3rd International Conference on Modern Art in Nigeria

1. Aspects of Intellectualism in Nigerian Art
   This panel will examine the relationship between art and other spheres of learning and aim to problematise the notion of art as mere “doing thing.” In fore-grounding the intrinsic intellectual capacity of art, the presentations will generate discussions on the apparent wide-spread notion of art in this part of the world as an extra-academic, extra-sociological enterprise. Beyond practice, intellectualism in the dissemination and administration of art and will also be critically appraised.
   
   Co- Chairs:
   Dr. Kunle Filani, Provost, Federal College of Education (Technical), Osiele, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria
   
   Dr. Ernest Okoli Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Tel: 08037518993, E-mail: eokoli2001@yahoo.co.uk

2. Art Criticism as a Purveyor of Intellectualism: The Nigerian Experience
   Can art criticism be divorced from the making and dissemination of art? Or is it a continuation/extension of the production of the work of art by verbal if theoretical means? In Nigeria, criticism is not very popular in the art scene as an ancillary engagement that compliments studio practice. Not only that. Artists are not very well disposed to criticism and in some cases criticism degenerates to “destructivism”, fault-finding and praise-singing.
   
   The concern here, therefore, will be to trace the origin of art criticism in Nigeria and interrogate its implications for a promising art tradition in an (under)-developing ecology like Nigeria as well as pinpoint some of the factors (artists, galleries, training, facilities, economy, social reality) that have encouraged or impeded the development of this aspect of art in Nigeria.
   
   Co-Chiars:
   Prof Ola Oloidi, Dept. of Fine and Applied Arts, Dept. of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
   
   C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, Dept. of Fine and Applied Arts, Dept. of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka ceberus@heavenstgate-ng.com

3. Nigerian Art in Diaspora
   This panel will explore the historiography of Nigerian art in Diaspora, and consider how (or whether) that legacy impacts art development and critical discourse in Nigeria. Papers might address the intellectual and artistic impact in Nigeria of major exhibitions abroad, such as Africa Explores, Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group, In/Sight: African Photography from 1940-Present, the Magnin/Pigozzi collection and exhibitions, the now–defunct South African Biennales, the Dakar Biennales, and, of course, The Short Century. Presenters might also consider the international response to major Nigerian exhibitions and publications. Additionally, panelists may wish to explore increasingly common debates circulating around the problem of representation in exhibitions abroad. Specifically, critics charge, exhibitions of Nigerian art outside of Nigeria tend to include the same small group of artists, most of whom reside abroad, while work produced by artist who live in Nigeria is marginalized in the international arena. Such papers might also address the perceived slippage between media, themes, and ideas explored by artists who live and work in Nigeria, versus those addressed by Nigerian artists living abroad. Because a number of modern and contemporary Nigerian artists live and work between two or more countries, and exhibit in venues around the world, we also invite papers that explore the implications of this movement. How does this movement affect the reception of the work in and outside of Nigeria? Are Diasporic artists and their work still seen as somehow “inauthentic” because they do not live on the continent, or has the recent international surge in scholarly attention to these artists and their work resulted in the marginalization of artists who are based in Nigeria? How are works by Nigerian artists in Diaspora perceived in Nigeria, and how does that perception differ from international reception?
   
   Chair:
   Dr. Sarah Adams, Assistant Professor, University of Iowa, 2006-2007 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, The Department of History of Art, 110 Tappan Hall
   519 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1357, Fax: 734-647-4121
   Email: sarah-adams@uiowa.edu

4. A Critical Look at Art Training and Art Education in Nigeria
   Some recent meetings and conferences in Nigeria have addressed the art curriculum in Nigeria and the prognosis has generally forecast a bleak future for art in Nigeria. Participants in this panel will be expected to critically examine the issues of art training, outdated/inadequate curriculum, and the dogged downgrading of art by the Nigerian government and education policymakers in the school system, especially at the lower level. The panel will also encompass the work condition of visual arts faculty in Nigerian institutions of learning and their general handicap in a system that fails to recognize the peculiar nature of each academic discipline, including art.
   
   Co-chairs:
   Abel Mac Diakparomre, Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria
   Ms. Helen Uhunmwagho, Department of Painting and General Arts, Auchi Polytechnic, Auchi, Edo State Tel: 08034705012

5. Invention and Continuity in Recent Traditional/Transitional Nigerian Art
   What among the Traditional arts has survived, and what has perhaps thrived and expanded in the early 21st century? What has been lost, stolen, or ceased being of interest to village peoples, and why? Have the fakers been busy meeting the needs of a voracious collecting community in Europe and the U.S., and how successful have they been in fooling most of the people most of the time? How have the urban masking festivals altered these time-honored art forms, and how does art serve New Yam festivals these days? What are other problems facing carvers, casters, and people interested in the “earlier” arts, especially with the onslaught of Westernization and fundamentalism in Islam and Christianity in Nigeria?
   
   Chair:
   Prof Herbert Cole
   3974 Crescent, dr Santa Barbara, CA 93110,
   USA. Email:scole@arthistory.ucsb.edu

6. Revisiting the Issue of Professionalism in Nigerian Art
   The problem of professionalisation in the Nigerian art scene has been a perennial one. Although Nigerian art stands out in the continent of Africa as one of the most vibrant, given the number of training institutions, art galleries, and artists in the field (both at home and in the Diaspora), art remains a minority enterprise and artists seem to be confined perpetually to the fringe because of the society’s perception of the profession as truancy from life. In the harsh realities of the Nigerian environment, only very few artists are able to rise above crass mercantilism to attain a level of professionalism, if by professionalism we mean the engagement in a noble vocation that has the capacity to secure for the individual a humanly dignifying standard of living, while enabling him to contribute to social development. This panel engages the above issues as they concern art/artists, art history/art historians, and museums and galleries in Nigeria in relation to their ability/inability to command all the attention, respect, and reward they deserve vis à vis other branches of scholarship and spheres of existence.
   
   Co-chairs:
   Dr. Bruce Onobrakpeya, Founder, Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation, Lagos
   Tel: 08060795466
   Jerry Buhari, Department of Fine Arts, A.B.U, Zaria
   Tel: 08034407878, Email: jerrybuhari@yahoo.com

7. a. Vanguard of Intellectualism in Nigerian Art

The aim of this panel is to trace the origins and dynamics of intellectualism in the development of art in Nigeria. Besides defining the meaning and ramifications of intellectualism in art, some of the presentations are to aim at historical-critical appraisals of the phenomenon through analytical portraits of selected major art practitioners or critiques of their portfolios as means of fore-grounding their efforts at advancing the cause of art in this part of the world.

7. b. Obiora Udechukwu as Artist, Painter, Teacher, Writer, Theorist, and Social Critic
   This Panel derives from the above and welcomes papers which address the works of Obiora Udechukwu as a painter, poet, writer, teacher, theorist and social critic

   Co-Chairs (for Panels 7a&b):
   Mr. Simon Ikpakronyi, National Gallery of Art, Abuja. Tel: 08060301661
   Email: simonoikpakronyi@yahoo.com
   Mr. Mike Omoighe, Department of Fine Art, YABATECH, Yaba, Lagos
   Tel: 08037194129, Email: mikeck27@hotmail.com

8. Gender Issues in Modern Nigerian Art
   The world over the issue of gender imbalance is the subject of serious debate and feminist activism. The Nigerian art scene is no exception to such imbalance. The fact that there are many girls training as artists in institutions and yet only a handful of female artists are to be seen in the arena remains a collage that most scholars cannot put together. But the gender issues in Africa, as elsewhere, are often traced to historical and cultural residuums which continue to overlap with the forces of change and new social realities. It is to such historical and cultural factors that one may turn if one seeks to know why most women fizzle out as soon as they leave art school. Yet as one Nigerian female artist has queried, “Are there really male and female artists? Or are there just artists?” After all, according to her, no artist trains as a “female artist” in the University. This argument, perhaps, takes the matter off the historical-cultural track and cast it on the quicksand of Nigeria’s social milieu where a combination of factors have turned art into an unusually masculine enterprise.

Co-chairs:
Prof Stella Idiong, Department of Fine and Industrial Arts, University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
Mrs Grace Edozie-Nwajei, Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria

9. The Press and the Development/Professionalisation of Art in Nigeria
   The earliest form of the modern Western-style mass media in Nigeria was introduced in the middle of the 19th century in the shape of a bilingual, English-Yoruba, newspaper by Anglican missionaries who wanted to use it to facilitate acculturation in favour of Britain and the imported religion. Subsequent early developments in that communication domain focused on issues outside the sphere of art; for example, on anti-slavery campaigns and afterwards on pro-Independence nationalism. The case of the electronic media was even more deprivative as far as the course of art went. For example when the BBC introduced Empire broadcasting it had the undisguised mission of furthering the British imperial interests. Marginalization of art in Nigeria's media coverage continued after Independence. Some improvement has been noticed in the last two decades but much still needs to be done. This panel will examine this issue diachronically and synchronically to determine strengths that need to be enhanced and weaknesses that need to be discouraged. It is not possible for a human society to make a sustainable progress in any other field, including science, if, as a rule, appreciation of art is weak. Historically it can be demonstrated that Africa's technological progress was attained at the same time as that of its highest accomplishments in the domain of arts. If industrialized societies of today have made great strides in the areas of high technology it can also be shown that their appreciation of art is not low either. The average newspaper in Europe and America devotes not less than thirty percent of its space to the coverage of fine and applied arts or related subjects. If a people's mind is not refined and sensitized by production and patronage of the arts, nothing else that matters may be possible in such a society.

Chair:
Dr. Peter Ezeh (Former Press Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge; former Regional Editor [East], Punch Newspapers, Nigeria)
Department of Socilogy/Anthropology, university of Nigeria, Nsukka

10. Common Trends, Issues and Currencies in the Making of Nations: Comparative Discourses on Interdependecies between Nigerian Art and Others
    Recent perceptions on art as idea, especially with the linguistic and cultural turn, point to art’s value as defining the spirit of a nation. The metaphors which originate from the artist are regarded as strings of happenings strewn together defining a nation’s symbolic structures. By the above they constantly reconstitute themselves into unique identities in space and time within a nation’s evolving social consciousness. Thus it is to art and not what nature has endowed a nation with that gives nations their characters as idealistic philosophy indicate. Art then as metaphor is a symbolic frame of reference where a polity strives for internal cohesion as well as engage in intercultural dialogues and negotiation of identities. In this regard it is important to define in the contemporary understanding of art the values inherent in adaptation and adoption of means and medium, response to contexts that concern survival strategies, values that reside in international art co-operations and identity politics, with Nigeria as a member of community of nations and feed-back response

Co-Chairs:
Prof. Uche Okeke, Director, Asele Institute, Nimo, Anambra State, Nigeria
Dr. Frank Ugiomoh, Department of Art and Design, University of Port Harcourt, Choba, Port Harcourt

Venue:

Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Date: November 21 - 23, 2006.

Participation

Artists, art administrators, art collectors, visual arts faculty, and committed research students are invited to submit abstracts on any of the above sub themes, before September 20, 2006. Abstracts should not be more than 200 words. Prospective participants whose abstracts are selected will be required to send a copy of their full-length paper to the organizers before November 10, 2006. All papers presented at the conference will be assessed for possible publication after the conference.

Registration

Registration fee for the conference is N5,000.00 payable on arrival. Participants will be required to submit 15 hard copies of their paper and one soft copy in a floppy disk as part of the modalities for all registration. Group lunch will be provided by the organizers for all registered participants during the conference.

Steering Committee