Ato Arinze, "Debacle; Aso Rock Mask; The IBB Years" 1994. Mathew B. Oyedele The cliche that art is the mirror of the society remains true in the work of Ato Arinze entitled, “Debacle; Aso Rock Mask; The IBB Years. Just like Picasso's commentary on the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists, Ato's "Debacle" is a social commentary on the struggle for democracy in his home country Nigeria. The work is a fibre glass piece whose composition is arranged to emphasize an entrapped man in a web at the upper part of the piece. A huge carrot with a snake at its tail - a metaphor for temptation and treachery - occupies the axis of the work and divide it into halves. The lower part of the piece has the image of a lion in between a buttock, a connotation of astrological sign and the preference for women while batons which connotes military brutality and oppress
Review of the arts.