Relational Lines: The Disjunction of Sameness

To be included in this Exhibition with Anthea Epelle and Obinna Makata is exciting news. The title felt so like what I would use as the theme for one of my paintings! I chose to emphasize Line in my work while still a student in Nsukka in the 90s. The element of art took on another meaning for me as an undergrad in The Nsukka Uli School. In Uli traditional motifs, Line was tied to meaning in a visual interplay of language and idea.

I started researching the books in the Linguistics section of the university library about Language and Meaning. Seeing how traditional Uli was used as a sign language, I read more about the works of the neurologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The writings of Freud was associated with the work of the Surrealists.

My use of line became personal- iconographic, suggestive, leading in various directions. As used by the curators of this exhibition Obida Obioha and Sunshine Alaibe (and in response to my work, in ways this post may not address) the word disjunction alludes to disunion, separation. There seem to be suggestions of an intent to address my practice, its place in current scholarly practice. The questions around origin, identity, and authenticity come to mind. The audacity of this exhibition, maybe its priority, is a sort of disruption in space.

I think back to one of the earliest essays written about me by Jess Castellote, a longtime friend and curator of Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Lagos. Jess described me (in his blog A View from My Corner) as a somewhat ‘invisible artist’ (my words). I have often preferred to work in solitude, hoping that my ideas will be less affected/influenced by popular trends in the arts. At the end of the day, I may stand alone. The extent to which I have been able to achieve this in my artistic practice is debatable. There are some exclusions in recent conversations that suggest that I am standing outside, somewhat self-induced. 

This is the price for a restless migration. It is also about the disruption that happens in meetings between different cultures. I have to keep introducing myself as I travel. Fluctuation becomes an essence mastered by a nomadic native son. There is original creativity familiar with the energy from other spaces. Vernacular must veer towards foreign syllabic consonants for communication. Of course, my work has been affected. And yes, the world is more connected now than 20 years ago. I have met co-sojourners. Many of us live elsewhere. We fall into a gap that is, to say it mildly, disruptive of a developing system.

My view may not be shared by the other artists in this show, nor by the two curators of Oda Art Gallery. But I enjoy the works of the other two artists.

NB: My first meeting with Sunshine was like 4 years ago when she joined some curators to visit my art studio in Lekki. They asked some quite interesting questions about my artistic practice. Hopefully they will put out the text of that interview one day. I felt they understood what it is that the artist intends to do in society. That sole visit culminated to me being in this exhibition. I am grateful. It comes just days after ArtX Lagos. 

Relational Lines: The Disjunction of Sameness is open for viewing to the public till December 9, 2021 at Oda Art Gallery, 10 Samuel Manuwa Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. For enquiries: info@odaartgallery.com

Website: http://www.odaartgallery.com

Reflective Universe, the exhibition

PRITHVI FINE ART AND CULTURAL CENTRE, New Delhi
Celebrates India’s 75th INDEPENDENCE DAY
in collaboration with ARTSY, New York
with the launch of an e-exhibition.

‘REFLECTIVE
UNIVERSE’

Works by well known Artists
ANTHONY NSOFOR
BEDIA KALE
İPEK DENIZLI
SANGEETA GUPTA

Concept & Curation
SANGEETA GUPTA

Exhibition details
Online show at ARTSY
Commencing from 15th August 2021

Log on to ARTSY: SHOW:
https://www.artsy.net/show/prithvi-fine-art-and-cultural-centre-reflective-universe

Log on to ARTSY: VIEWING ROOM:
https://www.artsy.net/viewing-room/prithvi-fine-art-and-cultural-centre-reflective-universe?utm_content=viewing-room-gallery-share

Large paintings

To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view with a reducing glass. However, you paint the larger pictures, you are in it. It isn’t something you command- Barnett Newman.

So, my experience has been that of stepping into my work head on, walking in and living inside it. This is a refreshing way of reliving the experience of art, in connecting process to theme, action to passion and reason. The gesture of laying brushstrokes is mediated by the span and reach of the creator/artist. In the larger work, the limit is physical. But the spiritual predates all that. You finally see summaries. Catchphrases stay on the mind forUi longer in a complicated life. We can always wring the phrase to squeeze out meanings like wandwaving magician’s apprentices on off day in the workplace. The very act of doing is enough justification for being presented as ‘art’. Now one ties to the idea of the dignity of labor. Not a sweat is wasted as it falls to the brown earth. There is a system to all the chaos, to the broken form, to the patches of color pointedly placed.

Living in the Future

Yesterday I was delighted to host 36 secondary school students and their teacher who came on a scheduled excursion to my Oguta studio. They were in a dilemma choosing their future professions, and their school did not have a guidance counselor to help them.

When I was in secondary school at Okigwe, we had a guidance counselor that virtually no one consulted. Most students passed through the school believing that the guidance counselor was there to advise undisciplined students, or something extraordinary that wasn’t meant for us. So there I was that afternoon, at the balcony of my house defending why I became an artist.

This is why I love teaching- as one interacts with the students, it soon seems like a personal reaffirmation of commitment to one’s chosen career path. Speaking with these young students felt like looking back, then delving deep into the future.

Professor Uche Okeke created the foundation for what we know today as the Nsukka School. He died last month after a long and productive life. I was shocked by a recent conversation with a former alumnus of mine who didn’t know who Uche Okeke was! Granted that he never taught my set directly, but I thought the general art history classes must have said something about him. Sadly, I recall that the obsolete curriculum of secondary schools only taught students of such painters as Aina Onabolu, and all the old western masters. Nigeria’s recent masters do not have a place in the antiquated colonial-era inspired history lessons.

A case has been made against the issue of non-inclusiveness of the old African masters who were contemporaries of other western artists in the books narrating the history of Art. Books that claim to relate the history of Art, by default, seem to ignore the fact of artists who lived and worked professionally in the same times as their masters.

African art critics, curators and historians in the past two decades have decried the biased art history stories in books written by western writers.

Maybe one of the most instructive, and essential books on Nigeria’s Art history is the acclaimed Post-Modern Colonialism, by Chika Okeke-Agulu. The book tells the story of the contributions of its artists to the development and growth of the Nigerian nation. Of course the book goes far beyond this. Speaking to the students who came on an excursion to my studio yesterday, I realized that the book is a must-read for students of Nigerian, nay, African art. (I broaden the scope of importance since Africa generally has a shared colonial experience).

Maybe it will be asking too much of the author of the book, but I realized that an abridged edition written for secondary school students would indeed be of great benefit. One also hopes that the tertiary institutions will include it in their curriculum and libraries. Of course, there will be arguments for and against the contents of the book. But the point remains that there should be more scholarly work about African art history.

When I taught at Whitesands School in 2009, I realized that the entire curriculum of the Nigerian educational system needed a major overhaul. Our history lessons are obsolete, warped with a bias, and told ‘from the outside’, in a way irrelevant to our local values and aspirations as a people. For decades, African history has been told by strangers. The stories are more like a stranger’s narration of a foreign culture. History is being made everyday. We must write our stories. No one can tell it better than the people directly involved. Hopefully, recent scholarship will rise to the task of documenting, and translating the stories. That way, we take our place in posterity. Then maybe, most likely, we will not be forgotten so soon. The future is in our hands to see and live in.

I expressed my gratitude to the secondary school pupils for the visit, and then I took a group photograph with them. The picture is important for me. I saw the future there. I wanted to cherish the moment over and over again. I hope the students learnt the things that I reiterated- whatever career path you take, work hard at it like an artist, with an eye for details, creating new solutions to old problems, staying innovative. I think Art should be taught as a general course to new entrants into the university. Art refines the human, totally.