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Postmodernism is a term which originated within a western
intellectual context, and is broadly used across different academic
disciplines to describe a contemporary culture and era which differs
significantly from the so-called ‘modern’ period of the late 19th
to mid 20th century.1 There are different
definitions of postmodernism that are as ambiguous as they are
contradictory. For example, some definitions maintain that the
explosion of information technology, global communication, and the
mass media have help to fracture some of the belief systems and
artistic values of the earlier modern periods2, while
some view postmodernism in the face of the criticism of
eurocentricity by the artists who were excluded by modernism from
the cannon3.
These
definitions have multiplied and instead of dismantling tangled
discursive issues, have confounded them the more. By and large,
postmodernism in its ample judgment describes a cultural vision, a
cultural paradigm that tries to dissociate itself from the modernist
project. In this vein, the litany of Western ‘isms’ is challenged
because of its exclusivist attributes towards many other forms of
modern artistic practice. This has corroborated the position of
African artists who had been practicing before the advent of
postmodernism. Because postmodernism accommodates the co-existence
of diverse techniques and heterogeneous cultural positions, Africans
can be involved in cultural multiformity and by extension adopt new
attitude towards present day art production.
This
new attitude has manifested in Nigeria over a period of time now. It
is a fact that a lot of changes have taken place in modern Nigerian
art in recent times.
These
changes have often fallen into the hands of half baked critics who
have resigned to the vicious circle of the game of polemics. This
paper sees postmodern tendencies in the works of Ozioma Onuzulike
and Dilumpruzulike and tries to relate them to issues of national
concern. It also identifies a sad practice in Nigeria where critics
and historians neglect a vital documentation strategy through lack
of introspective studies into exhibitions and works of younger
generation of Nigerian artists.
Negotiating a path
Historically, it is not wrong to see artists writing about art. Some
of the earliest European art histories, including autobiographies,
written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were written by
artists. For example in 1450 Lorenzo Ghiberti, a painter and
architect wrote Lives of the Artists. Since art was never an
independent subject of history in Europe until the last millennium,
these books were exclusively veritable records of art history in
Western Eruope today. In Africa, Nigeria precisely, we are borrowing
a leaf from our Western counterparts by charting a historic course
for ourselves through this medium. For example Obiora Udechukwu who
trained as a studio artist has written more than 100 essays in local
and foreign meida. Krydz Ikwuemesi a painter has also written more
than 75 essays in local and foreign media. Despite the role of some
younger generation artists in Nigeria whose forays into writing on
art have yielded positive results, they have negotiated a studio
path for themselves. They negotiated this path as (post) modern
artists and through a propensity by some of them (the artists) to
embrace installation art4.
Viewing Ozioma Onuzulike’s recent works, one may be tempted to
dismiss Kwame Anthony Appiah’s claim in 1991 that in West Africa,
artworks are not understood by their producers…in terms of a
postmodernism5 as a sign of temperamental kink6
with an intransigent attitude to the realities of art of younger
generation artists in Nigeria.
Contrary to Appiah’s assertion, Onuzuilike proves in his works that
artistic forms like installation are translated into other meanings
which may have broader cultural, socio-political or other
resonances. A close look at Refugees (plate 1) reveals a
postmodern tendency which has been translated to befit modern-day
realities in Nigeria. Materials used include chicken mesh
which correlates Nigeria in terms like separation, caging, capturing
… restricting, blockading, 7 disfigured cassava colanders
describing amputation, hammering, crushing, maiming ….8,
iron slugs serving as oppressive loads on the heads of human forms
suggesting exploitation and rejection. This work is steeped in
unconventionalities that question our knowledge and understanding of
art. Onuzulike is a ceramist but who from the above work displays
attributes of a non-ceramist because of his introduction of non-clay
elements in the work. In justifying Onuzulike’s adoption of non-clay
elements, Chike Aniakor (2000:5) notes:
The ‘environment’ is for him a fit metaphor for the
limitations of the clay medium if its formal horizon is not
extended to include non-clay media; an apt metaphor for the
crisis of the human condition as well as the scorched and
scorching earth, burning bushes, explosions and other aspects of
nature’s uneasiness9.
Onuzulike no doubt has broken the traditional use of clay to make
room for fresh creative elements. Another work casualties I
(Plate 2) involves the use of aluminum cassava sieve to arrange
several terra-cotta figures distorted to suggest one form of
disability or the other. Onuzulike’s casualties goes further
to re-echo J.P. Clark that
the casualties are
many, and a good number well
outside the scenes of ravage and wreck; …
… We fall
All casualties of war…
… We are all causalities
All sagging as
The
cases celebrated for Kwashiokor …
Onuzulike’s figures wear the look of malnourished victims like those
of Kwashiokor victims during the Nigeria – Biafra war. But
interpretations here connote different meaning. In an environment
replete with severe human torture and deprivation, one expects
different forms of casualties resulting from paralyzing conditions.
For example, a paralyzing condition may come in the form of power
failure making it difficult for a medical doctor already in a
theatre to continue or a person in a lift or any other similar
condition to be trapped. This power failure exemplifies the erratic
nature of our polity. Another example may be the atrocities
committed by men in black uniform (policemen) who forcefully exhort
money from motorists. Most often some motorists who stubbornly
opposed these illicit extortions were either shot or brutally
manhandled in a manner that either leaves them maimed or dead.
Another one is armed robbery which has assumed an alarming
proportion in cities Nigeria. In such places, one cannot claim with
intrepid assurance the survival of the next minute. In essence,
Onuzulike achieved a lot as he employed a much controversial style
in telling an ugly story of a nation. In comparing this style to
other conventional means of expression, it is observed that
Onuzulike’s style quickens comprehension at first observation. These
is a postmodernist examplar, which goes further to prove that our
artists can contrive such ideas and exert the knowledge of its
ideological milieu into the observing public against Krydz
Ikwuemesi’s fears of postmodernism. According to Ikwuemesi,
African artists have enough
issues and problems to address
at home with their art rather than
the bamboozling rhetoric of
postmodernism 10
Perhaps Ikwuemesi was not worried about the influence of
postmodernism but about the manner of internalizing its ideals. He
asks:
But in internalizing and manifesting these
influences, does the receiving culture have to
snuff itself out? Does it have to choke itself on
the mores which it believes would rescue it from
the periphery of the global village?11
Indeed, if Africa is on the periphery of the global village, what
does it need to push itself into the center if not works that
present contemporary discourses and postmodern values? Howevers,
different criticisms by African scholars on postmodernism in Africa
may not mean well after all for the African artists themselves.
Peter Ezeh warns that “censorship is the very worst that can happen
to any domain of art, or intellectual enterprise. In art let time be
allowed to treasure what it deems fit and burn what it loathers,”12
To say
that Onuzulike’s art is an offshoot of a postmodern idiom may not be
obtuse. Also to say that Causalities I did not address
satisfactorily severe postmodernism here did not involve exotic or
alien elements. Rather traditional components have been so
manipulated in a way they address a problem at home.
Perhaps National cake (plate 3) did it with a degree of
success. ‘National Cake’ has ceramic elements: terracotta made into
pan and bones. This arrangement reintroduces into the ceramic idiom,
archetypes of organic and transformative materiality. Like some
other works National Cake was intentionally ephemeral
reinforcing further a trend away from orthodox requirements of our
art towards a more intellectual engagement. This intellectual
engagement is like seeking a new artistic vigour.
Apparently tired of the provincial style of present day art practice
in Nigeria, Onuzulike was able to borrow Western ideas and reprocess
them within his indigenous environment, a procedure that often
involved a sudden shift of aesthetic registers.
The 21st
Century opened a whole new realm of artistic possibilities in
Nigeria due mainly to globalization and information technology. Most
artists of the younger generation group have acquired new artistic
experiences through internet. This has helped them adjust Western
artistic innovations to Nigerian traditions just as Onuzulike did.
One of such artists is Dilompruzulike (Otherwise known as Junkman
from Africa). In the popular archetype of appreciation among Nigeria
art audience, Dilumprizulike’s art may become non art13.
But Andrew Breton says they are not non art but manufactured objects
promoted to the dignity of objects of art through the choice of the
artist 14.
Dilumprizulike’s choice is a willful one. He, like Onuzulike,
demonstrates that the philosophy of hybridization for the artist is
relevant to the development of 21st Century Nigerian art.
His work The Pastors (plate 4) evokes a postmodern identity
that acknowledges the phenomenon of syncretism. The work underscores
the significance of opposing space to the realization of such a
work. One may wonder why Dilumprizulike did not choose to paint his
subject on canvas or why he did not consider the marketability of
his work. A deliberate arrangement of a cross with a tattered suit
hanging precariously on one end and tattered shoes placed at the
base of the stand shows that Dilumprizulike demands from us as
observers a more contemplative assessment. How else could he have
depicted the bastardization of Christianity by the impostors
parading under the cloak of pastors? Perhaps the prominent cross
would stir observers’ critical faculty at first glance more than the
cross painted on a two-dimensional panel. The Pastors
satirizes a society caught in dangerous throes of religion and
hypocrisy. Like Onuzulike, Dilumpruzulike has appropriated a
generally perceived Western idea of installation to create a work,
which is at the same time easily apprehensible to the general
public.
The
Chains
Looking at Onuzulike and Dilumprizulike, one may begin to ponder
their consequence to the realization of an artistic reality in
Nigeria. The chains come in varied forms. First, in the
shortsightedness of the public as appreciators of this type of art.
That “The Pastors” derives much of its vitality, its aura of satire
from the theme may not ignite public sensitivity to urgent moral
issues in Nigeria. Rather, public interest is enkindled through the
religious physiognomies of Nigeria made evident in the cross. When
works of installation aimed at addressing national ills begin to
dominate the Nigerian art field, art may began to rise above the
failures and shortcomings of this environment15.
The
chains can also come to the artists as a reaction to the economic
realities in Nigeria where subsistence has reached banal degrees.
For example the Nigerian artist is preoccupied with a false sense of
durability as the sole aim of artistic creation. Objects of
emphemerality are not yet explored in their unlimited dimension by
greater percentage of the artists.
Breaking the Chains: A conclusion.
The
chains of myopia can be broken through many ways. First, the
intransigencies of gallery owners can be checked. There should be a
growing concern for the restriction of liberty of thoughts and
expression by gallery owners. There should be an abrogation of
traditions, institutions and privileges that had held back artistic
progress in Nigeria. Postmodernism as a view of life, as well as a
state of mind, inherits the enlightenment’s admiration of reason,
against convention and continues to uncover the future as a
repertoire of natural lessons for correcting the defects of the
past.
Artists live in a world of critical change, where all that is fixed,
dogmatic and categorical is challenged. On the contrary, in Nigeria
artistic autonomy is not a constant and the artist’s individualism
results in his total alienation from commercialism that is the bane
of gallery owners in cities like Lagos. Against this backdrop it
becomes expedient to seek ways of breaking the chains that tied the
gallery owners to formality-based activities that do not encourage
growth in Nigerian postmodernism. Some of the ways of doing this is
by studying and comparing the theme and media of some exhibition in
other parts of the world. First comparison is made with “jigar”.
Jigar is the first solo touring exhibition of artist and film-maker
Alia Syed whose poetic films weave fragmented narratives of lives
that are continuously moving between different geographical spaces
and emotional states. This exhibition was shown in Walsall Art
Gallery, London. Because of this exhibition which was not
commercially based, Syed was commissioned by Institute of
International Visual Arts London to make a new work Eating Grass
which was presented at Turnpike Gallery. Here, classic feminist
agenda, issues of personal and political representation, fragmented
narratives and the urban landscape played alongside the artist’s
unpretentious celebration of sound and image. Eating Grass
looked at how Islam has been used to control and subdue societies
that are in danger of imploding through fear, poverty and ignorance.
There were five separate shows, each relating to the five times of
the day allocated for Muslim prayer. The emphasis was on women’s
freedom and how the ‘defence’ of their honour is continually
manipulated by the generals and moulvis in the name of Islam.
16
A
second example is taken from another work titled: Visual Exiles
by Roshini Kempadoo. Visual Exiles is an interactive
artwork by British artist Roshini Kempadoo that explores individual
and collective visual (his) stories and identities and examines the
notion of exile. This multimedia work which combines sound, video
and photographs from a range of sources focused on the geographical
location of Guyana. The artist’s media include his own photographs,
video footage and sound recordings, private family album, pictures
and official photographs from archives in Guyana, and images from a
range of photographic collections in the UK and the Netherlands
17. This example also highlights the freedom the artist
possesses as he strives to externalize his ideas. As one compares
these exhibitions with some exhibitions shown in galleries in
Nigeria, there is a marked dissimilitude in the theme, modes of
representation and techniques. For example compare an exhibition
where artists draw together elements of cinema, sculpturing and
video to provide a supportive environment in which artists and
viewers can engage in an interactive forum inside a gallery to that
which employs elements of only oil and canvas to provide only a
mercantile space for spectators. Or can one compare Keith Piper’s18
work which fuses a number of elements-imagery, sound, animation and
text-to explore recurrent themes of history, black masculinity and
surveillance to George Nwadiogbu’s19 oil on canvas
painting “Angelus’. The last suggestion at breaking the chains is
Artist-in-Residence programme. Through Artist-in-Residencies
programme, galleries can advance in their views and encourage
artists in the process of sensitizing the people on the dynamics of
installation and other multimedia art. Through this process Nigeria
can be advance a step further in her effort at fostering dynamism a
part of a people’s cultural and artistic life.
Notes
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Catherine King, (ed ) Views of difference: different views of
Art , New Haven and London Yale University Press, 1999, p.
16.
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Ibid.
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Ibid.
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Installation is a temporary grouping of designs to make a more
general artistic statement than would be possible using one
piece: often the viewer can walk inside and around an
installation (for more details see King. Op. cit. p.7).
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Appiah also included consumers (the viewing public) in his claim
emphasizing that there is no antecedent practice whose claim to
exclusivity of vision is rejected through the artworks (see
Appliah, K.A (1991) in is the post in postmodernism
the same as the post in post colonial? Critical Inquiry,
vol. 17, no. 2 pp. 336-57.
-
This was used by Robert Storr to articulate Greenberg’s
modernism which include unflinching loyalty to the colour field
academy, an Alexandrian condescension toward and ignorance of
the abstract art of the present. For Nigeria, one may substitute
‘installation’ for ‘abstract’ to drive home the message. (for
more see Robert Storr “No joy in Mudville. Greenberg’s modernism
then and now in Modern Art and Popular culture readings
in high and low eds Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik, New
York: Harry N. Adams inc. 1990 p. 163).
-
Ozioma Onuzulike, Casualties, (exhibition catalogue)
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Ibid
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Ozioma Onuzulike, Earth to Art (exhibition catalogue
National Museum Enugu 2000).
-
Krydz Ikwuemesi, Africa Heritage 97, (exhibition
catalogue of the Pan-African Circle of Artists, Enugu 1997.
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Krydz Ikwuemesi “There are no installations here” in
Glendora, African quarterly on the Arts, reviews. Vol.2 No.
4 p.8
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Peter Ezeh, “All, Minus Censorship”, Ibid. P. 11.
-
This term was used by Dada artists to describe their works in
Zurich, Barcelona, and New York in 1916 and 1917. Then a number
of artists independently stated their disgust with the war and
life in general by making works viewed as non art and nonsense.
This contradicts Nigeria’s situation where postmodern artists
believe they are making art while the people insist they are
making nonart. See Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich inc. 1976 pp 827.
-
Ibid
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Olu Oguibe claims that criticism is vulnerable to the vagaries
of its social environment and that it cannot transcend the
barriers of its social milieu. A case study is drawn with
Nigeria where I likened it to art appreciation. See Olu Oguibe
“Thoughts towards a New Century” in Olabisi Silva (ed) Art
Criticism and Africa, The International Association
of Art Critics (AICA) Publication, London p. 98.
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Institute of international visual arts mail; jigar: Alia Syed,
july 1, 2002.
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Institute of International Visual Arts mail, Virtual Exiles:
Roshini Kempadoo, Oct 1999-Feb. 2000.
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Keith Piper is a British artist whose background was set in
industrial city where technology has provided unlimited
opportunities for artist-gallery co-existence.
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George Nwadigbu’s background in Nigeria just like most other
Lagos based artists is without doubt tied to dogmatic worldview
of the art of stereotypes which needs a heavy exposure and
confidence to break.
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