Nigerian Art Research Articles

7. Universal Studios of Art: Professionalization and Contributions to Art Education in Nigeria

Abstract During the 2nd Black World and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977, a lot of novel, creative and artistic events took place in Lagos. One of these was the construction of a monument, the National Arts Theatre, which also accommodated the National Gallery of Art. Invariably, the presence of the Gallery made the Arts Theatre management allocate the premises of the Theatre to some notable Nigerian artists for use as Artists in Residence. The premises eventually, by 1980, became an institutional and inspirational workshop for budding Nigerian artists. The activities of the artists were so professionally accepted that it was named the National Studios of Art. However, at the time the Studio had become the centre of sound informal art training, it was given a relocation order which caused serious controversy between the Gallery and the artists. The artists eventually accepted the relocation order, and this, necessarily, led to changing the name to the Universal Studios of Art (USA). As the professional artists became globally known, the USA also became a tourist centre for both local and foreign visitors and artists. Till today, the activities of the USA continue to attract national and international attention. Very as unfortunately, no scholarly study of the Universal Studios of Art has been carried out, despite its outstanding professional qualities.. For many years, the artists have developed valuable art forms and art styles that have contributed to the advancement of modern Nigerian art. It is the objective of this article, therefore, to document the artists of the Universal Studios of Art.

Natural Synthesis and Contemporary Nigerian Visual Arts: An Exposition of Uche Okeke’s Works

The frontiers of contemporary Nigerian art are expanding as ethnic traditions have continued to evolve in individual genius which gives it expression. In the visual art of Uche Okeke, we see a synthesis of old and new, hence a perpetuation of old artistic Nigeria traditions in modern artistic sensibility. Although a great deal has been written about Uche Okeke’s exploit in arts, the corpus of his oeuvres requires continuous investigation alongside a myriad of artistic developments in Nigeria. More so, there is a dearth of scholarly materials in the global arena on the creative achievements of the artist which anchor on his philosophy of natural synthesis. This paper therefore examined the concepts of synthesis as an art making philosophy and as a creative paradigm inherent in the visual art of Uche Okeke. It also looked at his methods and styles of creating art works alongside those entrenched in traditional uli art practice.

Bilingualism and Biculturalism as Elements of Indigenisation in Selected Nigerian Artists Pop Music

The peculiar linguistic history of Nigeria has rubbed off on language use at the micro level. In the Nigerian music industry today, one can hardly find a single song that feature without using English, Nigerian pidgin or any of the Nigerian indigenous languages. The English language has been viewed as not having enough expressive resources that can match any of the native languages. English is seen as being too formal, complex and foreign to Nigerians and as a result of this complexity, speakers often result to the use of indigenous languages because it tends to make the speakers feel at home without much attention paid to the grammatical formations. This study seeks to find out this assertion by exploring the extent of bilingualism and biculturalisms techniques adopted by the selected Nigerian artists. Cummins Threshold Model of Bilingualism and Text Translation Model were used to interpret the lyrics of the songs - ‘Ojuelegba, Jaiye Jaiye, and Orente’. Bicultural elements were portrayed in the musical videos of artists via their costumes and physical settings. Artists employ dressing techniques that merge bits of European and African cultural values. The data sampled also showed the artists’ high level of cultural consciousness and solidarity with mother tongues as indispensable tools for self-expression and self-actualization. The switches between codes were used for emphasis where necessary.

Personal aggrandizement: an insight into Ben Enwonwu’s privilege position in the evolution of Nigerian art

This paper titled Personal Aggrandizement: An Insight into Ben Enwonwu’s Privilege Position in the Evolution of Nigerian Art, looks at the first trained artists. How the artists were classified by their styles either in the naturalistic, the abstract or the expressive imageries. The study examines and compares the contributions of some Nigerian artists like Aina Onabolu, Ben Enwonwu, T. A Fasuyi and B. Akinbola who were one time privileged to have held a post as an adviser to the Federal Government of Nigeria. An interview with Professor Jimo Akolo revealed another dimension to the paper.

Agentive Capacities, Democratic Possibilities, and the Urban Poor: Rethinking Recent Popular Protests in West Africa

This article revolves around the role of the urban poor or the “informal proletariat” in popular political protests in West Africa. It critically surveys instructive accounts of their participation in the 1990s movement for democracy in Lagos, youth politics in Dakar, and a recent insightful analysis of popular uprisings in various parts of the continent in the 2000s. Various aspirations for change anchor these accounts. Against this backdrop, I turn to everyday life and politics in zones of urban informality and juxtapose it to a discussion of the acclaimed Nigerian artist Jelili Atiku’s street performance towards the end of the Occupy Nigeria movement as a generative figure of protest. The scripts in which we read dispositions of the informal proletariat, their protest actions, relationship to state and power, and hopes for the coming community are central here. At stake I believe is our own ability to grasp agentive democratic possibilities for the future, which the protests and Atiku’s performance illuminate.

The reupholster of stained glass designs and “the deceptive silence of stolen voices”

Reflecting on the seminal theme of Biography as a provisional means of accessing artistic substance, this study dares a reading of the metamorphosis of the artistry of the Nigerian glass designs of Frank Ugiomoh and Nsikak Essien. Utilising an empirical analysis, principal art works of these masters are examined. However, a hermeneutic investigation is engaged to aid an unraveling of the tooling mechanisms and the art making traditions that the artists deployed in their engagement with the natural synthesis cognomen in affecting the ecclesia in Africa paradigm. The designs of Frank Ugiomoh are discussed with a hermeneutic detailing that draws attention to the peculiarities of his artistry as emblematic in the growth and development of glass designs. However, that investigation revealed (I) that the artist Nsikak Essien in re-upholstering his pictures diligently sourced his devises on mimetic reinstatements of the canons of academe; but introduced lineal schemes culled from the art forms of his Nigerian art world, specifically Uli and Nsibidi; while (II) Ugiomoh toed the intellectually subtle repositioning of themes and tooling mechanisms, declaiming the prime masters’ narratives but implanting a language of pictorial codes that deter the dearth of symbols.Keywords: biography, provisional, metamorphosis, hermeneutic, paradigm shift, re-upholster, deceptive silence of stolen voices

Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990 by Sonal Khullar, and: Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria by Chika Okeke-Agulu

Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990 Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015, 368 pp. Chika Okeke-Agulu, Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria Durham: Duke University Press, 2015, 376 pp. I. In this essay, I explore state of study of visual modernism in geographical areas outside of its ordained point of origin in Europe, using as a point of entry two volumes published in 2015, Chika Okeke-Agulu's Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria and Sonal Khullar's Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990. Okeke-Agulu and Khullar both contribute to a growing body of local and national histories that recast modern art's relationship to nation and nationalist discourse as a productive site of meaning-making in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Nonetheless, because of intimate relationship between modernism and narratives that define it on one hand, and colonialism on other, a number of assumptions continue to plague perception of non-Western modernism, all of which are connected to its relationship with [...] Western art traditions, its apparent inauthenticity and derivativeness, its supposed lack of comparative sophistication, [and] its troubling intimacy with cultural (Okeke-Agulu 6). In pages that follow, I explore how Okeke-Agulu and Khullar deal with these assumptions, situating their accounts of Nigerian and Indian modernism within context of art history's global turn. I argue that these authors offer avenues for expansion of art history's geographical reach without reducing disparate practices and discourses that define them to a single modernist temporality. Two common threads run through their books: on one hand, both authors emphasize local and national discursive parameters of contexts under investigation as constitutive of modern art; on other hand, both establish continuity between modern and contemporary, in Nigeria and India respectively, against a prevalent narrative of colonial rupture. In Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, Okeke-Agulu focuses on Nigerian art in decade of political independence, between 1957 and 1967, and in decades leading up to it. In particular, author pays close attention to terms in which visual modernism was imagined by artists themselves, and by contemporary Nigerian critics and writers, and uses these as a framework for understanding their practice. Against commonly held assumptions of abject dependency on nationalist ideology or on European models, author reframes relationship between art and nationalist ideology as discursively productive. Cultural nationalism was indeed central to ways in which artists conceived of their work, and the conjunction of art and nationalist ideology is an important characteristic of postcolonial modernism as an international mid-twentieth-century phenomenon (2). Furthermore, Okeke-Agulu reframes relationship of Nigerian modernism to European art in terms of idea of natural synthesis, deployed in Nigeria at time, which he defines as the selective use of artistic resources and forms from Nigerian/African and European traditions (1). In Worldly Affiliations, Khullar adopts a comparable approach, attending to terms of debates that surrounded art in India between 1930 and 1990. She takes binary between and West to be a central fact of Indian modernism, and argues that in India, as in Europe, this binary must be taken seriously, as East and West were marshaled as formal and social attributes in art history's most crucial debates on naturalism and abstraction, line and color, art and crafts, masculinity and femininity, nature and culture (12). …

The emphatic wood sculptures at the University of Benin – their cultural and philosophical contributions to Nigerian art space: an articulation of African aesthetics

The emphatic wood sculptures at the University of Benin – their cultural and philosophical contributions to Nigerian art space: an articulation of African aesthetics

The intricacies of Benin bead motifs – their place in contemporary Nigerian art

The intricacies of Benin bead motifs – their place in contemporary Nigerian art

Postcolonial modernism: art and decolonization in twentieth-century Nigeria

Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive postcolonial modernism that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.

“Global”: A View from the Margin

“Global”: A View from the Margin

Typological Examination of Drawing in Nigerian Art

Drawing which predate all other forms of art and verbal language is the focus of this paper. Despite its effectiveness in communication, it has remained rarely analyzed. The study is a typological examination of drawing in Nigerian art. It traces the general history of drawing from pre-historic period to the contemporary times. It further discusses the usage and significance of drawing and examines the various drawing typologies using contemporary Nigerian artistic sphere as a case study. The study is based on direct field investigation and bibliographical data collection from studios, galleries and libraries. Significantly, the study reveals the efficacy of drawing in communication particularly in Nigeria. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n6p89

Archiving Nigerian Contemporary Existential Realities: Ben Osaghae and His Dialectical Paintings

A greater percentage of contemporary art practice in Nigeria has been adjudged by major Nigerian and foreign art critics, writers, historians and curators to be ahistorical/apolitical and lacking in critical and cutting edge 21st century art making strategies that are prevalent in the West and elsewhere. And although most contemporary Nigerian artists that practice at home use primarily the modernist formalistic modes in expressing concepts that some people consider prosaic and anachronistic, a few of them still engage the contemporary socioeconomic and political experiences and among this small band of artists is Ben Osaghae. Hence, this paper is a critical analysis and contextualization of Osaghae’s paintings that deal with our collective postcolonial experiences which are more abysmal than pleasant. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n3p181

Environmental Challenges as Creative Muse: The Installation and Performance Art of Bright Ugochukwu Eke

Our modern African society is challenged by many environmental issues owing to industrialization and exploitation of natural resources and other activities that are coeval with western-oriented modernity. The Niger Delta of Nigeria is particularly challenged in ways not found in other parts of the country and elsewhere due to the unethical processes of oil extraction. In the Niger Delta region, water, air and land pollution are serious environmental challenges that affect the biodiversity and the ecosystem. These deplorable issues have become creative muse for writers and visual artists with the resultant genres known as the Niger Delta Literature (NDL) and the Niger Delta Visuals (NDV). This paper engages the conceptual and installation art of Bright Ugochukwu Eke, a young and innovative contemporary Nigerian artist now based in Los Angeles, USA. Eke’s uncommon exploration of water as a sculpture medium was sparked by an experience of acid rain he had in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria in 2005. Eke is widely exhibited with many international awards and residencies. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n3p63

Boniface Okafor: The Nigerian Surrealist Painter

Very little has been written on Surrealism in Nigerian art. While I may not trace any historical origin of this practice in Nigeria, I will concentrate on the art of one singular individual – Boniface Okafor. In this essay, therefore, I approach Surrealism from its Western origin and then take on the art of Okafor as a veritable exemplar of his Western counterparts. I show that Okafor, a former member of the Aka group of exhibiting artists, was a strong artist who reveled in the esoteric. His art resonates with critical thematic and formalistic attributes that provide cue for understanding some hidden aspects of human existence. Basing my essay on the Nigerian environment, I show that as a mystic artist, he may have been misunderstood for his strong attachment to his art and world views. I also hint at the fact that most of his works are often bifurcated along the lines of religion and mystery.

Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: monuments, deities, and money by Peter Probst

Reviewed by: Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: monuments, deities, and money by Peter Probst Ferdinand De Jong Peter Probst , Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: monuments, deities, and money. Bloomington and Indianapolis IN: Indiana University Press (hb £50.35 - 978 0 25335 611 6; pb £16.14 - 978 0 25322 295 4). 2011, xi+207 pp. including black and white, and colour Illustrations. This book is not about the 'saving' of African art by European art aficionados, although that story is required background reading. In 1958 the German [End Page 527] Ulli Beier and his Austrian wife Suzanne Wenger set up an art school in Osogbo, Nigeria. Inspired by the art brut movement led by Dubuffet, they launched various projects to teach Africans to make 'raw' art. Whilst the marriage between Beier and Wenger did not last, the projects they initiated produced a lasting legacy. Famous Osogbo artists like Twins Seven Seven and Jacob Afolabi first experimented with art under their guidance. Beier eventually moved to Papua New Guinea, but Wenger 'went native', immersed herself ever deeper in Yoruba religion, and became an Olorisa, a worshipper of Yoruba deities. It was in that capacity - and as an artist - that she started repairing and rebuilding dilapidated shrines. In collaboration with Nigerian artists like Adebisi Akanji, she reshaped the ritual landscape of the Osun grove of Osogbo by placing cement sculptures of deities and shrines in the grove. Probst paints a vivid account of the remaking of the Osogbo sacred grove with the 'new images' of Wenger's Sacred Art group. Situating her initiative in a colonial context, he reminds us that it was based on the widely shared opinion that African art was dead, or dying. The modernist 'experiments' in Osogbo were part of a modern movement to 'revitalize' African creativity and to counter the destructive impact of colonial modernity. Critical of the colonial nostalgia that drove the experiments in Osogbo, this book is really about something else; it is about the Osun grove as heritage. In 1965, due to the effective action by one of Osogbo's sons who was a minister in the Nigerian federal government, the Osun grove was credited with the status of national monument. Although still ignored during FESTAC '77 - for being too much indebted to colonial intervention - the grove's hybridity was increasingly valued in the international contest for local cultural achievements. In its 'second career' as heritage, the grove was eventually awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in 2005. Today, the Osun grove and its annual Festival attract many national and international visitors - although perhaps not as many as the applicants for the UNESCO qualification had hoped. But the 'success' of this process was never secure. In fact, Wenger's 'new images' have always attracted fierce criticism and their authenticity was debated at various moments. How the participants in the annual Osun Osogbo Festival experience the 'new images' and to what extent they deem these images effective in communicating with the deity Osun is discussed in several chapters. This excellent anthropological analysis is matched with a good historical analysis of how the traditional rulers have reshaped the significance of the sacred grove. In a context in which the majority of Osogbo's population converted to Islam or Christianity, they strategically represented Osun grove as a memory of the Osogbo past, rather than a symbol of Yoruba religion. Needless to say, these processes of representation - including photography and images circulating on the Internet - were, and still are, highly contested. Probst places the current struggle for authentication of the grove against the background of Osogbo mythology on the foundation of the city and its grove. In this cosmology, the traditional ruler and the sacred grove are said to mediate between the people and the deity Osun. Drawing upon contemporary media theory, the last chapter analyses the grove as medium and explicitly situates the modernist 'experiment' in this longue durée. Thus we learn Probst's take on Suzanne Wenger's innovations in the sacred grove: 'What from the outside looked like a modernist "experiment" in public art was and still is part of a long and well-established local strategy to remain in control of media...

Thematic and Stylistic Appraisal of Sculpture in Public Places in Nigeria: The Example of Southwest

Outdoor sculpture in Southwest of Nigeria is fast growing in practice and art historical values. Since its emergence in 1934, it has developed different modes in practice which have not been given proper art historical consideration. The nature of the fleeting practice, poor maintenance and preservation as well as constant loss of works portends serious art historical gap if left unattended to. It is therefore imperative that studies on the outdoor sculpture practice be conducted from time to time. In this study, themes and styles of the outdoor sculpture in the Southwestern Nigeria from 1900-2005 were examined. The period under study represents the emergence to the proliferation period of the practice. The outdoor sculptures within the period were enumerated and classified under form, style and material for proper analysis. Themes and styles from the samples of the works were specifically studied. Findings in the study reveals that thematic consideration in all the works were basically hinged on socio-political and economy state of the zone at each developmental phase. Forms were mainly expressed in realism with variation in each artist’s style. The study was conducted to place the themes and styles expressed in the nascent art on art historical record in the main stream contemporary Nigerian art. Significantly, the study is hoped to provide information and stimulate further studies in the related scholarly area.

Translator, Anarchist: The Power Dynamics of Translation in the longue durée

This article argues that the agency of readers can subvert the political dynamics of translation even in conditions of unequal power relationships. It is inspired by Lamin Sanneh who demonstrated that biblical texts translated into vernacular African languages had an important influence upon the valorization of these languages and the corresponding cultures, thereby stimulating nationalism. In the arts, two case studies illustrate the impact of translated texts: the first demonstrates that Leo Frobenius’s German texts translated into French had a deep impact on the Senegalese conception and use of art. Secondly, the preoccupation with Chinese art through translated texts influenced contemporary Nigerian art and strengthened a new artistic self-assurance. The article concludes that translation is an act of anarchism and its consequences are unpredictable in the longue durée but should be welcomed in order to expand the plurality of art history.

The appropriation of African American Vernacular English and Jamaican Patois by Nigerian hip hop artists

The present paper deals with multilingual practices as they have emerged in Nigeria’s vibrant hip hop community. Apart from English, the most important strand in the multilingual fabric of Nigerian hip hop lyrics is Nigerian Pidgin. In addition, several more indigenous languages are used regularly. The focus of the present study, however, is on the use of two foreign varieties, namely African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Jamaican Creole or Patois (JC). Borrowing from AAVE and JC is a useful strategy for Nigerian artists to authenticate their performances by international standards. In principle, multilingual practices, including use of dialects and languages which are not natively spoken in a community, fits in well with the hip hop aesthetic. However, as will be shown, some AAVE and JC elements are borrowed without a full understanding of their linguistic and cultural context or transformed in an effort to adapt them to a new local context, which also runs the risk of undermining authenticity. Borrowing from AAVE and JC proves most problematical on the level of grammar

Art as a Catalyst of Religious Development in Nigeria

Art in Nigeria from the early Christian Missionary�s perspective was anembodiment of traditional African religion. Therefore, Nigerian art wasconsidered to be a taboo to the Christian religion, hence it should beabolished. The Islamic Jihadists on the other hand saw art as ensembles ofidolatry which must be destroyed while the traditionalists seemed to see artas the exclusive preserve of their religion, therefore, every art object shouldbe venerated. However, art is essentially a tool for the promotion of allreligions. The thrust of this paper is therefore to assess the Siameserelationship between art and religion in Nigeria irrespective of thecoloration.