Ìgwèbúiké

For his phenomenal achievements in the contemporary art world, the second decade of the twenty-first century may be considered as the decade of El Anatsui, Africa's foremost sculptor. The artist's 2019 touring exhibition, Triumphant Scale, capped an eventful decade of international awards and recognitions for the artist, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (2015), the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award (2017), and Japan's Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award (2017). Triumphant Scale marked a milestone in Anatsui's life, as he turned 75 in February 2019. His experiences in the university town of Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria, where he has lived and worked for most of his adult life, offer insightful narratives on his life and art. From 1975, when he came to Nigeria from Ghana, till his recent retirement, he taught at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.On February 3, 2019, Ìgwèbúiké: Exhibition of Sculpture in Honour of El Anatsui at 75 Years opened at the outstation of the National Gallery of Art in the coal city state of Enugu, Nigeria. The show, organized by staff of the sculpture section of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, provided a cryptic gaze into stylistic correspondences among artists whose creative sensibilities have been shaped by encounters with El Anatsui. The exhibiting artists, Chijioke Onuora, Eva Obodo, Chike Akabuike, Uche Onyishi, Ekene Anikpe, Sabastine Ugwoke, Amuche Ngwu, Livinus Ngwu, and Sunday Odoh, were taught by Anatsui at different times. In what may be considered the manifestations of the long arm of Anatsui's influence, the show was, in an uncanny way, a retrospective reading of Anatsui's stylistic developments, particularly his wood panel experiments of the late 1980s and his found wood installations, which On Their Fateful Journey Nowhere (1995) emblematizes. Stylistic echoes of Anatsui's breathtaking monumental bottle-top sculpture installations also reverberated loudly in the show.Although the participating artists projected diverse experimental foci, a uniting force that bound them together emanated from the Ìgwè bú iké philosophy, a belief system of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria that emphasizes the awesome strength generated when people band together with unity of purpose. As a conceptual framework, Ìgwè bú iké embodies the coming together of modular objects in a repetitive manner to evoke a forceful presence, a process Ozioma Onuzulike describes “as reaching for the aesthetics of the critical mass.”1 From another perspective that is very congruent with the culture of experimentation that frame Nsukka school art, subject of a recent article by Chinedu Ene-Orji,2 this stylistic disposition towards achieving the aesthetics of the critical mass connects to, and also reinforces what Sylvester Ogbechie posits as the “language of sublime awe at the forefront of most significant developments in the Nsukka school art.” Ogbechie also points out that the radical aesthetics which the language of sublime awe enabled is for the most part dependent on the “use of indigenous knowledge to interrogate the relationship between local and global spheres of practice.”3 The dynamics of this relationship find interpretive contexts in the art of many Nsukka artists.As visual containers of both indigenous and contemporary cultural sensibilities, El Anatsui's art reflects the language of sublime awe and so does that of some of the artists featured in this show. Beyond the uli experiment in the Nsukka art school, of which Uche Okeke, Chike Aniakor, Obiora Udechukwu, and Krydz Ikwuemesi are critical actors, Anatsui pioneered a new art style that equally placed indigenous environment and knowledge at the center of creative investigation. Exploring the potentialities of ideas, materials, and process as correlative sites of artistic production is a key component of this art style. Its formalism derives expressivity from the exploitation of the materiality and metaphoric potency of the chosen material particularly when used as multiples in a repetitive manner. The obvious influence of Anatsui's art style on the exhibiting artists and, by extension, on other Nsukka artists, goes beyond appropriating the stylistic frameworks expressed above. Anatsui's achievements and successes in the global cultural arena are undoubtedly proselytizing. His art is equally seen as conforming to, and also approximating a global aesthetics that offer persuasive pathways to artistic relevance and visibility. The works on display clearly suggested that the artists were paying critical attention to Anatsui's unconventional way of thinking and were also very familiar with his experimental studio processes and art productions.Mounted in front of the exhibition venue and standing over 14 feet tall (way above the exhibition venue's interior height), Livinus Ngwu's Ozone Porosity (Fig. 1) underlined the diverse artistic dialects with which the artists featured in the exhibition engaged the aesthetics of the critical mass as much as it also pointed out the shortcomings of the exhibition venue. Experientially, its modest interior space was quite restrictive and denied viewers effectual space to interact with some of the installations. Again, inadequate wall space and absence of controlled lighting affected the show's presentational impact and ambience. Although space challenges informed the decision to mount Ozone Porosity in the open, contextually, placing it outside enabled direct conversation between its formalism and the environment which is the subject of its thematization. In its interrogation of one of the critical causes of climate change, the towering conical architecture of Ozone Porosity pierced the atmosphere in an act of protest and lamentation. Ngwu created a fabriclike garment using strips of discarded automobile tire tubes fastened together with copper wire. This material was draped around a conical metal framework housing a globelike structure covered with tree bark and periwinkle shells. The see-through nature of the fabriclike garment was used as metaphor for depleted ozone layer.El Anatsui's influence as embodied in the Ìgwè bú iké concept was clearly perceivable in most of the works featured in the exhibition. Sabastine Ugwoke's Journey to Nowhere and Open Secret (Figs. 2–3) evoked memories of Anatsui's On Their Fateful Journey Nowhere and bottle-top sculpture installations respectively. Journey to Nowhere comprised numerous bicycle riders executed with metal scraps and other oddities. Rendered in various sizes and depicted in suspended states of diverse movements and body language, this pack of cyclists dramatized the rat race of today's societies. Contexts of individualism and collectivism were thrust into the viewer's consciousness in a comical way that narrated existential experiences. Open Secret, on the other hand, expanded the stylistic trajectories of the Ìgwè bú iké spirit through the use of folded and belted strips of printing plates to create a shimmering landscape of human consciousness.Chijioke Onuora's Convergence of Members (Fig. 4) also obliquely recalled El Anatsui's use of found wooden logs with minimal human interventions to create installations. Here, Onuora took a satirical poke at what may be construed as open season on Nigeria's political space (the show took place a few days to Nigeria's general elections). Elongated semiabstract figures looking up to another, larger abstract figure wove an all-too-familiar narrative on the relationship between politicians and the electorate.Chike Akabuike's Grazing Colony (Fig. 5) interrogated violence and conflict within contexts of territorialism, conquest, and power imbalance. It evoked the image of a rampaging herd of beasts (presumably cattle) chaperoned by herders depicted as half beasts and half men (an obvious reference to the trail of bloodshed, killings, rape, arson, and pillage attributed to the activities of Fulani herdsmen, particularly in the middle belt and southern regions of Nigeria). The destructive force, aggression, and uncensored power in Grazing Colony were projected through the dynamic forms constructed with old logs and branches of wood shaped by nature and the natural elements. The influence of Anatsui's On Their Fateful Journey Nowhere is clearly evident in this piece. On the down side, the strong light coming from the undraped windows made viewing this piece disconcerting and very much diminished its impactful presence.Identity and the relativity of human thought was the underlying theme in Ekene Anikpe's Uche bu Akpa (The mind is a bag) (Fig. 6). The installation struck formal and conceptual chords with Anatsui's Waste Paper Bags (2004–2010). It also pointed out new directions in Anikpe's use of the bottom end of beverage cans cut out from the parent body for conceptual musings. In Uche bu Akpa, unlike in his earlier works where it was used in its natural state, the artist infused the medium with new meanings and contexts by wrapping it in colorful textile materials before joining hundreds of them together with copper wire to form bags of different shapes and sizes. The use of textiles as identity marker even in a simulated state as seen in the metal sculptures of Anatsui finds other interpretative contexts in the works of Eva Obodo, Amuche Ngwu, and Sunday Odoh.Eva Obodo's Exodus I (Fig. 7), a soft sculpture installation produced with jute, cotton fabric, and thread, expanded the stylistic quotient of Nsukka school art. The artist's studio processes, which involve techniques of stitching, tying, dyeing and bundling, were deployed as contextual and symbolic signposts for the objectification of human experience. With respect to the compositional strategies employed in Exodus I and in other related works by the artist, Obodo struck “an aesthetic and formal balance between what can be viewed as both sculpture and painting.”4 Another work by the artist, Oracle in Reverse (Fig. 8) explored the materiality of charcoal as an expressive and evocative medium and further illustrates the radical aesthetics of the language of sublime awe.Beyond paying tribute to El Anatsui, who attended the show's opening, the exhibition provided critical ground for engaging re-searchable anxieties that frame debates on the role and place of appropriation and influence in the making of art and artists. Considering that the show contained a rich trove of information on the current stylistic trajectory of Nsukka School art, staging the exhibition in Lagos, Nigeria's art capital, would have exposed the works and the participating artists to a wider audience. Sadly, Ìgwèbúiké flew under the radar and with it, a robust understanding and appreciation of the radical aesthetics that have come to be synonymous with Nsukka school art

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Exhibition · Honour · Medal · Milestone · Sculpture · The arts · Visual arts · Architecture and Computational Design · History

• From Masks to Metal Cloth

  Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie•Critical Interventions•2008

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• Continuity and Change in Nsukka Art

  Chinedu Ene-Orji•African Arts•2019

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