Monday 27 May 2013

Achebe discloses how Bisi Onabanjo encouraged him to publish 'Things Fall Apart'


Renowned writer, Chinua Achebe, may have departed as his remains was buried on Thursday, May 23, 2013 in his Ogidi home town, Anambra State, Southeast, Nigeria. But the writer, aside leaving a rich legacy in his books, also dropped an insight into his life as captured  in an online interview.  Excerpts;

What inspired you to write the book ‘Things Fall Apart’?
   The story wanted to be told at all cost and why it chose me to tell the story, I don’t know. What colonisation did to us was to remove power from the elders and pass it over to children. This is what European education meant.
   I don’t know what other place had this experience of having children (because they went to school), giving them power over the elders to determine what was going to be what.

How has the story surprised you since its publication 50 years ago?
   Students from a girls’ school in Korea, in a whole class of 30 plus, wrote a letter each to me and the teacher sent it. I learnt that my story was also the story of Korea, at least as these children saw it.
    Some of them were very angry that I killed Okonkwo. They thought Okonkwo should have been spared to succeed; they didn’t want him to fall.
   I have never been to Korea. I didn’t know their history. It was these children that told me that they were colonised by the Japanese. And so that similar, but different, incident of colonisation was the thing that held us together.
   I have discovered that the whole life of the world is full of that kind of similarity that people can use if they want to make themselves brothers and sisters of other people.

How many translations of the book since publication?
   In spite of the great success of the novel, which you referred to, you would think that the relation between the writer of that story and the publishers would be very close.
     I expect that, in the end, there will be many translations.  The one I promise to do will be my own version, which I expect would justify itself when it comes out, because I had sort of taken the story from its roots and created a dialect of English, which was my own invention. This I can now see because I kept worrying about what would suit what. I kept worrying about how you translate a proverb so that its dignity would be maintained. I had worried about all those things. And now I know why.
    It is because I wanted English and Igbo to hold a conversation.  And see how you can tell a story that happened in Igbo in this dialect of English. Now, I want to go back and do it the other way.

 Did you consider any other titles other than ‘Things Fall Apart’?

Oh, I may have. But once I encountered Yeats’ poem: Things Fall Apart The Center Cannot Hold/Mere Anarchy Is Loosed Upon The World. Once I encountered that I knew I had to take that title, Things Fall Apart; it presented itself.

How much editing did your manuscript receive from you?
    I didn’t need an editor. In fact, this is the point I remembered my professor of English at Ibadan, who said that my short story was fine. It was the best in the competition that was arranged in the English department; no story won the prize.
     My story was mentioned in dispatches, if you like. That was good, but not good enough to win a prize. It lacked form.
    I was overjoyed, because you know Ibadan was no joke, then, especially the English department. To be mentioned at all was a great celebration. So, I said great, I wonder if you can tell me something about form, for the features. She said yes of course, except she was going to play tennis that day.
    So, we went on over a whole term, waiting for her to be ready to meet with me. And, one day, she called me or saw me and said, you know I looked at that your story again and actually there was nothing wrong with it.
    So, I didn’t learn anything about form from my teachers. In a way, that was as it should be, because there was nobody who could have told me how to write Things Fall Apart. It was so peculiar to me. 
 
Younger Chinua Achebe
If you were to be a character in Things Fall Apart, which will you be?
   Perhaps, the most moderate, because moderation is important here, Okonkwo is a man of excess. I respect him as a hero, but a flawed hero. But, very interesting, that is why he is famous.
     But his friend, Obierika, is more moderate, the kind of person who would keep a house in order. And so, if I had to be one person, if it not Ezimma, it would have to be Obierika.

What do you think of the Africans in the Diaspora?
    Until we understand that we are one person, that whenever you talk about the diaspora that wherever you find this diaspora whether in America, in Brazil, in Africa itself, wherever, it is the same story that they have.
     And it is the story of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Now, whenever you see an African diaspora person, you know this is a victim, like myself, of that event.
     So, we have a long way to go in the diaspora, in getting our story straight, because if the story is not straight, we would not be straight.

What does Nigeria mean to you?
    Nigeria is home. First of all, that is what it means to me. It’s home. It is a very frustrating home, a very annoying home. But it is my home. And if I had my way, that is where this interview would be happening.
     But since it’s not gone that way. I don’t believe in weeping over something. I think it’s more effective, more useful to find what you can do rather than what you can’t do. So, Nigeria has such a wonderful possibility built into it, but something it never uses: talent. It would rather use a half-baked person than somebody who is highly qualified. But that is the country I have got.

What is the place of balance in Igbo understanding of the world?
    It is very, very important. It is central to our thinking. The Igbo convey it in many different ways. The one that springs to mind immediately is the statement that wherever one thing stands another thing will stand beside it; one thing and another thing. Nothing stands alone.
    If you see one thing that stands alone, the Igbo people say” ‘run away, because that is the worst possible danger that doesn’t have nothing near it, not even a necklace to keep it company.’
     That is the Igbo idea of evil – alone. It is from there that the idea of balance comes. One thing is good, but something else is also good. Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbours. The young man who never went to anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook. That is one thing they tell us. So, balance is at the centre of our idea of the good life, of the good world.

Comments on the character, ‘Nnuka’
   Well, if you like, you can place him with the women, in the society, this is how Okonkwo saw him. But he is a very decent and nice person. Not successful not in the sense of wealth and resources or ability to look after his family and live big, all these things didn’t work for him.
     One thing that worked for him was his flute. So, in the view of Igbo people, he was a failure. This is, in fact, where Okonkwo makes the biggest mistake and the Igbo culture is partly responsible because the Igbo culture looks a lot on strength and power and success. And Okonkwo heard this from his society (he heard it all the time), about this importance of strength and being manly.
    Now, the Igbo society does not talk so loudly about the other side. It talks gently. It’s there you got to make an effort to hear it. If you are wearing all these very heavy things you people wear in the ears nowadays, you probably wouldn’t hear. But in a gentle voice this society is also saying, “but also remember your children, but also remember the women, but also remember compassion.”
     Why does it say, ‘well if the gods have decided that this boy should die, we can’t stop them, but I won’t be there.’   
    So, cowardice is even a value of the Igbo people in saying to Okonkwo that it is not only in the machete and sword that there is value, there is value also in sitting down and contemplating.
  Many people think that what I'm doing is degrading the position of women; it’s very opposite. What I was doing was pointing out, how unjust the Igbo society is to women and how better to explore it than to make the hero of the story 'Okonkwo’; all his problems are problems to do with the feminine. There is nothing else wrong with Okonkwo except the failure to understand the gentleness, compassion that is associated with women is even more important than strength. Our people don't understand why I am showing this women who are not in charge, I'm showing them that because that is how it is in the society" I want to change" and that's what Okonkwo wasn't able to learn and I want others after him to learn it. That woman, compassion, music are as more valuable than war and violence

What do you think of today’s young writers?
They are good, there was a time when it seemed as if the thing was drying up but anybody who knows what art is would have known that it is waiting for something to happen, I don’t know what it is, but we seem to be back at work.

Why did you not take a national honour from Nigeria?
The reason I didn't receive it is because I didn't want to receive national honours from Nigeria as it was. Perhaps, maybe still is today. I was tired of hoping that someone would come up, who would understand the value of the position that we earn because of our education, leadership, whatever and to apply it to make our people happier and more prosperous.

How would you like to be remembered?
Just as a nice guy. (Laughs)

Has Okonkwo been living with you these 50 years?
He has. What I feel towards him is a sense of wonder and pity. Pity is probably not a good word, because Okonkwo is a very dignified and proud person and would not like anyone to pity him. But, I am sort of concerned that a major aspect of our human experience has to be suffering and failing to reach where you set out to go because of all kinds of things on the way and one day somebody came to me in a hospital and the question he asked was, why you; why would this happen to you?
    So, I said to him: ‘do you have an idea of somebody else to which it should have happened?  What I was saying is that the world is tragic by nature and that's why tragic stories appeal to me far more than happy and comic ones.

What kind of story does an Anglophone Cameroonian write, especially when they have to the left, French Cameroon, and to the right, Nigeria?
   Oh, that's something they have to find out themselves, that feeling of being the little or almost forgotten member tucked away there. There is a huge story there. You see, the mistake many people make is to think that a successful story is successful because it is big or because it is somebody else's story that has worked.
    You will hear some people say, 'I was not taught my culture; so what do I do.' Well, the fact that you were not taught your culture is a big story. No, we mustn’t wait for a story that looks like somebody else’s story before we can recognise our possibility.
     You see the Cameroonians; I went to school with them because, at that time, every term a certain number of Cameroonians would come to Umuhiah. So I knew a few names like Noto, Nkwaita who became an ambassador, Endele, who was a Doctor. He in fact led the exit from Nigeria.
    We, in Nigeria, could say, ‘that serves you right; next time be careful about big neighbors and big friends.’
    Seriously, what happened was not quite fair. What happened when British Cameroon joined French Cameroon was that the power moved to the North and, somehow, we had a very crafty ruler in the North. 
    The Sadauna of Sokoto was then the Premier of Nigeria; he managed to take the Northern part into Nigeria while the South went into Cameroon. And your business in my view is to find the story about your condition.

Did you make any personal deliberate effort to keep Okigbo alive?
   When I came back (this is during the Biafra war), I just traveled from Enugu to my home to announce to my family that I heard in the radio that Okigbo had been killed. 
  My son of two or three years said, “daddy, don’t let him die.” So, the reason was that Okigbo had made friends with him.
     Okigbo had friends everywhere — children, old people — and I remember whenever he came to visit us, this little boy would hold his hand and try to break it and Okigbo would pretend to be crying and they would be struggling.
    Okigbo would say, ‘children are so wicked.’ and that's the boy, who says he shouldn't be let to die. So, I then decided to publish something called, Don't Let Him Die, An analogy of poetry by friends of Okigbo or anyone who wanted to contribute something. There was no plan, which will work unless the subject in this case OKIGBO, had something of interest to say.
  His life was so romantic in a way. His life and death was so extraordinary. It just seemed so unlike anybody else you knew. So, that is the material for the kind of history we have of him, but also the profound nature of his poetry. So it’s both his life and words.
 Has your accident affected your productivity?
     I told you the story of a fellow, who said why should it have happened to me; and my answer is: why not? That's really what I believe.
      Look at my fiction. Okonkwo is strong-headed, wouldn't listen to advice and critics have accused Chinua Achebe in his book "Things Fall Apart" of downplaying the role of the African woman in today’s society. Achebe is quick to answer that it is quite the contrary as displayed in Monye's mother, Okonkwo's wife, and also his love for his daughter, Ezimma.
    The role of the African woman, mothers, and wives is still as relevant as it was back then.   What happens? He comes to a sticky end.
    Then, I said: ‘Let me try a different kind of African, an intellectual kind of person. So, I go to Ezeulu in the Arrow of God. He is a priest, a philosopher and what happens to him? He comes to a sticky end. So, there's no way out.
    In Igbo, we say that  ‘what came to nte (a small insect) is bigger than nte. He went and set a trap and something bigger than him was caught in that trap. So there is no sure answer to the problem posed to us from the moment the initiative was taken from us and we lost our freedom and independence.

Which was the most remarkable day for you in the course of writing "Things Fall Apart"?
    I think it was the day I finished. You see, the thing with writing my kind of writing is that you never really finish. When I thought I had finished, Bisi Olabanjo, with whom I was sharing accommodation in London (we both went to the BBC), who knew I had this manuscript, said to me, "why don't you show it to this man."  The man, Gilbert Phelps, was a BBC producer, who was a novelist.
    After a while, I took it to him and told him I was writing a book and he looked as white as they would if you bring them a manuscript; he wasn't hostile but he wasn't exactly embracive.
    But he accepted it very politely; and then Bisi and I went for a British Council for three or four days. One day, I came back from outing and there was a message for me saying one Gilbert Phelps had called and left his number. So, I said: well, if he doesn’t like the book, would he make a phone call, wouldn't he wait for me to return? Maybe he likes it, so I would call him.
   That was the first response I had and he liked this book; he recommended publishers to see it.
      Meanwhile, his publishers saw it and they were ready to start.  I said no; the book is not ready; I had made a mistake in thinking that the book could have three generations in one book and yet its not a big book.  It is too thin to carry this weight.
     That version of Things Fall Apart had Okonkwo 's children’s generation and a third generation till, bringing it to today, and now I realised just suddenly that there are three books here. The first part is Okonkwo; so, that is what I'm going to do and after that I will see what happens about the elders.
      I rewrote the book with this emphasis on Okonkwo's generation, not his son. Eventually, I wrote “No Longer At Ease, which you know — the story of Okonkwo's son. 
   But what about my father’s generation? That one is still waiting to be done. So you see, there is no quick answer to your question. 
 - Prof Joyce Ashuntantang, Okey Ndibe, Omoyele Sowore and Oyiza Adaba
  www.youtube/africarelatedtv.

Sunday 26 May 2013

In Sweden, Balogun goes 'Matter Redirected'


Two weeks ago, Adeola Balogun, a sculptor artist, and a Senior lecturer in Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, left the shores of this country for two months residency programme in Sweden. This is being funded by Quintessence gallery in Lagos, Astley Gallery, Uttersberg, Sweden and the Nigerian Embassy in Stockholm Sweden. This exposure has become necessary to open up this prolific artist to research and new techniques in his field of study.
 
Meta artist, Adeola Balogun, preparing for Matter Redirected, in Stockholm, Sweden. 

Adeola  started exhibiting works since 1991 and has more than 22 years experience which he brings to bear in this project that also offers him the opportunity to lecture in near by Universities and colleges with the support of Gunnar Ternstedt, an engineer who has offered his farm house and tools  for the first one month.
 
Adeola will also be showing an exhibition of his works first in Trollhattan, on 10th of June and then at Astley Gallery in Uttersberg at the end of his programme.

The first exhibition he titled Matter Redirected will showcase 20 sculptural pieces and drawings using horse shoes and farm implements. Horse shoe is a fabricate product used to protect a horse hoof from tear and they are made available in a variety of styles and materials. It is interesting to know that horseshoe is kept as a talisman in some parts of the world because it is said to bring good luck depending on how you hang it. If the ends are facing upwards then you got it right. It will collect and keep all the luck you desire. The farm implements includes the planter, seed drill, fertilizer spread, spike, cultivator and cultipacker, weight sorter and other impliments. Adeola is redirecting all these matters that are no long in use into witty, compositions and visible art pieces.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
Responding to what inspires him, Adeola said, before an artist would attempt to represent perceived objects or scenes either on a flat surface or on a three dimensional format, he or she must first be moved by it. This assertion was aptly stated by Harold Speed thus: “It is not enough in artistic drawing to portray accurately and in cold blood the appearance of objects. To express form one must first be moved by it.”  He feels really welcomed in Sweden and is greatly moved by what he has seen.

Adeola intends to use his works  as a moving testament of the creative skill of the Nigerian artist and to promote our culture and capabilities. His works will no doubt generates a lot of discourses in faraway Sweden.

Adeola will also be participating in workshops organized by Anders Nyhlen the curator of Astley Gallery in Uttersberg.  Anders gave Kunle Adeyemi, a renowned artist known for his paintograph and paintocast technique, a similar experience during his residency three years ago.

Adeola had the opportunity of meeting with the Nigerian Ambassador to the Scandinavian countries in Stockholm. Ambassador Benedict Onochie Amobi is an amiable fellow who has shown remarkable  love and support for Nigerian Art. He will be Adeola’s special guest at the opening of his exhibitions.

The art community wishes Adeola a fulfilling time as we all realize that his work is grounded in real values and experience.
 Moses Ohiomokhare 

Saturday 25 May 2013

'Venice Biennale 2015'… Seeking a curator for Nigeria Pavillon


 By Tajudeen Sowole
 Preparation for Nigeria’s debut participation at Venice Biennale in 2015 is in top gear.  However, choosing a curator that will coordinate the artistic contents and interpret the theme of the country’s Pavilion remains a challenge.
  
Nigeria, no doubt, is blessed with artists and curators in contemporary practice, home and in the Diaspora, but selection of participants and successful packaging of the diverse contents at the global and competitive Venice Biennale, Italy, will require in-depth preparation for a proper articulation within the framework of a chosen theme.

 Over a month ago, preparations for Nigeria to make its first appearance at the 56th edition of Venice Biennale began in Lagos, courtesy of a private initiative and supports of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) as well as assistance from the British Council, Lagos.

 For quite a number of reasons, Nigeria cannot afford not to impress at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015: currently, a Nigerian, Bisi Silva, is among the five-member jury for the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale, which opens in the next few weeks; Nigerians in the Diaspora are holding top positions in big contemporary spaces such as museums and galleries; Nigerian artists, in recent times, have made remarkable marks in art exhibitions and art auctions abroad. Examples of such exhibitions included dOCUMENTA 11 held at Kassel, Germany, which had Okwui Enwezor as artistic director, from 1998-2002; Nigerian artists were impressive during an European tour of 88 artists from 25 African countries themed Africa Remix and described as the largest gathering of African artists abroad; and recently, Africa’s participation, via Marker at the just held Art Dubai Fair, which had over 20 artists from West Africa was led by Silva. With these shows, Nigeria had made strong statement on the contemporary global art space.
Okwui Enwezor. PHOTO BY: Alix Laveau

  Usually, there are three main prizes at stake at the Venice gatherings: Golden Lion for Best National Participation; Golden Lion for best artist in the International Exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace); Silver Lion for a promising young artist in the international exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace).   
At the 54th outing in 2011, Germany won the Golden Lion for best National Participation with its presentation of the late artist, Christoph Schlingensief’s work. Aside of the main awards, there are Honorable Mention and Golden Lion for Life Time Achievement.

It is not impossible for Nigeria to make a mark, pat least, picking up an award despite participating for the first time, as efforts are being made to make 2015 a reality. And as crucial as the role of a curator is, in winning a prize, it is expected that by now, the organisers of the Nigeria Pavilion should have appointed one to start working, particularly given the complexity that may arise in selecting artists that truly represent the country’s creative diversity.

More importantly, the artists would need enough ventilation to factor the 2015 into their schedules, particularly in creating works, purposely for the exhibition. Given these factors, indeed, getting a curator to lead a team of creative professionals should be now for an elaborate preparation that the outing deserves.

However, picking a curator for Nigeria Pavilion of Venice 2015 appears to have begun to create headache for the Ego Boyo-led initiative.  A source disclosed that two Nigerians who practice in the Diaspora have been “informally named”. One of them, the source said, “is very experienced” and is “most likely to be named the curator”.

While the international experience of Nigerians practicing abroad is crucial to the success of a Nigeria Pavilion, it appears that most of the foreign-based curators who have made marks abroad have little or no home experience within the Nigerian art space of the last ten to 15 years. In fact, some of them never handled any art project in Nigeria.
Bisi Silva, a member of Jury, Venice Biennale 2013. PHOTO BY: Stephan Röhl.
Assuming the curator has to come from the Diaspora, does this mean creative managers of Nigerian art that are home-based lack required international exposure? “There are experienced curators in Nigeria”, Professor Frank Ugiomoh, art historian at University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State argued. He disagrees with the idea of outsourcing curator for the Nigeria Pavilion.
“Are the exhibitions all over Nigeria organised by ghosts?” Ugiomoh asked, while expressing doubt if a curator from abroad could read the “nation's mood and package it from Diaspora.” The art scholar cautioned that not tapping from the abundant professionals at home is like “going to Venice naked.”
  
Given a “success” story ascribed to the 2009 edition of African Regional Summit on Visual Arts and Exhibition (ARESUVA), an international gathering, though held in Nigeria, it could be argued that artists at home do not lack curatorial experience; the exhibition section of ARESUVA 2009 was curated, jointly by Tonie Okpe, Simon Ikpakronyi and Uwa Usen.

As much it is important to promote homegrown expertise, the fact that Nigeria has not had an experience of a biennale at a global level makes input from abroad crucial. “We have not been to Venice or big biennale before, apart from Dak’Art in Dakar, Senegal. I think, we need to tap from our resource in the Diaspora”, Dr Kunle Adeyemi, artist and teacher, Yaba College of Technology said. Adeyemi recommended a merging of the local and foreign experience to form a good team. According to him, “someone like Bisi Silva is a good example of a curator who has the advantage of both sides”. He however canvassed staging several workshops as part of the preparation, “so that in the process, we can come up with a team.”

And if the mix of home and foreign experience is a major criterion for selecting a curator who leads a team of creative or technical professionals for the Nigeria Pavilion at Venice Biennale, in 2015, Silva appears like a good choice.
Aside being the representative of the black race in the five-member jury of the 55th Venice Biennale, Silva has other impressive international credentials when it comes to contemporary art. She was co- curator of the 7th Dak’Art Biennale and of the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece as well as curated Marker, a section of Art Dubai Fair, 2013. And having run Centre for Contemporary Art, (CCA), in Lagos since 2007 till now, working with Nigerian and foreign artists here and outside the country under the centre’s solo and collaborative projects with international organisations, Silva’s familiarity with the home space would count for a Nigeria Pavilion in 2015.
  From the Diaspora, the experience of Enwezor could also be of importance, having curated quite a number of international exhibitions and was artistic director of dOCUMENTA 11 as well as 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997 and serves on several art advisory boards and jury. Arguably one of the leading names from Africa on the international art space, Enwezor, the director at Haus der Kurst, Munich, Germany is not active on the Nigerian art environment.

Another likely choice of a curator is Chika Okeke-Agulu. Currently based in the U.S., Okeke-Agulu organised a Nigeria section at the First Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 and has published several books, including Contemporary African Art Since 1980.
 
                                                                                       Chika Okeke-Agulu

The Venice Biennale is regarded as the largest gathering of artists on earth and is 118 years old.

Last week, Silva and five curators selected from Europe, U.S. and South America were announced as jury of the 2013 edition. Other members of the jury include Ali Subotnick, a curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, U.S.; Jessica Morgan, a curator, International Art, at Tate in London, U.K; Francesco Manacorda, Artistic Director of Tate Liverpool; and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, the chief curator of the 9a. Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Chong Cuy is the president of the jury.
  According to the Board of Directors of Venice Biennale, chaired by Paolo Baratta, the Jury will attribute the following prizes: Golden Lion for best National Participation; Golden Lion for best artist in the International Exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace); Silver Lion for a promising young artist in the International Exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace). 
  

Paintforation of Ehikhamenor’s Amusing the Muse


By Tajudeen Sowole
Inspired by ancient aesthetics, designer, Victor Ehikhamenor, steps into a new period of his art as he creates contemporary images, which thematically, focuses faces within the analogy of identity.

Currently showing at Temple Muse, Victoria Island, Lagos, Ehikhamenor’s new body of work titled Amusing the Muse also confirms that artists who are doing new things are frantically searching for a fresh outlets of presenting their art, particularly for themes or aesthetics that fall into the category of what is known as site-specific in contemporary art lexicon. For Ehikhamenor, the quiet design and cutting edge store, Temple Muse “fits perfectly into my ideal space.”

Amusing the Muse derives its strength from the artist’s new technique, Paintforation. Though a coinage from painting, it appears quite a curious one, particularly from Ehikhamenor who is hardly a painter, in the real context of creating art, the relief feel of the works suggests how the artist’s skill keeps blurring the line between art and design. Adapting the process of pointillism in a perforating method on a paper appears very innovative and also challenging, as the technique requires “painstaking efforts to protect the fragile surface.” 

One of Victor Ehikhamenor’s works, Adam and Eve, Waiting For A Flight Out of Eden

However, the aesthetics of pieces such as White Mask and I don’t Know Where To, But Let’s Go seems to assert that, indeed, the artist’s Painterforation is worth the experiment. Even in its monochromatic surface, Ehikhamenor’s new technique in design, which generates a sea of points or perforations, brings back pre-modernity rendition into contemporary space.

Of the about 18 or 19 works, the new techniques dominate the show, leaving few spaces to his familiar drawings. What is new about the drawing is that some of them are in large sizes as well as in deeper conceptual contents. This much a monochromatic piece titled, Adam and Eve, Waiting For A Flight Out of Eden, which spreads across nearly two ends of the walls, offers. 

Ehikhamenor’s Biblical depiction takes a viewer’s much of attention into the designs, which attempts to create some velvet-surface effect, deep into the artist’s seas of pen and ink movements.

Largely of conservative colours, Ehikhamenor’s new body of work have a partner in the Temple Muse’s space, softening the radiation of a thickened atmosphere of Victoria Island’s chaotic central business district. He recalled that his search for space that share something in common with his art came to fruition after his first visit to Temple Muse. “The moment I set my eyes on this space, I have not slept; I kept working and getting new idea,” Ehikhamenor enthused.

On faces as a central theme, he recalled how the mammoth crowd during the Occupy Nigeria protests inspired his thoughts on the importance of people’s faces in identity. “People live; do every thing, and are recongnised even after death by their face.”
And what a space to relish for the artist’s Paintforation; choice designs such as Tiffany Amber, Givenchy as well as some indigenous labels breath elegance into the architectural innovation of the interior.

“With this show, we hope to bring a different aesthetic, to complement the varieties of designs here,” the managing director of Temple Muse, Avinash Wadhwani, stated. Promoting indigenous creativity as evidenced in the fashion collections such as Tiffany Amber and other local designers’ in the space, he said, “is the goal of Temple Muse”.

The curator of Amusing the Muse, Sandra Mbanefo Obiago, described the artist’s calligraphic style of monochrome as “symbolic”.

Obiago noted that the images emanate from his background as a boy growing up in the rural setting of Edo State. “His style is influenced by the drawings he grew up with on the walls of sacred spaces in Udomi-Uwessan, Edo State, Nigeria.”

In 2011, at Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos Ehikhamenor’s solo show, Entrances and Exits: In Search of Not Forgetting added another form of native content to the Nigerian art vocabulary. The works tap from the relics of ancestral polygamous family, rediscovered as part of what he claimed “shaped his art over the decades”.

Last year, he extended his thoughts on identity to the foreign art space when he showed at a yearly art and culture festival in Greece, where he featured photos of rural people and western clothing.

After his studies and working experience in the US, Ehikhamenor returned to Nigeria and shared his design skills as art director of the rested 234Next newspapers. His experience as an independent book cover designs of many years was an asset he brought into the creative section of the newspaper.

Some of his solo exhibitions abroad are Beyond The Surface, at Utopia Gallery, Washington, DC and Spirits In Dialogue, the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute Gallery, Washington, DC  both held in  2000.  

He graduated from Bendel State University, Ekpoma (now Ambrose Alli University) with a BA degree in English and Literary Studies. He also holds an Msc in Technology Management and Masters of Fine Art (MFA) from University of Maryland, College Park in the USA.
  

Thursday 23 May 2013

Enwonwu's Mystery fetches £300,000.at Bonhams


Last night at Bonhams Africa Now auction, a set of 'lost and found' seven wooden pieces by late renowned Nigerian artist, Ben Enwonwu (1917-1994) sold for £361,250.


The works, provenance says,suddenly disappeared from the owners, Daily Mirror of U.K., "in 1960s, but just recovered last year from an old garage at Bethnal Green Academy, East London during a renovation work". The man credited with the recovery, builder Brian McDowwell, 65, was said to have shown the works to the school's authority who allowed him to have the works.

According to Bonhams, the set of works described as Seven wooden sculptures is a collection commissioned by the Daily Mirror in 1961. 
Seven wooden sculptures of Ben Enwonwu sold at Bonhams;' Africa Now auction

The sculptures, it was reported, “had been estimated to sell for £80,000 to £120,000 but tripled the high estimate to make £361,250”.

Enwonwu’s previous record was £125, 000 for a bronze piece, Anyanwu, sold at Arthouse Contemporary Limited’s auction in Lagos two years ago.

Giles Peppiatt, Head of African Art at Bonhams, stated: "African Contemporary Art took another step forward today with world record prices achieved. The national spotlight being cast on African art by Bonhams, the Tate and others has focused increasing interest on African artists and I am delighted to see them getting the recognition they deserve. As the only auction house offering a stand-alone sale of Contemporary African Art for the past five years, today's result pleases me very much."

Other works of Enwonwu, which made  impressive sales included The Durbar of Eid ul-Fitr, Kano, Nigeria, for £193,250, also beating the record held by Anyanwu. And for another Anyanwu, similar to the piece sold in Lagos, it was a good outing from an estimated £50,000-80,000 to a sale for £133,350. The work, according to Bonhams, is a small-scale version of the one at façade of the National Museum in Onikan, Lagos.

Also, Bonhams disclosed that new world records were set for over twenty other artists, including Erhabor Emokpae, Uche Okeke, Uzo Egonu and Tshibumba Kanda Matulu.