Beyond the frontiers of the homeland: Obiora Udechukwu’s diaspora art, 1997-2010

Abstract

This article focuses on the diaspora work of Obiora Udechukwu, one of the Nsukka Art School's most well-known artists. When Udechukwu immigrated to the United States of America in 1997, he continued his pre-diaspora activities by teaching art at the university and working in his studio. The article uses historical and stylistic analyses to investigate how memory, nostalgia, remembrance, and culture-induced biases intervened in Udechukwu's diaspora work against the backdrop of the socio-political, cultural, and artistic experiences that frame his pre-diaspora art. The artist's diaspora works demonstrated that his pre-diaspora interests in Igbo culture, memories of the Nigerian civil war, and experiences of socio-political life in Nigeria have continued to influence the formal and thematic terrain of his work. His extensive use of text as a decorative and communicative tool, as well as the use of a design technique that merges two pictorial surfaces into one composition, are among the significant innovations that have taken place in his work. The study offers a developing interpretation of Obiora Udechukwu's artistic output. It also emphasizes how important memory, nostalgia, remembering, and prejudices brought on by culture are to diaspora art and to the (re)enactment of artistic identity by diasporic artists.