Nigerian Women Artists' Visibility in Twenty-First
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DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/gjss.v20i1.6 GLOBAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES VOL 20, 2021: 59-67 COPYRIGHT© BACHUDO SCIENCE CO. LTD PRINTED IN NIGERIA. ISSN 1596-6216 59 www.globaljournalseries.com; [email protected] NIGERIAN WOMEN ARTISTS’ VISIBILITY IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONTEMPORARY ART PRACTICES: A TRIUMPH AGAINST EXCLUSIONS FROM ART GROUPS AND COLLECTIVES IN NIGERIA NKIRUKA JANE NWAFOR (Received 26 April 2021, Revision Accepted 6 July 2021) ABSTRACT Nigerian artists began forming art groups and schools from the 1950s and 1960s. These art groups advanced the reclaiming of Nigeria‟s artistic cultural heritages. However, even in the post-colonial and post-Civil War 1970s and 1980s many art groups and art institutions had few or no female members that participated in their activities. This essay reviews notable art groups in Nigeria from the earliest to the more recent. It also identifies the prominent women artists that had contributed to modern Nigerian art history. The essay also looks at the changes in the 1990s‟ and identifies contemporary art and its liberal and individualistic approaches as what caused decline in art groups in the twenty-first century. It will identify the women making impact in Nigeria‟s art scenario in the twenty-first century. The essay argues therefore that the liberalizing nature of twenty-first century contemporary art practices in Nigeria may have endeared more visibility to Nigerian women artists. KEYWORDS: Nigerian women artists, art groups, art schools, modern Nigerian art, contemporary art, post-colonial art, twentieth century, twenty-first century. INTRODUCTION The essay also looks at the vicissitudes in the 1990s‟ and the more recent 2000s‟ contemporary Art groups and associations were critical in art practices in Nigeria. The paper will therefore forging the narrative of art history in Nigeria. try to identify the vibrant women artists of the pre- However, one common thread among these independence and the three subsequent groups was that they had been predominantly decades of post-independence modern Nigerian spaces for excluding women artists. In reviewing art. This was when art groups were popular in the history of modern art in Nigeria, the essay Nigeria. Furthermore, the paper will also identify tries to locate some of the female artists of the the women artists who are making impact in colonial and earlier post-colonial era. This essay Nigeria in the twenty-first century. The paper also therefore reviews notable art groups in Nigeria suggests why many women artists of the early from the earliest to the more recent. It also and mid twentieth century may have been either questions why women artists were excluded at passive members or entirely excluded from the the early stages of cultural solidarity through art activities of the art groups and schools in Nigeria. groups. Nkiruka Jane Nwafor, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. © 2021 Bachudo Science Co. Ltd. This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. 60 NKIRUKA JANE NWAFOR ART GROUPS AND SCHOOLS IN THE others. Nonetheless, few names stood out in the COLONIAL ERA: 1922 -1955 quest for western art practice. Nigerian artists began forming art groups and Although she was not among Kenneth Murray‟s schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Before then, students, Afiong Ekong (1930-2009) is often Aina Onabolu (1882-1963) had mastered regarded as a contemporary of Ben Enweonwu. representational style and perspective through Both had furthered their studies in art in England his personal efforts and also through further in the early 1950s. Ekong‟s had been actively studies in London and Paris in the 1920s (Vogel, involved in promoting modern art and art 1991:179). As the foremost western-trained artist institutions in Nigeria in the colonial and and art tutor he engendered a new modernity that postcolonial setting. She was the foremost redefined Nigeria‟s artistic productions at the turn academically trained female artist from Nigeria to of the century. Onabolu introduced Western have held a solo art exhibition. She was also part academic art in Nigeria‟s secondary schools‟ of the selection committee that organized curriculum in 1922. Onabolu was influenced by Nigeria‟s independence art exhibition. (Okeke- Euro-American ideas that were becoming Agulu, 2015:141). Ekong used the ideals of internalized by African artists of the early Western realism to explore subject matters and twentieth century. These crops of African artists themes that basically reinforced the primordial manifested their progress by believing that the African scenario. Her works therefore were also “old Africa had to be swept away to make way for in tandem with the Murray School‟s essentialist the new” (Vogel, 1991). However, as Chika notion of African art. “Murray school” refers to the Okeke-Agulu notes, Onabolu‟s affirmation of group of students who had been trained by “academic realism did not quite accommodate Kenneth Murray. the complexities and paradoxes of the colonial Some art collectives however did not originate experience” (2013:58). Colonialism had caused, from formal institutions. The Oye-Ekiti workshop in some cases, abrupt break with Africa‟s artistic was initiated following the papal order of the traditions and inferiorized them through flawed 1930s that allowed catholic church missionaries ethnographic and anthropological methodologies. to include aspects of African culture, thought to I argue also that by introducing western art and be harmless, as part of their Christianization not indigenous art into academic institutions, experience. By 1947, two missionary priests, Onabolu‟s may have brought inconspicuousness Kevin Carroll and Sean O Mahoney encouraged to Nigerian women‟s art practices such as textile, local carvers in Oye Ekiti to use traditional mural/body painting among others. These were Yoruba art styles to create Christian themed aspects of Nigeria‟s indigenous arts that are not sculptures. Some of the carvers‟ works eventually taught in Nigeria‟s formal academic institutions, decorated catholic churches in many parts of and which Euro-American historians had in the Western Nigeria. The sculptures were criticized past erroneously termed „lesser‟ art. on one hand for what some Yoruba Catholics By 1928, Kenneth Murray a British educational saw as „pagan‟ shrines of their ancestors. administrator of the colonial government joined However, the workshop provided an alternative Onabolu as an art teacher in Nigerian schools. motive power to reinvigorate Yoruba sculpture He was also the acquisition officer for the tradition. It also counters Onabolu‟s pioneering country‟s diverse cultural heritage and had approach to art tutelage in Nigerian schools interest in sustaining and preserving cultural which emphasized Western realism as opposed artefacts. For that reason, he encouraged to conceptual indigenous arts. Notable among budding art students to seek inspirations from the these carvers were Lamidi Fakeye, George sufficient artistic materials in the colony‟s Bandele, Areogun, Johnson Esan, Otooro. indigenous traditions. Murray‟s students included As significant as the workshop may have been C. C. Ibeto, Uthman M. Ibrahim, D. L. K. Nanchy, the age-long guilds of carvers and bronze casters A. P Umana, J. O. Ugorji and Ben Enweonwu. were men. Thus, women were absent in the Oye Murray‟s prominent students were men Ekiti workshop experiment. Women practiced suggesting that few women were studying art in pottery making, weaving, embroidery and other secondary schools. This is in spite of the fact that textile practices, and indigenous painting women were at the helm of many cultural techniques. Therefore, it may be argued that the institutions of diverse ethnicities in Nigeria. We initiators of Oye-Ekiti workshop could have may assume that at that time more women were included women artists in their effort at invested in indigenous art institutions where they repurposing indigenous arts. For instance, the practiced and produced pottery, textiles among interior of Christian churches could adapt the NIGERIAN WOMEN ARTISTS’ VISIBILITY IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONTEMPORARY ART PRACTICES: 61 indigenous Yoruba adire textile art. Notable most post-colonial researches on modern women artists that worked in indigenous art Nigerian art. They are more in many art history styles included Mgbadunnwa Okanumee, a documentations than Ugbodaga-Ngu. renowned uli painter from Nnobi, Eziafo Okaro an Following the ideologies that informed Negritude, uli painter and Felicia Adepelu of Igbara Odo, ZAS theorized „Natural Synthesis.’ The members Nwazupuite of Ishiagu, Sabina Jenti from Yola of ZAS used Western art materials but and Ladi Kwali from Abuja (Ikpakronyi, 2004, p.9) conceptualized their art based on Nigeria‟s However many artists that later emerged from diverse indigenous aesthetics. Josephine Ifueko art institutions in Nigeria have deviated Osayimwese Omigie was often been identified as significantly from normalized gendered art. A a female member of ZAS collective (Omoighe, peculiar case is that of Princess Elizabeth Olowu, 2004:179). In her recent research “Invisible the daughter of the Benin Oba Akenzua II. Born Woman: Reclaiming Josephine Ifueko in 1945, her father, who clearly saw the evolving Osayimwese Omigie in the History of the Zaria dynamism of colonized cultures, allowed her to Art Society and Postcolonial Modernism in learn from the usually secretive palace bronze Nigeria,” Itohan Osayimwese (2019)