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Invisible Woman Reclaiming Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie in the History of the Zaria Art Society and Postcolonial Modernism in Nigeria Itohan Osayimwese All rephotography by Adeyemi Akande, Black & Loud Photography, Yaba, Lagos; and Christian Scully, Design Imaging Studios, Providence, Rhode Island I had an amazing experience today. A senior colleague who I met at a success of members has created incentive for the membership conference asked if I was related to “the Osayimwese who went to Zaria.” net to be cast wide and for the group’s influence to “metastasize” It took me some time to figure out what he was talking about. “There was an Osayimwese who went to Zaria?” I replied. (Ugiomoh 2009: 7, Ogbechie 2009: 9; Gbadegesin 2009). Perhaps “She was short, fair, hmmmm, rather substantial in stature.” we can understand this “posthumous” growth of the Society in the I grinned at this typical Nigerian turn of phrase. Bourdieuan sense of the role played by educational credentials and —Itohan Osayminwese, personal journal, Brooklyn, March 21, 2014 other nonmaterial forms of value—cultural capital—in social re- production in capitalist societies (Bourdieu 1977; Sullivan 2002). he “Zaria Art Society” carries a lot of weight in If we understand the Zaria Art Society as the product of a new Africanist art history circles. It was the name of system of Western art education in Nigeria, then it should come a club founded by students at the first Western- as no surprise that affiliation with or proximity to the group bred style formal art program in Nigeria, the fine cultural capital. Through publications, exhibitions, and workshops arts department at the Nigerian College of Arts, organized primarily by a network of European artist-scholars who Science, and Technology (NCAST) at Zaria saw the continent as an ideal site for alternative artistic practice (now Ahmadu Bello University). Led by painter Uche Okeke, the (Probst 2011: 37), Uche Okeke’s vision of the Society and its his- SocietyT critiqued the colonial thrust of art education that taught tory was established as the canon of modern Nigerian art. Much Nigerian artists to draw snow and sculpt like Michelangelo (Okeke subsequent scholarship on the topic has built on histories written 1998a: 57–59). Instead, in the face of antipathy from some fac- by Okeke, whose own narratives were likely shaped by an all-too- ulty and students, Society members articulated a new program human desire to center his own interventions (Ugiomoh 2009: 7). for Nigerian art. They called their program “natural synthesis,” Most accounts of the Zaria Society agree, however, that its mem- a framework for filtering appropriate elements of Nigerian cul- bers were all men, with the exception of a lone woman who joined tural traditions into contemporary Nigerian cultural production the Society near the end of its life. Little seems to be known about and synthesizing “old and new” and “functional art and art for its this woman, whose name is given variously as “I.M. Omagie” and own sake” (Omezi 2008: 34–45). Although individual members “Ikponmwosa Omagie/Omigie” (Dike and Oyelola 2004: 11, 17, 73, of the Society interpreted this guiding principle in different ways, 77; Ikpakronyi 2004: 22; Omoighbe 2004: 179). When discussed at they shared a commitment to identifying an artistic language to all, she is dismissed: “She was a young member. She wasn’t terribly embody the emerging modern nation. active. If I see her today, I may not be able to recognize her” (Okeke The precise composition of the short-lived (1958–1961) Zaria 1998b: 52). Who was this woman and why do the scholarship and Art Society has been widely debated. Though the group was barely the historical record appear to be silent about her? Because of its in existence long enough for its membership to consolidate and now-iconic status as an instrument of decolonization and found- its founding ideas to take root, the subsequent and longstanding ing institution of postcolonial Nigerian culture, the Zaria Society is an ideal launching pad for a consideration of the art and life of this Itohan Osayimwese is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Ar- specific pioneering woman artist as well as of the role of women in chitecture at Brown University. Her research focuses on German colo- modern Nigerian art in general. nial architecture and urbanism, the art and architecture of Nigerian nationalism and, more recently, African diasporic cultures in the An- glo-Caribbean. [email protected] 66 african arts SUMMER 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 2 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00461 by guest on 28 September 2021 osayimwese.indd 66 2/20/2019 12:23:50 PM 1 Batik signed “J.I. Omigie,” ca. 1970s. 80 cm x 56 cm Courtesy of Dennese Clarke Osayimwese AFRICANIST FEMINIST ART HISTORY AND ORAL HISTORY The answers to these questions are implicated, not surprisingly, with gender and its particular valencies in the history of Nigerian art. Indeed, the absence of women in academic histories of art in general has long been debated in the Anglo-American academy. Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin wrote in 1971 that the prob- lem stems from a false understanding of art as a “free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, ‘influenced’ by previous artists” (Nochlin 1988: 158). But in the 1980s, the idea of women’s agency came under attack as part of a wider poststructuralist cri- tique. In Griselda Pollock’s words, the concern was now about how women were refracted in the “web of psycho-social relationships which institute a socially significant difference on the axis of sex” (Pollock 2012: 47). Lisa Tickner argued that the question was no longer “why are there no great women artists?” but “how are the processes of sexual differentiation played out across the represen- tations of art and art history?” (Tickner 1988: 106). After decades of deemphasizing the work and agency of individual women artists for fear of falling into the trap of essentialism, since the 1990s, fem- inist art historians have again focused on identifying the agency of specific women, the subversive power they actually exercised, and the unremitting disruptive pressure that their agency has ex- erted upon culture (Broude and Garrard 2005: 3). Feminist oral history, which challenges the principle of objectivity promoted in positivist research, emphasizes connections between public and private worlds, highlights the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of these interviews as coproductions that say as much about my rela- the researcher and subject, and offers a basis for a potential para- tionship to the interviewees and the selective and synthetic char- digm shift in art history that enables us to finally see women art- acter of human memory processes as they do about “what actually ists (Gluck 2008: 118–20; Pollock 2013, 2008; Cvetkovich 2013). happened” (Grele 2007: 49, 53, 59). These newly created texts are As a clearly defined methodology with critical implications, oral as much performed acts as they are static “evidence.” I combine history has become a legitimate tool for inquiry in feminist schol- interpretations drawn from these new texts with formal analyses of arship but has only slowly made inroads into mainstream art his- Omigie’s few extant works, most notably a resist-dyed wall hanging tory (Reading 2014: 207; Brucher 2013). Similarly, since the 1960s, she likely designed in the 1970s (Fig. 1). Indeed, the significance historians of Africa have found oral history useful because it has of oral history to this project is illustrated by its inception story the potential to fill gaps in the canon and transform historiography quoted at the beginning of this article. in the process. In 1965, Jan Vansina revolutionized African history by positing oral traditions (the performed telling and retelling of “She studied textiles.” oral histories) as plausible historical sources. Oral history has since I started to think out loud: “Could it be my Aunt Josephine?” served as an important although not primary method in Africanist “Yes, Josephine! How is she? She was my classmate. A very diligent stu- dent. She was very good.” historiography (Doortmont 2011; Vansina 1996; Cooper 2005). “But I didn’t know she went to Zaria.” Lessons from African history have perhaps finally transformed Even as I said this though, some old memory sparked. Africanist art history in Rowland Abiodun’s (2014) call for a new paradigm based on understanding African cultures (specifically, As this first-person narrative explains, the project grew out of Yorùbá culture) as integrated wholes often housed in oral and my encounter with one of Osayimwese Omigie’s former university linguistic discourses. classmates. Initially, I experienced the encounter as a classic clash Building on its possibilities in women’s history, African history, between my subjective experience and my academic disciplining and art history, I use oral history as my primary method in this as a historian. Academic disciplines are not only about the circum- article. To learn about the work and life of this pioneering woman scribed bodies of knowledge generally accepted as constituting artist—positively identified as Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese each discipline, but also about the rules governing these bodies Omigie in the following pages—I have interviewed her family and the ways in which scholars are socialized to approach their members, colleagues, and students. I understand the outcomes of work. Generally, to preserve the fiction of objectivity, historians VOL. 52, NO. 2 SUMMER 2019 african arts 67 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00461 by guest on 28 September 2021 | osayimwese.indd 67 2/20/2019 12:23:51 PM as Yoruba customary laws that recognized married women’s right to own property, but did not automatically endow a single wife and her children with the right to inherit all of a man’s earthly posses- sions upon his death (Mann 1982; Otite 1991: 33).

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