CHRIS AFUBA IS A QUINTESSENTIAL SCULPTOR AND AN ART TEACHER.

 

Chris Afuba remodelling 'Otiigba'. Source: Facebook.

Chinezim Moghalu

Chris Afuba is a post-war Nigerian artist from Nimo in Anambra state, who was born on June 3, 1947, in Ogidi, Anambra state. His father moved from the Onitsha city with him to Nimo when he was very young. Afuba indicates: "as far back as I could remember, when I was five, my mother's kitchen was being built with local materials, and being as we were preparing meshed mud, which they used in those days in building walls, instinctively as a child I went to where she was doing it, pounding it with her legs and making it malleable, and I was attracted to the material because it was soft and malleable. I scooped a handful of lump and began to model. The first figure l modelled was a police man- just a bust; small in size. I was excited and I had to admire it. In no distant time, because red-earth mud is not too plastic, it cracked and broke. I saw it breaking off and, instinctively I got a stick, removed the head, inserted the stick in the head and pushed it down the neck and torso area, and I loved it. But one thing I did that excited me was that I turned the head on the neck, and the figure was looking sideways and was still standing, and I got excited. So I kept turning it from left to right as a child. That was my first sculpture experience and, I enjoyed it.

After that, my elder brother of blessed memory who was an artist, was drawing on our compound walls, figures and masquerades and things like that. Not long I joined him. I was also drawing on the wall. My mother was also an artist- a traditional artist. She was designing the compound walls with Uli designs and I was following what she was doing."

When Chris Afuba began primary education, one of his teachers got interest in his artistic and visual development. During craft session(s), whilst his classmates made brooms and prepared baskets, little Afuba would hunt for what he suspected was a good clay at his village stream, prepare it, model some lizards and frogs and took them to school. Impressive and attractive to his teacher, he would ask the class children to be bringing clay for Afuba at school, and Chris kept modelling objects and figures. The teacher was keeping the sculpture in the school's shelf. While other pupils were busy with making their baskets and brooms and other stuffs, Chris Afuba was engaged in sculpture, at that early period.

When Afuba had moved to Enugu, he was actively involved in drawing, usually on notebooks that translated to sketchpads.

When the Nigeria-Biafra civil war broke out, young Afuba couldn't continue with active art practicing. However, during the war, the talented sculptor was creating a handful of art works, in a bid to survive. He adversely made works that veered from carvings to experimental scotchings with heated knifes on calabash. He was selling them at the time. Chris was also making art objects with/from tapiocas. But mostly, he was creating walking sticks, which people bought; before the war moved from his village to another village.

Following a considerable quelling of the civil war, Chris Afuba found himself at Ozubulu. At Ozubulu, he started to make rarely realist figures; such as statues of the Virgin Mary. He was modelling it and kept developing himself.

In 1970, while still resident in Ozubulu, Anambra state, he developed a unique skill in making ornaments with wood. He worked on that as well as inadvertently doing other things.

In 1971, master Chris Afuba joined late professor Uche Okeke, for an informal art training and education. Afuba's late cousin had met late Okeke and asked him to help Afuba develop his art. Uche Okeke would oblige. Afuba lived with Uche Okeke and became his apprentice. Chris Afuba spent eleven months under Uche Okeke's tutelage. The months was an intensive and laborious period of art practice for Afuba. He worked for Okeke, learned from him, met many artists.

It was at Okeke's house that Chris Afuba knew Bruce Onobrakpeya and Demas Nwoko, who were Uche Okeke's classmates at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Uche Okeke went to places in company with Chris Afuba. They would attend poetry readings together.

It was at late Uche Okeke's house that Chris Afuba met Chinua Achebe, when the novelist was visiting Okeke. Achebe was admiring the sculpture Chris Afuba was making with wood at that moment.

As an apprentice under Uche Okeke, Afuba equally came to know artists such as Obiora Udechukwu. He met El Anatsui also through Uche Okeke- not as an apprentice any longer; because El Anatsui arrived Nigeria in 1973, from Ghana.

Having taken courses in correspondence subjects, senior secondary education qualification examinations and intermittent certification programs, Chris Afuba was admitted into the Institute of Management and Technology in 1977 for an enrollment in Fine and Applied Arts. The education was a very successful one, according to the sculptor. He did very well at IMT, and became the overall best graduating student from his class, during the year he graduated.

Between 1980-81, Chris Afuba produced the widely-famed 'Otiigba' sculpture. Situated at the New Haven avenue in Enugu city, the sculpture is primarily a manifestation of the artist's quest for a monumental sculpture, and was created at a period that was that of the sculptor's artistic and creative zest, and exuberance. In his words, he reiterates: "I was just creating it because I loved the igba. And I wanted to create something monumental. That was it. Out of interest. And it came out wonderful. I never thought of it to be a public sculpture. I made it as an alternative graduating project sculpture, during the year of my graduation from IMT. It was eventually sold and taken to the Otiigba junction in Enugu city."

Afuba is a founding member of the AKA Group of Artists. According to popular opinion that the exhibiting group is already defunct, Mr. Afuba has debunked that. Instead, plans are being made to revive the formerly acclaimed group of artists.

Chris Afuba, Dike (Hero) ll 2014, 66cm, Cement. Photo credit: Arthouse Contemporary Limited.

Afuba's development as an artist didn't come from one direction or perspective. According to the remarkable sculptor, he had a traditional experience, studied from traditional artists and also learnt a lot from his master, the late artist and scholar professor Uche Okeke who taught him how to draw and, gave him an idea of what he should be drawing.

Chris Afuba learned from traditional artists basically- from his village; learning from them how to draw the Uli designs. He actually went to them. He observed them carving masks and traditional religious objects. He also observed traditional female (women) artists draw designs on the body of other women. And he learned from them.

And when Afuba got apprenticed, he would learn also from Uche Okeke's friends and acquaintances who were mainly artists. Some of them are still alive.

At 'school', Chris Afuba learned from teachers formally and became versatile. But he is inclined to sculpture. Sculpture has been his preoccupation. He is said to be enjoying the influence.

Because of Afuba's exposure and contact with many artists, who incidentally are well known in Nigeria, he has been exposed to varied visual experiences, which he enjoys. And over the years, he has traveled to some countries and had contact with artists from different parts of the world, which has exposed him to further global visual experience and practices.

"I must say that I have enjoyed my artistic journey and career", Afuba, 73, asserts.

Below is nonetheless an excerpt from a talk between I and the master, yet largely uncelebrated sculptor, concerning his artistic career and professional practice.

Chinezim Moghalu: Can you talk about your teaching career; especially during the periods you taught at the Anambra State College of Education.

Chris Afuba: My teaching experience was very interesting. I started teaching formally in secondary school. I taught at QRC, Onitsha. It was interesting. The most interesting experience I had at QRC was the experience of having two blind students in my class. I found teaching blind people art very interesting. When I discovered that I had two blind students in my class, instinctively I thought of how I would manage in teaching people that do not see together with people who have their sights. First thing I did was that I gave them an assignment- all the students; that they should go home and create whatever they could as works of art. When they came back with the assignments I gave them, they came back with many art works: collages, mosaics.

I felt that since the blind students were not seeing, they needed to express themselves with tangible materials. I asked them to find a board and pods or seeds of grains, and to look for an adhesive for binding. I told them that all they needed to do was to have a feel of the surface of the board and stick the adhesive on it. Based on the ideas they have about what they wanted to do, they'll have to know where the board is, and where they kept the grains or seeds. Then they should be picking the grains or objects and stick it on the board, and use it to form depictions, according to the ideas they have. They did it and surprisingly came up with images that amazed me. It was a completely tactile experience- working with textures, working with feelings. Among all the students that I gave the assignment, theirs were the most interesting to me. I wished that I stayed long with them, because I didn't stay long teaching at QRC, Onitsha.

I taught next at Girls Secondary School, Nimo, for a short while. It was while there that I got employment at the Anambra State College of Education, Awka. That was in 1984. I began to teach at the department of Fine and Applied Arts. After two years, I resigned because I wanted to practice art. I did that for two years.

I was thereafter employed at the Institute of Management and Technology, at the department of Art Education, in 1990. I did not break up from the employment until I retired in 2012.

Chris Afuba, Adamma Masquerade, Cement. Copyright: Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-Atlantic University.

CM: Is there a comparison between your practice during the periods of your early and mid artistic career, and now that you are ageing? Do you find practicing at your old age more interesting?

CA: The question is interesting. It is interesting because what comes to mind now is quite different. There is a quotation a Reverend father I know once said in his preaching. He said that, "ageing is a spiritual journey and a process of perfection." Having said this, I want to use it in casting my mind back to when I was a vibrant youth. I was very energetic. I would say that during my youthful era, I was much more energetic, both in production and in visual expressive interpretation. I say this because I had the energy, the power, the drive. I could pick a piece of wood and tore it with my axe and chisels. And I was enjoying that. In fact, if I had not done sculpture, I may not have found experience that could challenge my creative drive. The energy and power propelled me, because I loved materials that were tough. I can remember a carving that I did with a very tough wood. I tore materials. There is a particular wood that when carving with it, fire sometimes spark from its hardness. The wood is called Okpeyi; and Nsukka wood, very tough. It gave me energy. And when I veered towards metal and steel sculpture, it was that drive that made me to bend and use metals, mend steels, bend them to subject to the forms that I wanted to express.

So, I'll say then that my art was much more physical when I was a youth. And I enjoyed them. It was much more physical. Now that I have come of age, I tend to enjoy my art differently. My art has become much more mental. At this stage, I think more of what am creating, than when I was a young artist. Because those days, if I have an idea of what I want to visualize or model, I do think about the spiritual and mental symbolism of interpretation, but not finishing the work in my head before translating it on a particular material.

These days I start a work of art in my head and finish it, and gradually develop it, conserving and considering my energy, and bringing it out systematically; managing my energy in doing it. I think more of skill involved in the execution of a work.

So, I create works now much more in my head mentally than I was doing it when I was a young artist physically. So, now, it is a much more mental visual experience than the physical. Then, I enjoyed the bang-bang of the mallet, even the chisels and everything. But now, I lie down and dream about the work am doing. I finish it. And when I wake up, I look at how I am going to marry the experience to the physical experience. And I ask myself: "this thing you are dreaming of, will you be able to surmount it physically. Do you have enough energy to execute it?" So, it is a contrast. It is a relationship between force and feebleness. Because the feebleness is there; whether I like it or not. That's why I said ageing is a spiritual journey. Journey is an experience. You find out that both eras are very enjoyable.

Ageing is enjoyable. It is enjoyable because if one understands it from the point of returning to the life of childhood, it's a perfect way by the Almighty to make one return to Him when it is one's time. Because, one cannot return to God as an adult. Returning, getting back to one's maker, in a normal process, age requires slowing down and shading off all the forces and physical experience, and beginning to forget things that bother one; because the spiritual life is not the same as the physical life.