Artsdiscourse

Mathew Oyedele Mural, painting and installation section of the exhibition space. Image credit: Tobi Animashaun. Despite the commercialisation and commodification of art in Lagos, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, continues to stage critical, experiential and experimental art to contribute to the development and professionalisation of artistic production in Nigeria. Founded by the late independent curator, Bisi Silva in 2007, the Centre prides itself in its library which houses huge collection of books, journals, manuscripts, catalogues and monographs for research as well as collaboration with African and international artists, curators and organisations.  The recent exhibition by Tobi Animashaun which employs the fusion of sound, mural, installation and painting in a critical and experiential presentation, explore Nigerian history through maps and street names. The show, themed "Akomona" and curated by Michael Enejison is the first exhibition of the Centre in 2021.  Tob...

  The Wait ( 2020), Mixed Media, Fredrick Idele. Mathew Oyedele On Saturday 20th of February 2021, Artpedia gallery opened to the public with an art exhibition that traces and examines the influence, significance and effect of time and happenings on artists' subconscious minds. The exhibition, titled, Persistence Of Time features six artists: Ikechukwu Ezeigwe, Fredrick Idele, Ada Godspower, Sejiro Avoseh, Elizabeth Ekpetorson and Habeeb Andu. One is welcomed into the exhibition hallway by the striking works of Habeeb Andu whose fusion of discarded materials with canvas expresses bold socio-political themes. I was glued to his mixed media work with the title, Arrival Quarters (2018) for minutes before I could even look at other works. The work brought back the anger and pity I felt when news broke out that Africans were being sold into slavery in Lybia some years ago. The composition of the work is carefully arranged to direct the eye to the silhouetted figures, hanging inver...

Oghagbon Moses, "Collective effort 2", oil on canvas, 2018.  Mathew B. Oyedele In December 2018, Weave and Co. gallery held an art exhibition of paintings by Oghagbon Moses, a Nigerian painter and photographer whose passion for Nigerian cultural landscape remains evergreen. The show was themed "Colours of Uhola". Uhola is an annual cultural festival of the people of Zuru, Kebbi state, Nigeria, meant to appreciate God for abundant harvest. And, Oghagbon, with dexterity and meticulousness, captures the colours, actions, movements and gestures of the festival. Within the context of the exhibition, Oghagbon delineates culture as the chord that connects the people of Zuru. He therefore depicts the people as embodiments and custodians of culture. Paintings like "collective effort","experience" and "the way we are" attests to this fact. Oghagbon Moses, "The way we are 2", oil on canvas, 2018. The struggles, growth an...

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...

Tobenna Okwuosa. Mathew B. Oyedele Three books by Nigerian writers - The Man Died by Wole Soyinka, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe and Labyrinths by Christopher Okigbo inspired the recent works of Tobenna Okwuosa that were exhibited at the African Culture and Design Festival, in November 2017. These books offer a profound archive for the artist to delve into the past and create an oeuvre that confronts the viewer with guilt-ridden contents. 2017 was the 50th anniversary of the declaration of Biafra, and 50 years after the death of Christopher Okigbo on war front, fighting for Biafra. Okwuosa’s exhibits show the   historical facts of the Biafran War and the poetic truths of Christopher Okigbo. The Biafran War is a vital and sensitive aspect of Nigerian history that should be known to all Nigerians so that we may, to borrow an expression, transform yesterday’s action into tomorrow’s wisdom. The provocation of conversations in the coll...

By Chinezim Moghalu   Chibuike Uzoma , " Untitled", from the series, "No Victor, No Vanquished, 2018.    “No Victor, No Vanquished”, part of the ongoing 9 th edition of Lagos Photo Festival exhibition, is a body of work by Chibuike Uzoma, which forms part of his ongoing project titled “Museum of Burnt Things”. It is an ambitious and laborious project that reconciles photography with painting in a close-up intertwined sequence. This is the second part of a three part project, which is showing at the yearly festival in Lagos, presently. The work takes a departure from the term “no victor, no vanquished” , an assertion by Major Yakubu Gowon, who was the head of state during the devastating and violent Nigerian-Biafra civil war that began after seven years of Nigeria’s independence from the British and lasted for three years (1967-1970). This was a statement he made at the end of the war which indicated that there was no victor nor vanquished during such w...

By: Mathew B. Oyedele A couple of days ago, Ato Arinze and Djakou Kassi Nathalie opened their joint exhibition at the Quintessence Gallery, Ikoyi, Lagos and the exhibition runs till 24th of June. The works that are presented in this show offers a marked contrast and deviation from the functionality label that is consciously or unconsciously tagged on ceramics. Ato and Nathalie's works are strongly different in content and style. Born in Cameroun, Nathalie lived and taught in Cameroun before coming to Nigeria some years ago. Ato schooled in the southwestern and southeastern parts of Nigeria respectively.The fact that they both grew up in different environments have major influences on their works. For Ato, the Nigerian landscape offers an array of opportunity to define and conceptualize his art. He alludes to socio-political situations with simple shapes and sound contents. Nathalie's works neither questions nor comment on socio-political happenings - spontaneity...

By Chinezim Moghalu “It is a visual information about the struggles to survive, missions of making marks and the eventual probable failure and success of the foreigners abroad.” - Monsur Awotunde, ( Nihin Lohun Catalogue 2017) August 13-17, 2017, witnessed “ Nihin Lohun (Here and There)”, a solo art exhibition by Awotunde Monsur, at Rele Art Gallery, 5 Military street, Onikan, Lagos, Nigeria. The exhibition was a sojourner’s narrative which ushered manifestations of the artist’s lived experiences within a decade of shared occupancy between his native Nigeria and United Kingdom. A visual essay and compendium about the fleetingly sheer, ambiguous and arbitrary happenings encountered upon his immigration- and reflection of the eclectic and complex moments within “there” and “here”. The four day event afforded one an encounter with subtle, yet forcefully compelling paintings that highlighted the artist’s commentary. Within the context of the exhibition, Awotunde presen...

Ifaka Jesse The violence in Ifaka Jesse’s photographs is raw, dramatic, intense and expressive. They are a reflection of the societal rumbles that occupies the pages of newspapers, screens of televisions and social media walls. He explores social commentaries by listening to social banters and maelstroms in his environment. Jesse, whose works are born out of his passion for the oppressed persons in the society, found out that the society has become comfortable with oppression and humiliation as domestic violence shows no sign of abating. “I once saw a young couple living as rivals under the same roof and nobody said anything,” he says. In the photographs, we see a lot of actions- a hand holds a female victim by the mouth, two hands strangles a female victim by the neck, a foot stands on a female face, an all-men fighting scene and a man strangling another man. They look like they have been stripped out of a movie. If a spectator pays attention, he can begin to ident...

By: Chinezim Moghalu Chris History. Memory. Futurism. As regards “Nsukka School”, the first connotes threshold; the nucleus, reminiscence and experience; the last, a coalescing of aspirations, hope, achievements and manifestations from the present- coupled with acknowledgement of the obvious challenges that escort them. Nsukka School (the department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka) after fifty years, have witnessed a robust history which formally spans fifty-six years. In this trajectory, vast significant events and remarkable landmarks have taken place, which becomes rehashing and exhaustible to list. The Art School has effortfully and resolutely survived, in a radically and bold undertone, the coastal and tidal waves that polices an Art School with an ancestral creative ideology, philosophy and pedagogy which opposes and confronts Western art pedagogy- the Uli aesthetics. In like manner, “Nkoli Ka” (recalling is greatest), becomes a veritab...