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]

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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

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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). It seems likely that in Nigeria, as in Europe and North America, the perceived legal and social impact of marriage on women’s identities has often made it difficult to trace their agency and write their histories.

A PRELIMINARY BIOGRAPHY Though the lone woman in the Zaria Art Society is often noted as “I.M. Omagie/Omigie” in existing literature, no such person attended the Department of Fine Arts at NCAST between 1958 and 1961. Instead, we find a “J.I. Osayimwese,” a name that like “Omagie/Omigie” is of Edo extraction. Both family history and university records confirm that Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese matriculated to NCAST in 1958 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in textiles in 1963 (Ahmadu Bello University 1990:16).2 Osayimwese was born on July 2, 1936, in Ibadan, Western Province. She attended C.M.S. Girls’ School in Benin City from 1946 to 1952, and was one of few girls in the country to go on to 2 Ceramic pot signed “Osayi, 14.11.58.” H: 7cm, a secondary education, which she received at the newly opened, circumference: 43 cm. government-sponsored, and highly selective Queen’s School Ede Courtesy of Isoken Omigie Odukogbe. from 1953 until 1957. After a gap year, she gained admission to do not write histories of themselves. Certainly as a relative of NCAST, where she remained for six years. After an additional year Osayimwese Omigie’s, I have privileged access to material that has of study, she obtained a Postgraduate Art Teachers’ Certificate. been difficult for other researchers to uncover. And this personal Upon graduation, she embarked, in October 1964, on her teach- relationship and the oral history methodology that it demands are ing career at Edo College, Benin City. She had only been at Edo arguably susceptible to the same self-serving impulses that shaped College for a few months when she married Mr. F.N. Omigie and Osayimwese Omigie’s exclusion in the first place. As gender stud- relocated to Lagos, where he worked for the Nigerian Railway. ies scholar Ann Cvetkovich suggests, however, including oral his- Between 1965 and 1970, she gave birth to three children. But she tory excerpts within historical and analytical writing itself fore- also taught art at Lagos City College, Yaba College of Technology, grounds subjectivity and intersubjectivity as opportunities rather and Queen’s College, Yaba. In 1974, she joined the Arts Division than problems. Analyzing these excerpts can provide an opening of the Federal Ministry of Education and later moved to the to “invent vocabularies” for social formations that combine the Scholarship Division. She relocated to Benin City when her hus- intimate, social, informal, and institutional in novel ways that are band retired from the railway in 1978. In Benin, she was appointed particularly relevant to women artists (Cvetkovich 2013: 127). vice principal of the recently opened Federal Government Girls’ Philosopher Nkiru Nzegwu (1999) has hypothesized that College (FGGC), where she served as principal from 1980 until gender has had a unique effect in Africanist art history. She con- 1985. Between 1985 and her death in 1997, Osayimwese was the ceptualizes “gender transmogrification” as the “grotesque” and Coordinating Inspector, Inspectorate Division, Federal Ministry of 3 systemic distortion of the role of women in creative production Education, Benin City. Though mourned within the community in African societies as a result of biases inherited from cultural an- of Nigerian women educators, her death went largely unnoticed in thropology and Western feminism. The result is a sexist flattening the larger network of artists and former Zaria classmates: of complex social realities and artistic histories. Here, the typical negative framing of African histories—underpinned by asymmet- “She died. Of cancer. Some time ago,” I said. I was certainly not expecting his reaction. He stopped in his rical power relations—is layered over with gender ideologies that tracks. His face fell. code women’s art as inferior, domestic, personal, derivative, pas- “Ó ti kú (she died)?!!!” sive, and ultimately, invisible. Nzegwu’s arguments are useful for My heart thudded in my chest. He banged his head against understanding Osayimwese Omigie’s erasure from the scholarship the wall. Grimaced. “Ó ti kú o! Ó ti kú.” on postcolonial modernist art in Nigeria.1 Also associated with this expurgation of women is the issue of It is at the moment of marriage and childbirth that Osayimwese marital name change as an element of Christian practice and of the Omigie’s art historical biography goes awry. Her first child, a son, nuclear family ideal promoted by European missionaries in Nigeria was named Ikponmwosa. It is telling that her name, “Josephine (Suter 2004). In the context of modern English law, marriage Ifueko,” has somehow been supplanted by her son’s name in some naming practices are closely associated with the patriarchal con- published sources. While the slippage might be attributable to a cept of woman-as-property and thus with women’s ability to claim simple typographical error, it also illustrates the dynamics at work rights associated with personhood. When introduced to Nigeria, in her exclusion: in the minds of some of her male colleagues, these ideas sometimes contravened existing cultural norms, such

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osayimwese.indd 68 2/20/2019 12:23:51 PM Osayimwese Omigie’s role as a wife and mother displaced her She was the eldest child of progressive Christian parents (Fig. 4). from consideration as a serious artist. The colloquial practice of Her father traveled the country in his role as an accounting clerk calling Nigerian women by their first child’s name may also have for the British colonial government, leaving a matrifocal family to contributed to this mix-up. In many precolonial Nigerian cul- develop back in Benin City. Josephine likely visited him in loca- tural traditions, reproduction was one of the primary purposes tions as diverse as Port Harcourt and Ibadan. Due to this itinerant of marriage and a woman’s social status was closely aligned with lifestyle and the family’s Edo-Akure heritage, Josephine was fluent her reproductive power. These ideas still exerted a strong influence in Yoruba, Edo, and English, but she and her siblings found it dif- among educated urban men and women in the 1960s and beyond. ficult to understand their maternal aunt, who only spoke Akure To her neighbors, friends, and family then, Osayimwese Omigie Yoruba (Akintoye 1969).5 became “Mama Ikponmwosa.” According to family lore, Josephine’s mother, Madam Margaret As is wont with such errors, subsequent publications have per- Jose Omozuwa Osayimwese, was of the ilk of self-determining petuated the misidentification of Osayimwese Omigie. The fact that Nigerian women who traded beads, textiles, and other goods in variations of her married name rather than her premarital name order to gain socioeconomic power and access to public life. As have been retained even though she was unmarried at the date of part of her diversified business activities, Margaret Jose tailored her involvement with the Society also supports my hypothesis that and sold school uniforms and was treasurer of an esusu (an in- her male peers saw marriage and motherhood as defining and lim- formal credit institution or savings club famously associated with iting factors in her life. Alternately, it indicates that Osayimwese Yorubas) (Adebayo 1994: 393–96).6 There was, however, significant Omigie was known in artistic circles or at least maintained contact precedent for Margaret Jose’s participation in the public sphere. with some former Society members after her marriage—which Since precolonial times, Yoruba women were renowned as success- was in fact the case, as I will show. In an effort to suture the threads ful entrepreneurs who traded, locally and across long distances, of her life story back together, reclaim her subjectivity, and high- in goods such as palm oil, dye, ceramics, and textiles that they or light her agency, I have chosen to use her unmarried and married their family members manufactured. Through the capital they ac- names simultaneously throughout this article. cumulated, these women could become extremely wealthy and ad- vance their political and social status (Oladejo 2015: 7; Falola 1995; Ogbomo 1995; Kriger 2006: 44). Furthermore, following Rowland TRADE AND EDUCATION: ROUTES FOR Abiodun, we could argue that the (woman-centered) activity of WOMEN’S SELF-DETERMINATION IN WESTERN NIGERIA dyeing was vital because it was associated in Yoruba language and Of the small collection of Osayimwese Omigie’s works that are philosophy with communicating the essence of an individual’s available, the earliest known dated piece is a glazed ceramic bowl, existence, character, or being (Abiodun 1990: 67). To the south- inscribed with her name and the date “14.11.1958” (Fig. 2).4 This east of the Yoruba, Edo women were also involved in trade, and in was the year that she gained entrance to NCAST. The bowl has the spinning, dyeing, and weaving textiles both at home for household attributes of a school assignment: the uneven circumference of its use and in a public context as members of the royal weavers’ guild base and bumpy excrescence of superfluous glaze that surround (Mba 1982: 18–20; Ben-Amos 1995: 17, 1978: 51–52). Over the it suggest a developing competence with the potter’s wheel and course of the colonial period, Yoruba and other southern Nigeria glazing techniques. Yet the bowl’s careful balance between the buff women used these traditional routes to financial independence color of its interior and near-translucent green glaze of its outer and self-determination as an effective platform for political action. surface, the careful articulation of a heavy dark green line of the Their activities significantly shaped the face of Nigerian politics in dripping glaze below the rim followed by row of crescent moons, the run-up to independence in 1960. indicate an emerging aesthetic position situated neither in the As an Edo-Akure, Margaret Jose may have drawn on these female-dominated pottery traditions of Nigeria such as the geo- models of women’s activity, and her activities may have shaped her metric and stylized naturalism associated with the Gwari nor the daughter’s own interests and choice of profession. Margaret Jose minimally decorated utilitarian vessels and ornate anthropomor- herself had been forced to abort teacher training in order to take phic and zoomorphic ritual pottery of the Yoruba, among others. the reins of the family after her parents were murdered. She un- Neither does it fit into the purely derivative European practices doubtedly believed in the value of education for both her female and forms typically associated with colonial schooling or in the and male children and, like many colonial-era urban Nigerian colonial nativist reinvocation of tradition that Chika Okeke-Agulu women, worked hard to fund their education and run her house- argues was becoming the official line in art teaching in Nigeria in hold from her own earnings. As historian Abosede George con- the 1950s (Harrod 1989; Okeke-Agulu 2015). Pottery was among tends, urban elite women in 1940s Nigeria formulated a vision of several basic subjects of study that made up the four-year curric- modern Nigerian womanhood in which education was a means ulum offered by the Department of Art after 1955, so it is possible to economic, political, and social participation and full citizenship that Osayimwese Omigie created this piece soon after her arrival (George 2014: 7, 213). in Zaria. A rare photograph from her archive shows Osayimwese Omigie sculpting a nude seated figure on a tilt-and-turn table in 1950S EDE: CRUCIBLE OF A NIGERIAN the sculpture studio at NCAST in 1958 (Fig. 3). What factors con- CULTURAL RENAISSANCE verged to lead Osayimwese Omigie to Zaria? It is in this context that we must situate Osayimwese Omigie’s Osayimwese Omigie’s unusual academic success as a female in entry into Queen’s School Ede. Arguably, her experience in Ede 1940s–1960s Nigerian can be attributed in part to her upbringing. was instrumental in her pioneering presence on the arts scene in

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osayimwese.indd 69 2/20/2019 12:23:51 PM 3 Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie at NCAST sculpture studio in 1958. Courtesy of Isoken Omigie Odukogbe.

4 The Osayimwese family, c. 1957. Josephine is in the front row on the left. Courtesy of Izevbuwa Osayimwese.

Zaria. When she arrived in Ede in 1953, the town was blossoming under the enlightened leadership of the famed timi (king), Oba John Adetoyese Laoye I (1899–1975). A British-trained phar- macist, Oba Laoye became king of the old Yoruba town of Ede (northeast of Ibadan) in 1946. He pursued two simultaneous and mutually supportive programs during his reign. On one hand has been noted among some progressive male English art teachers, he was determined to modernize Ede by establishing schools in like K.C. Murray, working at boys’ schools in Nigeria in the 1920s collaboration with Baptist, Catholic, and Seventh Day Adventist and 1930s (Harrod 1989: 148). To Adegboye’s knowledge, nothing missionaries. He also conceptualized the construction of a large came of this submission, but it certainly serves as early evidence of dam—the ultimate modernization project undertaken by soon-to- Osayimwese Omigie’s aptitude. Indeed, art was one of six subjects emerge postcolonial nations. It was through Oba Laoye’s initiative in which Osayimwese Omigie sat and passed her school leaving that Queen’s School—one of the few girls’ secondary schools in examinations in 1957. the country established as part of a state-sponsored (rather than Her training in the classroom may have mingled with varied ex- mission-funded) initiative to improve girl’s education—came to be ternal stimuli. Okonjo Ogunyemi notes that the girls at Queen’s established in Ede in 1952. Oba Laoye’s wife, Flora Ebun Laoye, School were suffused by Laoye’s project of modernization alongside would further cement these foundational ties through her teaching his affirmation of Nigerian cultures. With the help of the school appointment at the school. lorry that drove them into Ede proper, Queen’s School girls visited On the other hand, Oba Laoye, who descended from a lineage and participated in celebrations and saw colorful masquerades, like of drummers and was an accomplished practitioner of the Yoruba Egungun, hosted by Laoye. The Oba also performed at school for talking drum, cultivated a renaissance of Yoruba culture through the girls, who welcomed his presence and composed songs prais- his promotion of drumming and dance via performance, writ- ing him. This is particularly noteworthy, since modern European ing, public speaking, and radio broadcasts in Ede, throughout the schools in Nigeria typically took a hard line toward local cultural Western Region, and at international venues (Adekilekun 1987: 17; practices. For example, almost every student in colonial Nigeria Kehinde 2016). In a sense, Laoye offered a living model for balanc- was familiar with the stricture against speaking any language other ing the seemingly competing agendas of modernity and tradition. than English at school. Okonjo Ogunyemi confirms that this rule Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, who arrived at Queen’s School at was strictly enforced at Queen’s School as well. This kind of “lin- the same time as Osayimwese Omigie, recalls these exciting years guistic violence” has of course provided fertile ground for postco- in Ede. As one of only a handful of Igbo and Edo girls at Queen’s lonial theorists trying to understand the insidious mechanisms of School, Okonjo Ogunyemi and Osayimwese Omigie spent many colonial hegemony and their postcolonial legacies (Fanon 2008: 8; hours traveling together on government lorries between Ede and Mazrui and Mazrui 1998). By contrast, Queen’s School’s purported Benin City before Okonjo Ogunyemi journeyed alone on the final openness to Laoye’s cultural experiments seems to contradict long- leg of her trip home to Ogwashi-Ukwu. According to her class- standing colonial education policy and highlights Ede and its oba mates, Osayimwese Omigie was a good student whose serious- as harbingers of a new epoch. ness, good leadership, and likeability earned her a prefectship. The school lorry also drove the girls to nearby Osogbo, where Fine art (taught by a European woman) was a required subject at they met the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger, who would soon the school. According to another classmate, Rachel Adegboye (nee become known for her attempts to revive Yoruba religion through Oye), the school was so impressed by Osayimwese Omigie’s devel- art. This must have been soon after Wenger arrived in Osogbo oping skill that they sent one of her artworks to England for a com- after an earlier sojourn in Ede itself and in nearby Ilobu (Probst petition.7 A similar practice of sending student work to England

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osayimwese.indd 70 2/20/2019 12:23:52 PM Zaria in 1960. For her, Ede, rather than Zaria, was the birthplace of a postcolonial modern art. Meanwhile, Wenger had gone through a spiritual and artistic conversion of sorts. She was initiated into the worship of several Yoruba deities. In response, she created large, brightly colored, ex- pressionist oil paintings that, in her own words, captured the vi- olence of human experience. At the same time, she began to find solace in another type of painting. Under the tutelage of an un- named Yoruba woman in Ede, she learned the technique of adire eleko—a method of dyeing textiles using painted starch, practiced by women. While indigo textile dyeing dates to at least the ninth century in West Africa, adire eleko itself is a fairly recent devel- opment that owes its origins to the Atlantic trade on the Guinea Coast that introduced new materials, patterns, and techniques (Kriger 2006: 120). Though adire making is said to have started in Abeokuta, Ede is remembered as a major supplier of the dye itself to Abeokuta dyers. Indeed, Olugbemisola Areo and Razaq Kalilu point out that Ede’s oriki (citation and attributive poetry) links the city to “Iya Mapo, the Yoruba goddess of creativity, who is revered as the protector and guardian of all female crafts and [is] believed to be the first dyer” (Areo and Kalilu 2013: 357; see also Abiodun 2014: 324). Thus, along with Abeokuta, Osogbo, Ibadan, and Ondo, Ede was a historical center of adire production. Looking back at the years in Ede and Osogbo, Beier explains that Wenger found the slow and disciplined nature of this technique calming and was drawn to the “organic” nature of Yoruba art pro- 5 Susanne Wenger duction in place of the isolation of the European atelier. In order Obatala Catches Sango’s Horse (1958) to gain more flexibility with colors, she switched from this local Starch resist batik diptych; each 214 cm x 83 cm technique (which allows the artist to use only one color) to an im- Photo: courtesy the Susanne Wenger Foundation ported wax-based process (generally called “batik” today) which soon spread, under her influence, to Yoruba artists in Osogbo and 2011: 48).8 Wenger left a significant impression on the girls, since the region. Her work from this period not only represents a change she was the only white woman they had met who was “neither in media but also reveals new motifs and subjects. Specifically, Catholic nor Anglican.”9 It was clear to these girls that Wenger contrary to Beier’s characterization, I would argue that Wenger was defiant in the face of societal expectations about her personal occasionally borrowed Yoruba forms. Classic adire eleko patterns and professional life. As Okonjo Ogunyemi put it: “She recog- like Olokun often use grids as the basis for “translation symme- nized art in objects that no one else saw as art. Pots of different try” or repeating geometric arrangements that extend to infinity. kinds, calabashes, and so on adorned her walls. No one did that Additionally, certain design elements, including spinning tops back then.”10 Okonjo Ogunyemi’s comments are particularly inter- and diagonal subdivided checkerboards, were standardized within esting in light of the cultlike status that Wenger acquired among configurations like Olokun (Kriger 2006: 159). Wenger borrowed a certain segment of the Nigerian intelligentsia, beginning in the the grid, top, and checkerboard elements in batiks like Obatala 1960s and continueing unabated even after the artist’s death in Catches Sango’s Horse (1958) (Fig. 5). She uses them in expected 2009. And Okonjo Ogunyemi’s narrative of Queen’s School’s early ways to create a grid, but this grid remains only a frame to larger, years is undoubtedly also shaped by her own foundational 1980s more important elements in the center or offset on the side of the contributions to theorizing “African womanism,” an autonomous batik. The Yoruba motifs also serve as building blocks for these alternative to Western feminism that contextualized the criticism larger elements—anthropomorphic figures and objects that float of gender relationships in relation to African specificities (Arndt on circular or rectangular blank fields.11 Their large, angular limbs 2000; Ogunyemi 2006). It is notable that Wenger was still married are engaged in energetic and sometimes tortured movements that to the expatriate literary and cultural critic Ulli Beier during this suggest expressionist inspiration but also embody narrative—spe- period. Indeed, it was Oba Laoye in Ede who introduced Beier and cifically her interpretation of Yoruba mythology. With this, Wenger Wenger to aspects of Yoruba religion and its associated arts and developed a new artistic language grounded in Yoruba traditions thus laid the foundation for their subsequent deep engagement (Beier 1975: 25; Drewal 2003). with Yoruba traditions (Okeke-Agulu 2015: 302; Oyeweso 2017: Osayimwese Omigie probably saw some examples of Wenger’s 35). Beier would later “discover” and canonize the work of Zaria textile work during school visits to her workshop. But it is even Art Society members like Uche Okeke. It seems highly likely, then, more likely that she encountered numerous examples of the work that Osayimwese Omigie met Beier and was introduced to the idea of local aladire (female adire practitioners) from the ranks of the of a modern Nigerian art rooted in but different from indigenous seventeen historic indigo-dyeing families of Ede and observed their artistic traditions almost ten years before he visited NCAST in mysterious indigo vats, the careful, almost meditative painting of

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osayimwese.indd 71 2/20/2019 12:23:53 PM 6 Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie, silk- used a basic vocabulary of dots and diagonal lines. Perhaps we can screen, undated; 82 cm x 43 cm. Courtesy of Isoken Omigie Odukogbe. recognize the basic circular adire motif with its star-shaped center produced by tying raffia fibers around seeds or small pebbles in Osayimwese Omigie’s dot element: tiny dots near the center of the patterns onto undyed fabric, and long arrays of dyed cloths drying piece quickly transform into larger round forms with empty cen- in the sun. Between Oba Laoye’s efforts to modernize Ede and si- ters that themselves twist and stretch into a new vocabulary of fill. multaneously renew Yoruba cultural practices, the dynamic indi- Meanwhile, the diagonal lines that fill the fields between the curves go-dyeing woman-led industry of the town, and Wenger’s artistic create the illusion of three-dimensional depth in some areas of the experiments in and around Ede, Osayimwese Omigie was well- piece. The resulting work achieves dynamic movement and repose placed to develop and pursue an interest in both modern and tra- at the same time. Together, its forms suggest a certain anthropo- ditional Nigerian arts. morphism even as they resist representationalism—both attributes found in the work of other Zaria Society artists. It has gone completely unremarked in existing scholarship that NIGERIAN WOMEN LEARNING AND TEACHING Osayimwese Omigie was the only woman to graduate from the ART: THE ZARIA DAYS Fine Arts Department at NCAST in the first five years of its ex- An undated silkscreen preserved by Osayimwese Omigie’s family istence (Ahmadu Bello University 1990: 15).12 How did the over- may offer some insight into the artist’s early work. Two versions of whelmingly male faculty and student body receive her? Family the piece are known: a small piece of white yardage (about 82 cm x and friends recall that Josephine was deeply involved in student 43 cm) with a print replicated three times side-to-side (Fig. 6), and affairs during her Zaria years. She participated in elegant evening a single red and blue print of the same pattern set in canvas and parties as well as dramatic performances and costumed parades. wood frame. In the unframed version of the work, two partial lines According to her obituary, “she was entrusted with the welfare of of triangles define the long edges of the pattern module. Though her fellow students and ensured that the students were properly fed they are reminiscent of the diagonal subdivided checkerboard … For this, she was affectionately called ‘Seriki Tuwo’ (leader of Olokun square motif, Osayimwese Omigie broke with convention porridge).”13 This nickname suggests that her classmates envisioned by stringing the constituent elements of the checkerboard into an her in a nurturing role. Preserved photographs do not necessarily insistent horizontal line. Between the triangular frame, two large substantiate this image, however. Though she is frequently the only “eyes” dominate the composition. The first eye is built up by con- female student depicted in photographs of Art Department events, centrically replicating the lines of a double-pointed oval. The final she appears self-assured and at ease among her male colleagues. lines of this form are distorted so that they no longer form a point In addition, several photographs show Osayimwese Omigie with but remain open and bent. The second eye is created in the same a small group of female friends—always the same faces—implying way but is slightly smaller and rotated forty-five degrees. These that she created a network of women colleagues from elsewhere on curved lines set the tone for the rest of the piece, which consists of campus who provided companionship and support. globular shapes and curved areas between them, so the entire piece Given Western art’s predilection to view women’s artistic work as is a series of curved lines and fields that appear to connect seam- craft, one also wonders if Osayimwese Omigie had complete free- lessly with each other. To fill in the fields, Osayimwese Omigie dom of choice in her area of specialization in the European-style

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osayimwese.indd 72 2/20/2019 12:23:53 PM curriculum at NCAST. Her class (1963) was the first to include a Omigie followed in the footsteps of Nigeria’s first formally trained textile design specialization (Ahmadu Bello University 1990: 15; teacher of art, the pioneer “itinerant” instructor and artist Aina Okeke-Agulu 2015: 73). In addition to her as the lone female, four Onabolu (Oloidi 1986: 112). Her practice therefore referenced a men graduated with this specialty. Thus, by this time, British colo- model that preceded the studio-based ideal promulgated by Zaria nial discourse had successfully transformed what it formerly mar- Society chroniclers. Yet, when women are discussed, teaching art ginalized as a traditional female activity into an acceptable male is suddenly read as a sign of unfulfilled potential. occupation. At the same time, the fact that the first female fine arts At the root of this contradiction lies a corpus of strongly held graduate of NCAST specialized in textiles may indicate that the as- views about the nature of Nigerian women and their role in so- sociation between textile work and women lingered. Nike Davies- ciety. These views amount to a negative essentialism that sees Okundaye—the most successful woman artist to emerge from the gender as biological rather than socially constructed: women Osogbo workshops operated in the 1960s by Ulli Beier, Susanne are nurturing by nature, ergo, their role is to mother children or Wenger, and Georgina Beier (Beier’s second wife) in collaboration serve in some other nurturing capacity, like teaching and nursing, with local performance artist Duro Ladipo—described how the that is by definition inferior to more “rigorous” pursuits (Cortina predominantly male Osogbo artists-in-training coopted the ar- and San Ramon 2006; Denzer 1994; Fuss 1989). For example, in tistic knowledge and labor of their wives, which was grounded in a book dedicated to reclaiming a space for women in the history traditional Yoruba division of labor in the home (Vaz 1995). The of Nigerian art, contributors attribute the dearth of woman art- emergence of textiles as a concentration at NCAST can perhaps be ists to a disconnect between women’s “gentle disposition” and the understood as the result of a similar process of appropriation of “physical and mental demands of studio work” (Oshinowo 2004: traditionally female Nigerian labor and knowledge. 147; Buhari 2004: 174). In response to feminist critiques like that Similarly, in modern Western culture, teaching is figured as a of Nkiru Nzegwu, contributors to the volume argue that Western female occupation. Most attempts to understand the dearth of feminist analyses cannot adequately account for gender relations women in the history of modern Nigerian art point to the ten- in African contexts. Rather, they propose to replace Western dency of female art school graduates to pursue teaching careers. feminist critique with “positive gender concepts” built on indig- According to Simon Ikpakronyi (2004: 22), the pioneer Nigerian enous African principles (Ikwuemesi 2004: 164; Aniakor 2004: woman artist Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu failed to have as much 158; Buhari 2004: 174). of an impact as her male colleagues because she became an art However, the charge against Western feminism has arguably teacher. Art historian Pat Oyelola (2004: 142) applies the same logic been resolved by the emergence of disciplinary perspectives to Osayimwese Omigie: “Omigie’s area of interest was art teach- known loosely as African feminism. Some scholars have noted ing so it is not surprising that she did not become a full-fledged that African feminism is “distinctly heterosexual, pro-natal, and studio artist.” Similarly, in his discussion of Nigerian women visual concerned with many ‘bread, butter, culture, and power’ issues,” artists, Kolade Oshinowo (2004: 144) contrasts “enduring pro- but is also “pro­democratic” and politically active (Mikell 2003: 109, fessional studio practice” with other kinds of artistic practice as- 1997:4). Unlike Western feminism, African feminism concerns sociated with women. itself with “multiple oppressions,” which it responds to by empha- The implication that teaching art does not constitute a valid sizing “cultural linked forms of public participation” over “indi- form of art practice needs to be challenged. Arguably, the ability to vidual female autonomy” (Mikell 2003: 105, 1997: 4; Steady 1996). teach art is contingent on knowing how to make art. One is hard- Indeed, African feminism scrutinizes both recent legal constructs pressed to envision a teaching studio in which the art teacher does and indigenous cultural norms to evaluate whether they actually not strive to demonstrate a command of their media (jegede 2001; benefit African women. Oloidi 1986: 108). This mastery-based model of teaching seems African feminism can therefore offer a useful counterpoint to to have been employed at NCAST itself and would therefore have the familiar argument that women have never been central to ar- been familiar to Osayimwese Omigie. There are certainly differ- tistic production in Nigeria. This claim invokes indigenous norms ences between the two modes of art practice as the gradual sep- in two ways: 1) by arguing that men in Africa are the traditional aration of professional art training from art education training at producers of art, and 2) by asserting that media in Africa are gen- NCAST over the course of the late 1950s suggests. Conventionally, der-specific. Sociologist Oyeronke Oyewumi decisively debunks as Roy Barker, former chair of fine arts at NCAST, contended, an this argument for at least one Nigerian cultural tradition when artist becomes a true artist only if he possesses that illusive “spark” she shows that “anatomical distinctions in Yoruba culture are in- of genius, rather than as a result of his training (Okeke-Agulu cidental and do not define social hierarchy, occupations, or func- 2015: 73). Barker’s conception of the new Nigerian artist is prob- tions” and “gender dichotomies are not inherent in any art form; lematic on at least two counts: his resolute understanding of art- rather gender models are part of the critical apparatus” inherited ists as male, and his assumption that genius is innate rather than from Western intellectual traditions (Oyewumi 2012: 165; Bakere- socially constructed. Yusuf 2003). Oyewumi goes on to assert that, while motherhood Indeed, the distinction between studio practice and teaching is paradigmatic of gender in “gendercentric” worldviews, in the seems to be in part an artifact of art historical scholarship. Many Yoruba tradition mothers represent universal human attributes Zaria Society artists became teachers. Solomon Wangboje, Bruce and motherhood is both “earthly” and “otherworldly, pre-earthly, Onobrakpeya, Yusuf Grillo, and even Uche Okeke had long careers pregestational, presocial” (Oyewumi 2012: 171). Historically, for in art education that did not prevent them from being perceived the Yoruba, motherhood and its attendant characteristics and ac- as artists (jegede 2001; Oyelola 2004: 143). Indeed, as she hopped tivities have been anything but disadvantaged and subordinate. from school to school in the early years of her career, Osayimwese The absence of women in histories of Nigerian art cannot therefore

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osayimwese.indd 73 2/20/2019 12:23:53 PM be automatically explained away by reference to the constraints or kneeling. Her upper torso is bare, but a wrapper (or multiple imposed by traditional gender roles. strings of beads) hides her lower body and a gele (headtie) encir- A “gender-conscious” rather than “gendercentric” perspective cles her head. Behind her and to her right is a much smaller figure may help us make sense of Osayimwese Omigie’s case. By contrast whose wide hips, narrow waist, and pointed chest suggest a female with the restrictive narrative of encumbering motherhood that has body. Her arms reach up to support a large object balanced on her marginalized Osayimwese Omigie until now, the artist’s daughter head in the time-honored pose of the African woman carrying remembers accompanying her mother to various art exhibitions in a calabash. But there is no realism here: the larger woman’s arm Lagos in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Kaplan 1997, 1993; Lopasic splays out unnaturally below the elbow to curve into her lap and 1997).14 Given her Zaria pedigree and presence in Lagos, it seems the background figure has almost as many arms as a spider. Typical likely that Osayimwese Omigie would have been involved in some of the wax-resist technique, the major lines and important shapes of the early initiatives to professionalize Nigerian art that started of this batik have been left a crackled white while the large fields of in that city, including the Nigerian Council for the Advancement space and background have been dyed an indigo-purple. But these of Arts and Culture and the Society of Nigerian Artists (itself pop- dark fields are almost entirely filled in with lines, dots, scales, and ulated originally by former Zaria Society artists) (Okeke-Agulu triangles in crackled white and smooth pink that follow the con- 2015: 227).15 Several photographs from the family’s collection tours of the sitting figure and frame her in a sea of activity. Because depict Osayimwese Omigie showing her work at (unnamed) exhi- of its strong directional orientation and centralized elements, this bitions and conferences in the 1970s. We can picture this “short,” piece, even more than the silkscreen in Figure 6, is meant to be “plump,” “fair skinned” woman visiting the long-awaited Festival experienced frontally as a two-dimensional, wall-hung work of art. of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977 with her three young chil- What is astounding about this work is the way in which the curvi- dren in tow.16 Indeed, her visit is recorded for posterity by two linear lines that define the sitting woman appear to flow continu- matching wood carvings—replicas of the iconic Edo ivory mask- ously into all other lines in the piece. Almost nowhere does a line shaped hip pendant of Queen-Mother Idia that had been chosen as end abruptly. Everywhere is calm, graceful movement. the symbol for the festival—that she brought home and presented Who are these women and what is their significance in this art- to her brother. These would not have been simple souvenirs for work? The kneeling bare-breasted woman is a standard trope in Osayimwese Omigie, who may have identified culturally with the Yoruba wood sculpture. Moyo Okediji points out that the nude mask, seen it as a potential example of traditional Nigerian art ripe kneeling woman was a common motif on the divination tappers for reintegration into modern Nigerian aesthetics, and been aware of Ifa priests, where nudity served as a means of communication of the controversy surrounding the British Museum’s refusal to re- between humans and the gods by referencing the solemnity and patriate the mask (Apter 2005: 62).17 sacredness of the moment of creation in the posture of a woman in Osayimwese Omigie participated in exhibitions but she also so- labor (Okediji 1991: 34; Akinyemi 2016: 342). The adornments of cialized with other artists. Illustrious NCAST fine arts graduates Osayimwese Omigie’s seated woman offer additional clues. Clearly and fellow teachers and artists like Onobrakpeya and Wangboje incised and highlighted in pink on her cheek are the three narrow were regular visitors to her homes in Lagos and Benin City and vertical scarifications often associated with Yoruba identity (Ojo were known to members of the extended family. Though her 2008: 367; Drewal 1995: 83). Conversely, the two horizontal lines friendships with these men may be attributed to their shared that encircle the bare-breasted woman’s forehead are not known to presence at NCAST in the 1950s and their common Edo-related correspond with any particular Nigerian ethnic tradition of body cultural identities, it is equally likely that they shared a vision for art. In the nineteenth century, body markings had served as mark- a contemporary Nigerian art. Indeed, Onobrakpeya gifted his ers of ethnic identity, aesthetic statements, and, in certain forms, as former classmate a signed etching, Emedjo, dated 1974, that hangs medicinal and spiritual media. But scarification declined from the on a wall in the family home today. Like much of his art from this late nineteenth century as the Yoruba political situation stabilized period, Emedjo invokes Urhobo and Benin folktales and mytho- and Western influence recoded body markings as “backward” logical creatures and places. Nephew Omozuwa Osayimwese rec- (Nevadomsky and Aisien 1995: 62). Was Osayimwese Omigie ollects that an average visit to Osayimwese Omigie’s house during reclaiming this practice and transmuting it into the modern school vacations between the late 1970s and mid-1980s meant media of wall-hung art? watching the artist carefully dip textiles into buckets of dye and Below the scarified face, Osayimwese Omigie renders her bare- then spread them on clotheslines strung across her backyard.18 breasted woman’s neck and arms with lines interspersed with dots This is not the profile of a woman who was prevented from sustain- that evoke beaded necklaces. Her color palette of muted pink and ing her artistic practice by marriage, motherhood, or domesticity. white on an indigo-purple background recalls what art historian Rather, Osayimwese Omigie’s case offers a picture of how the pro- Bolaji Campbell has described as the typical deployment of the gressive feminist vision of modern Nigerian urban womanhood three Yoruba chromatic categories in shrine painting and the use that emerged in the 1950s may have functioned on the ground. of color as a tool to communicate, transform, and elevate in Yoruba Though her forms were generally nonrepresentational, her aesthetics in general. Similarly, dots are a common Yoruba strategy choice of medium and technique, in the context of both Nigerian for “communicating with the divine” but are also a creative device and Western practices, privileges womanhood. In terms of con- for harmonizing and enhancing a work (Campbell 2008: 41). tent, only one work identified so far is explicitly about women. Here, too, by refusing to apply these dots within the segmented This wax-resist wall hanging or batik depicts two women (Fig. 1). geometric framework typical of adire and many Yoruba decora- The woman in the foreground occupies almost the entire height tive arts, Osayimwese Omigie imaginatively reclaims a Nigerian and width of the fabric. She is shown in partial profile, sitting aesthetic tradition for a modern purpose. Furthermore, the fact

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osayimwese.indd 74 2/20/2019 12:23:53 PM Nigerian traditions even as they reference everyday activities and motifs grounded in Nigerian experiences. Under the combined in- fluence of Oba Laoye, the adire makers of Ede, Edo textile trading traditions and Margaret Jose Osayimwese’s own trading activities, Susanne Wenger, and Ulli Beier, Osayimwese-Omigie may have already realized that the future lay in some kind of synthesis of the old and the new and the indigenous and the foreign. As Chika Okeke-Agulu has argued for the emergence of an avant-garde at Osogbo in the 1960s, any notion of a unidirectional vector of influ- ence from “primitivist” European art workshop teachers to naïve African students is oversimplistic. This applies equally to under- standing the Zaria Society and conceptualizing the work and life of Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese-Omigie (Okeke-Agulu 2013: 154, 2015: 154). The case of the invisible Zaria Society woman supports the argument that modernism in Africa was a byproduct of co- lonialism and of a modernity experienced simultaneously across multiple geographies (Salami 2010; Okoye 2008).

BEYOND ZARIA: TEXTILE ART AND FASHION

That was one of her classic designs. With the thing around the neck. Like lions’ teeth. You could not buy this in the market. You could buy adire, ankara, akwete, and lace. Occasionally you could buy a special print. Like what that woman in Osogbo did. Big figures all over. I made a dark colored dress out of that cloth. But that was unusual. Most of the prints had designs all over. It did not matter how you sewed them. With Josie’s cloth, you had to arrange the design. You could also buy that print with what looked like diamonds in the front 7 Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie, boubou, and at the back. They called it “Africa print.” But it did not have the ca. 1970s. Wax resist batik; L: 141 cm Courtesy of Dennese Clarke Osayimwese designs around the neck like Josie’s cloth. Dennese Clarke Osayimwese, interview with author, Providence, RI, May 2018 that Osayimwese Omigie’s figures are engaged in everyday activi- ties suggests that they represent generic female ideal types like the wise old woman and the young woman hard at work rather than Between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s, Osayimwese Omigie specific people or mythological beings or deities. created numerous textile designs in batik and tie-dye for family If Osayimwese Omigie included distinct ethnic markers and and friends who transformed them into apparel. Extant examples cultural motifs in this work, then she did so largely to signpost its of these works like that in Figure 7 are useful for reconstructing Nigerian-ness rather than to replicate traditional art. Thus the na- her practice. The argument that only textiles that are framed and tionalism typically identified with Zaria Society works is also an el- designed to be viewed frontally are worthy of being designated as ement of Osayimwese Omigie’s oeuvre. It is possible that her deep art is problematic (Ikpakronyi 2004: 35). For one, it implies that commitment to Christianity prevented her from fully embracing the transformation of carefully woven and dyed textiles into cloth- elements of traditional Nigerian culture in her art to the same ing is a new phenomenon. Oral traditions and archaeological ev- extent as her Zaria Society colleagues.19 In Onobrakpeya’s Ahwaire idence prove otherwise. Secondly, the notion that textiles must be in the Spirit World (1961), for instance, non-Christian references wall-hung to be understood in aesthetic terms completely ignores are very clear in the anthropomorphized figure of a tortoise facing a growing body of scholarship that looks at clothing and fashion as a shrine. Onobrakpeya has written several times about how he intertwined aesthetic and social forms in historical and contempo- had to fight against the Nigerian public’s perception of his work rary Nigeria. In her analysis of traditional Northern Edo textiles, as non-Christian “fetish” (Singletary 1999: 41, 336). Peter Probst Jean Borgatti (1983) writes that cloth and clothing “amplify” the (2011: 43) has written about how parental concern about “pagan wearer’s presence and structure behavior. Historically, they func- practices” slowed Jimoh Buraimoh’s affiliation with the new move- tioned as individual aesthetic enhancements as well as markers of ment in Osogbo. And Richard Singletary (1999: 10) has shown sacred space. Likewise, Yorubas, she says, have long understood that European figurations of Nigerian art as “pagan” created some cloth as an outward expression of one’s station in life. For them, tensions in the early years of missionary and colonial development clothing has been the most significant form of aesthetic expres- of formal art education in Nigeria. It is likely that similar concerns sion (Ben-Amos 1978: 52). Rowland Abiodun goes even further affected Osayimwese Omigie. by asserting that cloth (aso)—everything that is worn, including Certainly, Osayimwese Omigie’s batiks from the 1970s suggest the outward appearance of objects—is the ultimate agency of re- some allegiance to Wenger, especially in their large lines and use generation among humans and the orisa (Abiodun 2014: 176). of basic elements like dots familiar from adire. Yet Osayimwese As Judith Blyfield and Elisha Renne, among others, have argued, Omigie’s works contain few overt gestures to Yoruba, Edo, or other the significance of the link between apparel, aesthetics, and social

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osayimwese.indd 75 2/20/2019 12:23:54 PM 8a–b Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie, boubou designs, before 1978; black-and-white photographs Courtesy Isoken Omigie Odukogbe.

9 Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie, February 22, 1995, Ugbowo, Benin City. Courtesy Dennese Clarke Osayimwese. Caftans, boubous, and zippered A-line skirts replaced imported Western-style skirts and blouses and the cumbersome traditional iro (waist wrapper) and buba (T-shaped top) for women. Yet, as the epigraph at the beginning of this section suggests, there was something distinctive about Osayimwese Omigie’s cloth and the expression only expanded in the late-colonial and independence outfits created using it. As was typical, the designer of Osayimwese years (Borgatti 1983: 10; Nevadomsky and Aisien 1995; Byfield Omigie’s boubou carefully cut and laid out the pattern of the dress 2004: 33; Renne 2004). More recently, fashion is being recognized to maintain the continuity of the fabric’s pattern and highlight as an important aspect of African artistic expression that can offer particular moments—in this case, the axis of the starburst aligns insight on local histories as well as global networks and changing with the axis of the boubou and of the female body it adorns. Yet conceptions of tradition and modernity (Rovine 2015: 7; Rhodes Osayimwese Omigie maintains a connection to the adire tradition and Rawsthorn 2007). Approaching textiles from this altered per- not only through the indigo that marks the darkest elements of her spective will go some way toward filling in gaps in the history of composition, but because her design almost reads as a scaled-up the Nigerian women artists (Filani 2004: 151). version of a single element in a geometrically patterned adire And so we can look at the boubou (a long, wide gown worn square, such as the diagonal lines, chevrons, triangles, and stars of in much of West Africa) in Figure 7, tailored by Osayimwese the pattern called “Olokun” (Borgatti, 1983: 53; Picton and Mack Omigie’s sister-in-law using a batik given to her by the artist in the 1989: 156). Though the batik is strongly abstract and geometric, its late 1970s, as a work of art and a functional object embedded in a angular lines are softened by the occasional bleeding and erosion number of overlapping cultural systems. In this batik, Osayimwese of color and line that the batik technique produces. Perhaps it is Omigie adheres to the standard of using two color groups—white this softness that allows us to identify a highly abstracted human and blue in this case (Mijer 1925). She used factory-woven yardage figure with a pointed head and arms and legs akimbo as one of the as the base on which she drew and dyed a design of narrow and focal points of the composition. This figure may generically invoke wide bands and crackled triangles that are mirrored biaxially to some indigenous representations of the human figure such as the create modified starburst shapes. Unlike traditional Yoruba adire, twelfth–fifteenth century conical terracotta head from Ile-Ife or which consists of orthogonal units repeated to create all-over pat- the white-cloaked, hat-wearing Eyo masquerades of Lagos, but it terns that have no focal points, this batik has distinct and multi- is certainly not figural and referential in the manner of the con- ple focii (Kennedy 1971: 24). After their (re)introduction under temporaneous Osogbo School (Abiodun 2014: 25; Probst 2011). the influence of nationalist politics in the 1950s, popular expan- Unlike Osogbo School works—especially those by Twins Seven- sion under the influence of Folashade Thomas-Fahm, Nigeria’s Seven and Jimoh Buraimoh that were characterized in part by their first modern fashion designer newly returned from London in lyrical portrayal of elements of traditional Yoruba history, religion, 1960, and concomitant shaping by the spread of black American folklore, and contemporary experiences (Probst 2011: 77)—in soul culture and its rediscovery of African cultural forms, cloth- this work Osayimwese Omigie does not appropriate any partic- ing styles created from African fabrics—style and cloth both ular Nigerian cultural mythology. Her approach is much more re- often reinvented to reflect modern tastes—became increasingly strained and in line with achieving a synthesis with rather than popular among the Nigerian elite and expatriates (Denzer 2010). a renewal of Nigerian traditions—a principle that has often been

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osayimwese.indd 76 2/20/2019 12:23:55 PM used to distinguish the Zaria and Osogbo Schools. necklines, and her ornate hems beautify the wearer’s feet no matter A series of eight undated black-and-white photographs of neck- what shoes they wear. line and hem designs indicate that Osayimwese Omigie took textile It may be useful here to consider art historian Victoria Rovine’s design for clothing and fashion very seriously (Fig. 8). The photo- distinction between classical and conceptual African fashion graphs are stamped with the name of the studio at which they were design. Classical design refers to “forms that evoke traditional shot, Sunny Decent Photographs on Apapa Road in Lagos, and cultures: the objects, practices, and histories that serve as symbols were therefore likely taken before she moved to Benin City in 1978. of indigenous culture and local histories.” Conceptual design, on Indeed, Osayimwese Omigie’s papers are replete with photographs the other hand, uses “indirect allusion rather than stylistic resem- primarily of women but also of men and children—including blance” to assert its African-ness (Rovine 2015: 110). As a garment herself, family members, and friends—wearing her textiles in the consisting of a particular physical form, aesthetic, mode of con- form of boubous, caftans, and dansiki (a short-sleeve, hip-length struction, and set of associations, the boubou, with its origin in tunic with wide arm holes). Her focus on necklines and hems in Islamic West Africa, represented continuity with the past when it this series indicates that she was conceptualizing her designs as entered modern Nigerian women’s fashion in the 1960s and 1970s. three-dimensional clothing rather than two-dimensional textiles Thus the physical form and mode of tailoring of Osayimwese that could be later converted into clothes. A common strategy is Omigie’s boubous can be designated as classical. However, allu- visible across all eight designs: necklines are emphasized with two sions to local cultures and histories are much less direct in her to four concentric rows of decoration, while hemlines are embel- designs for boubou fabrics—putting them into the category of con- lished with three to six parallel rows in the same style. A variety of ceptual African design. Her boubous blend classic and conceptual simple, geometric shape and line combinations—including a scal- approaches to African fashion. lop and line, linked oblong dots, diamonds, hollow circles and con- A 1995 photograph of Osayimwese Omigie wearing a boubou centric circles with solid centers—make up the building blocks of and gele of her own design shows that the artist continued to work these neck and hemline designs. A complimentary pendant design with the same basic vocabulary almost two decades later (Fig. 9). hangs from the center of each neckline. In three cases, these pen- The design is in indigo, light blue, and white wax resist. Here, she dants are zoomorphic or naturalistic. In the other cases, they are merges what had been two distinct approaches in her 1970s de- geometric patterns created by repeating, rotating, and translating signs: the neckline designs seen in Figure 8 and the full gown pat- the basic neck and hemline motif. Crackled lines are clearly visible terns of the boubou in Figure 7. For this neckline, she created two in the white fields that make up the solids in these figure-ground rows of “teeth” in a vertical scallop and line combination. Below, on designs, suggesting that these are photographs of actual batiks the body of the gown, two sets of sweeping, broad, slightly curved, rather than pencil sketches or initial designs painted on paper. and tapered lines in white and light blue frame a central, large Though these photographs do not communicate color, other curvilinear element. This, quoting sister-in-law Dennese Clarke color photographs and oral testimony confirm that Osayimwese Osayimwese, is Osayimwese Omigie’s “classic” design. To speak of Omigie’s palette often revolved around blue and white tones, an artist’s work as classic is to submit that the artist has developed a perhaps in homage to the indigo traditions of adire and earlier distinctive, highly recognizable style over a lifetime of artistic prac- indigenous Nigerian textiles. Likewise, the use of color to create tice. Similar designs could not be purchased in the market. Nor contrast and of continuous geometric shapes and linear patterns are they seen in the work of the few well-known Nigerian women as decoration brings to mind historical textile West African textile artists who worked in the textile medium. Art, for Osayimwese design techniques such as brocading and embroidery.20 In arche- Omigie, was vocation and avocation. typal boubou styles in West Africa, laborious handmade embroi- dery enhances necklines, yokes, chests, and backs with complex CONCLUSION motifs based on elements of natural world, such as cat’s eyes, and By way of conclusion, I return to my hypothesis that one of motifs from Islamic history and belief, such as the magic square the reasons academic art history has failed to identify “great” (Rovine 2015: 49). Iconic Yoruba garments such as the agbada (a Nigerian women artists is because we have been looking for the large, ankle-length gown with mostly open sides worn by men) wrong thing in the wrong places. As I have argued in this article, were inspired by Hausa garments in the Islamic regions north of art education—where artists like Osayimwese Omigie found their Yorubaland at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the calling—has been considered an inferior form of art practice. That Edo and other non-Islamic ethnic groups only adopted these gar- Osayimwese Omigie spent a significant part of her life teaching ments late in the twentieth century. In all their forms, the ornate girls is notable and may account in part for her absence in the his- patterning and voluminous size of boubous communicate suc- toriography and canonical memory of Nigerian art. It may be the cess and power. Osayimwese Omigie’s painted neckline, pendant, case that there existed a network of Nigerian women artists that and hem designs invoke these messages but translate them into functioned in parallel to the male network. This network would a modern, less-labor-intensive idiom. In her boubous, as in tradi- have been nurtured through academic teaching on one hand. But tional boubou types, these patterns are activated by the movement it may also have been enabled by local practices in which women of the wearer. Where a magic square embroidered onto a Malian passed down their accumulated arts knowledge and vocations to 21 projects its protective power once it makes con- tilbi-style boubou their daughters (Areo and Kalilu 2013: 351; Olowu, Layiwola, et tact with its wearer, Osayimwese Omigie’s patterns draw subtle at- al. 2003). Perhaps we should look for our elusive Nigerian woman tention to the movement of human limbs beneath. Jewelry—layers artists among the “daughters” of pioneering women artists like of beaded necklaces crucial to Yoruba and Edo body ornament Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie. and dress—becomes almost redundant around her embellished

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osayimwese.indd 77 2/20/2019 12:23:55 PM Notes may not have been a factor during her youth. Broude, Norma and Mary D. Garrard, eds. 2005. I thank Rowland Abiodun, Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, 20 In brocading, “weft threads that are supplementary Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After and Isoken Omigie Odukogbe for their assistance with to the threads that form the basic ground structure of the Postmodernism. Berkeley: University of California Press. this research. fabric” are used to create patterns. Whereas embroidery 1 In addition to Osayimwese Omigie, no serious takes place after the fabric has been woven on the loom Brucher, Liz. 2013. “Voices in Art History.” In Linda scholarly histories have been written on such well- and involves embellishments made by sewing stitches Sandino and Matthew Partington (eds.), Oral History in known women artists as Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu with a needle and thread (Kriger 2006: 181, 182). the Visual Arts, pp. 77–84. New York: Bloomsbury. (b. 1921) who was the first Nigerian art lecturer of any 21 A tilbi is a Malian boubou style made of fine cotton gender at NCAST, Afi Ekong (b. 1930) who was the first or damask in muted colors and embroidered with a Buhari, Jerry. 2004. “The Changing Female Calendar.” director of the Lagos gallery of the Nigerian Council for range of standardized symbolic abstract motifs in silk In Paul Chike Dike and Patricia Oyelola (eds.), Nigerian Art and Culture and the only founding female member thread (Rovine 2015: 49). Women in Visual Art: History, Aesthetics, and Interpreta- of the Society of Nigerian Artists in 1963, and the tion, pp. 171–74. Lagos, Nigeria: National Gallery of Art. NCAST alumna and self-declared surrealist painter who References cited made a splash when she arrived in Lagos in the 1960s, Abiodun, Rowland. 2014. Yoruba Art and Language: Byfield, Judith. 2004. “Dress and Politics in Post-World Colette Omogbai (b. 1942). Seeking the African in African Art. New York: Cambridge War II Abeokuta (Western Nigeria).” In Jean Allman 2 “Late Deaconess Josephine Ifueko Omigie, Burial University Press. (ed.), Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress, Service, 1st November 1997, 2:00 pm, Outing Service, pp. 31–49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2nd November, 1997, 10:00 am.” Abiodun, Rowland. 1990. “The Future of African Art Campbell, Bolaji. 2008. Painting for the Gods: Art and 3 “Late Deaconess Josephine Ifueko Omigie, Burial Studies: An African Perspective.” In African Art Studies: Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals. Trenton, N.J.: Service, 1st November 1997, 2:00 pm, Outing Service, The State of the Discipline, pp. 11–23. Washington DC: African World Press. 2nd November, 1997, 10:00 am.” National Museum of African Art. 4 Most of the artworks discussed in these article are Adebayo, A. G. 1994. “Money, Credit, and Banking in Cortina, Regina, and Sonsoles San Roman, ed. 2006. unsigned and thus cannot be definitively attributed to Precolonial Africa. The Yoruba Experience.” Anthropos Women and Teaching: Global Perspectives on Feminiza- Osayimwese Omigie. However, they are taken largely tion of a Profession. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. from a collection held by her family, who attribute them 89 (4/6): 379–400. to her: Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie collection, Adekilekun, Abdul-Lateef. 1987. Oba Adetoyese Laoye, Cooper, Barbara. 2005. “Oral Sources and the Challenge held by Isoken Omigie Odukogbe, Anthony Village, the Late Timi of Ede. Ede: Ilereke Printing Press. of African History.” In John Edward Philips (ed.), Lagos, Nigeria. Information on some details of the art- Writing African History, pp. 191–215. Rochester, NY: ist’s life comes from documents also held by the family. Ahmadu Bello University. 1990. Zaria Art School University of Rochester Press. 5 The Edo-Akures (Edo ne Akure, Edo n’ekue, (1955–1990): Catalogue of an Exhibition by Students and Ado-Akuree) are people of mixed Yoruba and Edo Lecturers of the Department of Fine Art and Industrial Cvetkovich, Ann. 2013. “The Craft of Conversation: ancestry who reside in Benin City and its environs Design, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, May 31–June Oral History and Lesbian Feminist Practice.” In Linda and in certain districts in Akure as a function of the Sandino and Matthew Partington (eds.), Oral History in Benin Kingdom’s incursions into Yorubaland since the 1990. Lagos: Repro Crafts Limited. the Visual Arts, pp. 125–34. New York: Bloomsbury. fifteenth century. Akintoye, S. 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