer. She worked hard at that. But as if she knew that she had indeed very little time to live, she decided to experiment with a select few; just to test the waters. That was when she brought four women to the gallery: (NKECHI PLEASE CHECK THESE NAMES, AM I RIGHT?) Ebele Okoye; Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo; Angela Isiuwe; Juliet Ezenwa. That show, 'Women About Women', which held at the Goethe Institut, Lagos, though not the first all-women show, was definitive of the direction of new art as practiced by the Nigerian women.
In choice of themes, form predilection, style and techniques of rendition, 'Women About Women', perhaps represented a most definitive statement on the question of art and gender equation; of course, with a subtext of art and identity albeit the undercurrent discourse on what constitutes contemporary Nigerian and African art.
A peculiar note from that show was the fact that women artist do not necessarily have to engage issues of gender or use motives that are strictly women in content or context to practice as artists. That women are capable of engaging any subject, form, stylistic or technical options to express their innermost desires. Also it shows that paintings as had been known through the checkered Nigerian art history had been subjective in the hands of the men. That for instance, the 'Fulani Milk Maid'; 'Mother and Child'; or the ubiquitous nude model, which is often drawn to the very details of her precious materials are the whimsical creation of men.
Several of the artworks on display were obvious (even sometimes subtle) reactions to the archetypal portrayal of the female being by the male artist. Not that such reactions had not been attempted in the past, but for many 'Women About Women' was perhaps the first time in recent memory, in this environment, that there was such a robust repudiation of what has almost become a legend in artistic contention. Moreso this was perhaps the first time there was such a multiple of voices interrogating a tradition in local exhibition circuit; or in a single show.
Remarkable in the assemblage was an installation by Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo on woman and labour. In its picturesque depiction of the pain of labour, the work (title), an effigy robed in white, with splatter of blood at the genital part, lying prostrate, spent or perhaps comatose, haunted the viewer's conscience to the realities of the burden the woman bears.
****
"Gender does position me differently from my male colleagues, but does not define or articulate my artistry. First, I am an artist who happens to be female within a social order that has an overwhelming tendency to relegate women. My experiences and perceptions are on a different psychological and emotional plane. I find that women are able to empathise with most of my work while men are often disturbed by their content".
--Chinwe Uwatse
"I see the urge to explore and succeed in my chosen field before I see my strength or weaknesses as a female or human. Being a woman does not lower the expectation and standards of art produced. A good painting is good irrespective of whether done by a male or female artist".
-- Peju Layiwola
The second tale was an accident of history, but it underscores a core objective of the current show on identity i.e that every people or group of people must attempt to develop their own voice(s) and express same in their own originated vocabulary else others would speak or continue to speak for them. And of course, when others speak for you, they engage their cognitive structures constructed out of their own selfish motives, preferences, prejudices and as well subjective definitions and conclusions in depicting your affair. Africa and its people have suffered this debilitating adversity for centuries. And even in the 21st century it is not about to get out of that canyon.
Like Africa, the women have been perennially under that yoke in which -- the men - speak for them. And the effect has been most psycho-somatic, particularly, in a society where certain cultural norms and man-made rules have helped to (almost un-resolvedly) condition the women to be second rate in many respects. This has indeed been a recurrent subject of many decades in art circuits, in classrooms, seminar rooms, among art intellectuals, especially between men and women.
Often, one had pondered what must be going on in the minds of women when they stepped into the exhibition room, and they behold the prurient predilection of male artists celebrated in the famous nude figure, which has been favourite subject for ages. artists. This as said earlier, is at the very core of the question of art and identity, quite equidistant to the cross-borders perspective of the germane question.
But this is pontificating. Back to the accidental shot of history as referenced earlier...
" ... naturally I feel the need to
express issues that affect the woman - issues of child bearing, fertility, and barrenness and overpopulation, women's work and perspectives..."
-- Peju Layiwola
A happy jollificating collection of Nigerian culture elite was recently at a send-forth reception for an expatriate culture worker somewhere on the Lagos Island. Expectedly, discussion drifted to the state, nature and character of Nigerian visual art and performances. This was when a female proprietor of an art centre in the city made a statement that has continued to ricochet in one's consciousness. Spotting a scornful smile, she looked straight ahead - into the eyes of a painter in the group and asked (paraphrase): 'Tell me, if you were a woman would you have been happy to walk into a gallery and see an artwork showing all the details of the genitals of a woman. Would you feel dignified that before you, especially when your husband or children are standing by your side, that you were viewing a painting that shows the female organs...?'
Silence fell on the gathering of all male except the woman flanked by her husband...
The painter attempted an answer... "Well, it is just a painting..."
The woman continued: "Why don't you men draw the male nudes with all the male genital organs intact. Why should it always be the woman's breast, and others that get frequently, without respect, depicted".
Another male painter came in: "Madam, but it is only a piece of artwork; it is the subject that fascinates the painter that he worked on."
"Whatever! It is horrible. You need to see the picture of two women, one in red colour and the other in black, naked in everything. It was too detailed and conferred no respect on womanhood".
"But there have been such other s over the centuries of the female. It is a common subject", offered a journalist in the group.
The woman said, "But it doesn't have to be perpetuated. It may be something of fancy to them in the West, because of their excessive liberal culture, but for us in Africa, we should be very careful. Motherhood and womanhood are still sacred institutions here.' This was another member of the gathering, a teacher.
"For instance, would you have drawn your wife, girlfriend, or daughter in that nude posture. I am sure it has to be someone else's daughter..." continued the woman. She was the only one not smiling through the informal symposium oiled by red wine and small chops.
"The lady is my model; she posed for me. Many artists use such model. It is a profession for many of them", said the painter in the dock.
"Oh yeah, and I am sure that picture was recorded after some other transactions between the artist and his model..." offered the woman spotting mischief on her pretty face.
She continued, "Honestly, there are so many ways that you men abuse the women and help to perpetuate the lack of respect and dignity of women by what you do. That is why you have many young women on the streets who believe that the only thing they have to offer to survive this harsh economic environment is their body; the temple of the Lord".
The talk would not end, but this statement was apparently the fundament of the debate.
"I am an artist who happens to be
female within a social order that has
an overwhelming tendency to relegate
women"
- Chinwe Uwatse
The appropriate response to the male-domino assessment of art by the womenfolk is provided in this (above) response to the poser: 'Does gender position you differently from your male colleagues'.
Specifically, there is a resonance in her conclusion that the object of her artistic production and expression is not to assert her femininity or assure of her femaleness; for she says "My work is an extension of my being".
And there is something indeed instructive in Nneka Odoh's statement on same Identity and Gender vis: "I would prefer to have paintings assessed on their individual strengths or weaknesses as valid statements in art just as one would assess works of my male counterparts".
Remarkably, as it is in the visual art, so in the other disciplines within the art. The Theatre and the film, especially the new Nigerian film culture characterized by the video drama (Nollywood) is suffused with materials that do not hide prejudice against the female being. Especially in the videos, the women are objects of carnal exploitations, and debasement; sometimes tools for the villain to realize his negative actions. In music, whether in video clips or live in performance, the woman is for no other use but to titillate the sexual instincts of the audience. Hence no band or clip is complete without women wiggling their waists or bobbing their boobs. And in a few cases where women lead the band, they merely assist the men to continue the objectification of the female being as a mono-brand: sexual pawns.
But the reassertion of the yearning by the female artist to be seen as artist rather than through any prisms of labeling is carried forcefully in the poet-painter Nwosu-Igbo's submission thus: "I choose for my work to be approached on terms of strength in communication and appeal and I strongly advocate that my art is identified and categorized not by gender but by its message and style (which is what it should be)".
And Layiwola, the painter-sculptor, says "Although gender differentiation exists in the use of materials, I find a rather interesting response to my works. In my chosen use of metal as my medium, I think people make a shift and become more receptive when proven wrong. There appears to be a kind of conflict in perception. Sometimes on one hand, the audiences may view the sex of the artist before appreciating the works, but on the other hand, I see my art before realizing that I am a woman in a male dominated field. In this complex situation I find in my experience that ingenuity and hardwork are commended irrespective of gender affiliation. I have had no discrimination whatsoever in my art practice. If anything my efforts have always been greatly appreciated and commended."
No less instructive of the un-necessary-ness of the male-female dichotomy in artistic production is the experience shared by lara Ige-Jacks thus: "Lara be gentle with your strokes, take it easy, you may not need to do much of this in future..." my male colleagues would go on and on. I was the only female student in a painting class of fourteen and so this foundation did influence my vision as an artist. I never placed myself differently from my male colleagues".
Stella Ubigho's attempt at delineating the cognitive structures of the male and the female in relation to contemplation of creative enterprise, may not be general in all the ramifications of artistic contentions, but it helps to elucidate the fact that creativity for any human being is a function of received stimuli and past experiences as well as the nature of the personality producing.
She states: "Gender has nothing to do with the kind of artwork I produce, my being a woman does not make my artwork less than that of my male colleagues though the man and the woman have different sensibility.
The man promotes reasoning than the woman, the woman is more emotional than the man. The woman displays this emotion occasionally in her works as a result of her nature. While the man passes his message more direct (reasoning) to the people in his works but this does not make the work sing gender".
However, in explaining her choice of motive, Odoh perhaps, offers a fresh perspective to why the female character is obsessive to many male painters: "The choice of the female personality owes its usage to reasons of convenience, flexibility and its readability and not strictly as an advocacy on gender-related issues. However, this does not imply that I may not tackle gender issues if the issue at stake infringes on my rights as an individual".
The patriarch of contemporary Nigerian art himself, Ben Enwonwu, in an interview with The Guardian in the early nineties to mark his 70th birthday, had offered that "the female figure is the most beautiful creation of God, the most perfect form of nature", though he added in same breath, that the pregnant female is "a distortion of form".
Indeed, would women, especially female artist want the old order of portraying women as object of visual mockery, pieces of worthless objects to satisfy the sexual reveling and desires of men to continue? The subtext here is how the female artists engage their talents and skills to redirect societal attitude to the worth of the female being. In the context of Identities and Labels rests an answer to the poser.
For this one could take the final affirmation from Titi Omoighe who says: "The gender issue shouldn't come up in the art profession. An artwork should simply stir the emotions of the viewer".
****
Culture is not fixed and I agree with Eddie Chambers that people who insist on seeing works produced in Africa necessarily reflecting 'africanity' about them is equivalent to these people maintaining that artists who are geographically located in the continent, Africa should live in huts and paint on caves and bodies using indigenous materials and tools. I believe that the term AFRICA makes specific references to geography also and not a strong linkage to a fixed past culture.
--Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo
The third tale backgrounding this comment is rooted in a statement that one had to make few months ago, while writing an introduction to an exhibition of a select group of six Nigerian artists at the Air Gallery in London. Titled Africa Passage, the exhibition in its ambitious albeit patriotic conception re-echoed that ageless poser: what is African art? Is there a contemporary art - just as the interrogative underscore of the current show, Identity and Label?
Following is an excerpt of the statement that one had to make:
"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".
This statement is at the core of the three positions canvassed by Sylvester Ogbechie (Artistic Identity); Dele Jegede (Identity and Tradition), and especially, in Eddie Chambers (African" Identity) -- the three posers themselves being the fundamental objectives of the current show.
As a matter of fact this show, going by the conviction of the individual artists must address the stream of undercurrents, which manifests no matter how subtly, the prejudices of the West about the capacity of the artist that originates and as well operates from the continent.
Hence it should be possible to review the misconceptions that Africa is a monolithic cultural entity, in which case, the arts from the diverse peoples of the continent are often ignorantly or sometimes mischievously lumped under the term 'African Art'. And this in spite of the fact that the multitude of tongues as well as ethnic conclaves suggest that what could successfully encapsulate the art of the continent is art from Africa and never African art.
It should also be possible to challenge the notion that not much quality art happens within the continent.
And more significantly, it is time to assert with authority and substantive creative portfolio that an artist from the continent can participate effectively in the discourse on the global stage. That a 'modern African artist' in the quest for global acceptance does not need to kill his creative being to assume an expected character that bothers on the stereotypes. That he does not need to "ape 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". That to be successful on the international market, the artists need not become a slave to strange influences wrought mostly in the West whose cultural contentions are most times at variance with the African cultural cosmology.
'Identities & Labels' stands at the threshold of affirming that the Female Artist is capable of musing on philosophy, social-political- economic conditions, human triumphs and travails; as well as engaging her art to reflect ideas beyond the mindset of the kitchen, the bedroom, and the baby nursing room.
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