VOL. 29 a Nigerian Song 61 Literatus Encountered Uli Murals at Family Compounds Chinese Literati Painting Andin Rural Shrines
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Rutgers Art Review The Journal of Graduate Research in Art History VOL. 29 A Nigerian Song 61 Literatus encountered uli murals at family compounds Chinese Literati Painting andin rural shrines. Agulu3 He to receivedthe east, hiswhere early he education first in Concepts From The Song colonially administrated Anglophone schools; Dynasty In The Contemporary unlike most Nigerian artists of his generation, Art Of Obiora Udechukwu * he had art training in both primary and secondary school.4 Udechukwu enrolled at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria in northern Nigeria in 1965, KRISTEN WINDMULLER-LUNA where pogroms perpetrated by the northern immigrants interrupted his studies. Many deaths occurredHausa and in Fulani reaction against to a federal-level southern Nigerian coup that biora Udechukwu is a member of the reasons.5 Nsukka group, an artistic network from ininvolved the south, Igbo where military he officers,and other among Igbo receivedother Othe University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where little support In 1966, or sympathy Udechukwu from fled the to Nigerian Igboland he studied after anti-Igbo pogroms forced him government.6 There, he enrolled at the University to leave the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. An accomplished artist and poet, his work was break in rural Agulu, where he encountered Igbo shaped by his experiences during the 1967 to villageof Nigeria, culture, Nsukka, including spending ephemeral his first uli summer body art, 1970 Biafra war. During the war, his focus shifted the form that became central to his later artistic from a singular concern for aesthetic forms and practice.7 Concurrently, civil war broke out in qualities to a blend of social concerns, aesthetic Nigeria as the south seceded as the independent interests and experimentation that continued Republic of Biafra in 1967. Characterized by even after the war’s end.1 He is best known for blockades, destruction, human misery and ruined his integration of uli, an Igbo artistic practice, land, the war was mostly fought in southern into politically charged pen and ink and brush Igboland until Biafra surrendered and the two and ink drawings created during the 1970s and countries reunited into a single Nigeria in 1970.8 1980s. In a 1981 article for Nigeria Magazine, he outlined the similarities between uli and li Early in 1968, Udechukwu was employed as (Chinese painting), citing painting theories and a civil servant by the Audio Visual Unit of the practices common to the artistic practice of Song Directorate of Propaganda, part of the Biafran literati (wen-jen hua), which he intentionally Ministry of Information. Alongside fellow Nsukka incorporated into his own artistic practice.2 students, he designed posters, magazine layouts, Though not stated in his article, Udechukwu also cartoons, and other art for wartime propaganda adapted other aspects of Song literati practice to campaigns.9 While working for the government, his own art, thereby creating art in the mode of a he created his own art and joined a poetry group Song literatus. This paper addresses Udechukwu’s composed of artists from the Odunke Community. appropriation of Song literati artistic practices According to Udechukwu, “Poetry provided a while situating his art in a greater global context. survival tonic for some of us during the Nigerian Civil War.”10 He focused on uli wall painting for Obiora Udechukwu was born in 1946 in the southern market city of Onitsha. He lived and studied in this urban setting throughout his thenhis required his BA thesis undergraduate on the subject. field 11research Despite at his youth, but also maintained ties with family war-interruptedNsukka, first writing studies, a 1966 Udechukwu term paper received and a A Nigerian Song Literatus Chinese Literati Painting Concepts From The Song Dynasty 62 In The Contemporary Art Of Obiora Udechukwu agwolagwo (concentric coil), visible on Igbo-Ukwo uli.12 Nsukka bronzes and poetry dating to the ninth and tenth wasBA (1972) also where and an he MFA met (1977)the artist in Uchepainting Okeke, from centuries CE, while Sarah Margaret Adam’s 2002 whoseNsukka; paintings his MFA andthesis drawings was also Udechukwu on dissertation recounts both historical and recent encountered before the war but had not linked practice.17 While uli painting’s exact origins are to uli.13 uli body painting from Zaria in 1970, he learned about Natural appeared in the literature in the eighteenth Synthesis, From a theory Uche Okeke,of merging who indigenouscame to Nsukka art century;unknown, the the lack first of references long-term toscholarly research traditions with western traditions to create a means that it is still unclear if uli body and wall new, modern art form.14 Most scholars credit the painting evolved simultaneously.18 Women are modernist paradigm of Natural Synthesis to the considered the appropriate uli artists because Zaria Art Society, a group of students from the of their relationship with Ala, the pan-Igbo Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, earth goddess who governs creation, creativity Zaria who questioned the supremacy of their and beauty, all traits that women are specially Anglo-centric art training during the late 1950s endowed with.19 Only Igbo girls and women and early 1960s. Notably, Sylvester Ogbechie has practice uli, painting their skin with intricate argued that this modernist paradigm did not semi-permanent drawings for both social originate in the postcolonial era with the Zaria events and rites of passages; rare accounts of Art Society, but decades earlier in the works of men wearing uli record the painting of vertical Ben Enwonwu. Enwonwu may have used uli up uli stripes on young men, including village to four decades before the members of the Zaria wrestlers (Fig. 1).20 Earth pigments are used to Art Society incorporated its aesthetics it into create identical or stylistically similar designs their own theories. His combination of the best on public shrine and housing compound walls, of Igbo culture and European representational which are distinguished from uli painted on the human body by the incorporation of animal and onconventions the ethnographic was likely study influenced of Nigerian by his art, which surfaces.21 Igbo uli paintings are composed of heinstructor believed K.C. allowed Murray, his who students placed to extensive retain their value human figurative motifs painted on architectural cultural identity in the face of outside forces and coherent unit on the surface of a long wall. Unlike educational curricula.15 Regardless of the current Chineseseparate handscrolls but unified createdareas of inaction intimate that settingsform a debates centered around the pre- or post-colonial for mostly private consumption, uli wall paintings origins of its theories and aesthetics, Natural are visible to the public, frequently commented on Synthesis appealed to Udechukwu’s interests in or judged aesthetically by passerby.22 Both indigenous art and stimulated his explorations skin and wall paintings are semi-permanent of Igbo uli as he participated in Nsukka’s Uli artistic works executed by women, though men Revivalist Movement. can commission wall paintings, as Udechukwu did to obtain a detailed specimen to study for Some Igbo peoples in south-central Nigeria his BA thesis.23 practice uli, which refers to mural painting, drawing done on the human body with a uli painting appears decoratively mmanwuli (painting knife), and the plant- abstract—while its decorative factor is highly derived liquid used to make the drawing on valued,At first glance,especially by the artists themselves, uli is skin.16 Elizabeth Willis’ research points to also valued for its power to express moral values the antiquity of uli’s linear forms, such as the and a multi-leveled reality.24 Uli paintings are A Nigerian Song Literatus Chinese Literati Painting Concepts From The Song Dynasty 63 In The Contemporary Art Of Obiora Udechukwu stylized representations of ritual or everyday some of his drawings along with uli. Nsibidi is the objects, but are themselves imbued with symbolic pictographic script linked to the Ekpe institution meaning; for example, an image of a kola nut both depicts an object used in divination rites and appears as decorative patterns to the uninitiated functions as a symbol of luck.25 Udechukwu also andof the as Efik patterned and the layers Northeastern of proverbial Igbo, meanings which studied nsibidi, which he incorporated into his to the initiated. Combing nsibidi and uli—both ideogrammatic, calligraphic scripts—in his work, Udechukwu created a visual language that not but also allowed it to function as a vehicle for socialonly imbued criticism his and art satirewith historical through thesignificance, embedded symbolism of the traditional forms.26 Udechukwu’s post-war production was characterized by a nearly two-decade period of black and white ink drawings that utilized three underlying principles of uli: designs placed strategically to obtain a balance of positive and negative space; a reduced number of elements and shapes; and spontaneity and directness of lines.27 Unlike other African artists who primarily explored relationships between indigenous African and Western artistic traditions, Udechukwu extended Natural Synthesis by In 1976, he traveled abroad, viewing Chinese art atincorporating the British Museum Chinese ininfluences London, intothe Walkerhis work. Art Gallery in Minneapolis and the Art Institute in Chicago.28 During this trip he noted the shared characteristics of Nigerian uli and Chinese li: balancing of positive and negative space; drawing from nature; spontaneity; and artists who were also poets.29 Inspired by this visit and his studies of Chinese art at Nsukka, Udechukwu wrote the article “‘Uli’ and ‘Li:’ Aspects of Igbo and Chinese Drawing and Painting” in a 1981 issue of Nigeria Magazine, analyzing the connections he found. In his article, Udechukwu directly addressed aspects of Chinese painting that he admired and integrated into his own artistic practice. Drawing from his overseas experiences viewing Chinese Fig.