In short
Nigerian modern art’s mid-20th-century “moment,” framed through decolonization politics, colonial education, and the Zaria-based Art Society; it argues Nigerian modernism wasn’t derivative of Europe but a renegotiation of pasts via “natural synthesis,” ending with fragmentation and the 1967 Civil War.
Guests
Chika Okeke Agulu, Princeton professor; author of Postcolonial Modernism, Art and Decolonization in the 20th Century Nigeria. Background: began with art history after being forced out of Nigeria during a military dictatorship; curated a major Uche Okeke retrospective (1993, Gotha Institute, Lagos) and studied art history at the University of South Florida.
Key claims
colonial “indirect rule” and schooling discouraged history and democratic/civil society development; European art teachers didn’t simply bring modernity. Nigerian artists adopted European forms as inspiration, not copying.
Notable examples
Aina Anabolu; Kenneth Murray; Uche Okeke’s “natural synthesis” (Igbo Uli, body drawing, mural painting); Demas Enwoko’s Soldier; Obiora Udechuku’s Blue Figures; Uche Okeke’s About Women’s War (1929 Igbo women resisting colonial rule, revisited in 1965).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Rise of Nigerian Modernism
0:21 to 1:11
Discussion about the increasing recognition of Nigerian modern artists and their historical context.
“In general, the artists of this era have become more recognized outside of their home country in recent decades, from early figures who laid the groundwork like Aina Anabolu, to a towering figure of the 1950s like Ben N.”
Chika Okeke Agulu's Contribution
1:11 to 2:03
Exploration of Chika Okeke Agulu's work and insights into Nigerian art history.
“when a near century of British colonial domination was shed and the many problems of a fragile new independent nation had to be faced.”
Curating Influence: Uche Okeke
2:03 to 4:53
Chika Okeke Agulu discusses his early experiences in curating a retrospective of Uche Okeke.
“Chika Okeke Agulu, you are on the shortlist, or have been on the shortlist of guests I've wanted to have on the show for a long time, so I'm very excited to get the chance to talk to you today.”
Decolonization and Art
4:53 to 6:06
Connecting Nigeria's political decolonization to the cultural and artistic landscape of the mid-20th century.
“The easiest one was to get a student visa to the U.S.”
Challenging Narratives of Modernity
6:06 to 11:44
Discussion on the complexities of colonial education and its impact on modern art narratives in Nigeria.
“sort of having its moment now, well, in Europe and America, at least.”
Influences and Inspirations
11:44 to 14:00
Examining how Nigerian artists, like Aina Onabulu, drew inspiration from diverse sources to create a unique modern art.
“In other words, that these early European teachers that had established some form of art training and so forth, that they brought modernity.”
Exploring Aina Onabulu's Influence
14:00 to 16:50
Learn about Aina Onabulu's role in Nigerian modernism and his interactions with European art teachings.
“Precisely the reason why I would, out of half-generosity, hesitate to say that Picasso and Braque and Matisse were copying African sculptors, right?”
The Characteristics of Nigerian Modernism
16:50 to 20:58
Understand the defining features of Nigerian modernism, including relationships with tradition and progress.
“And that, for me, is a way of signaling that these artists were not mindlessly taking what was given to them, but instead had participated in a constructive discourse.”
Natural Synthesis in Art
20:58 to 24:40
Discover Uche Okeke's concept of natural synthesis and its significance in modern Nigerian art.
“And so this intensive formal experimentation meant studying specific artistic traditions and experimenting with them in order to come up with new forms.”
Synthesis of Ancestral and Christian Traditions
24:40 to 28:07
Explore how contemporary Nigerian artists blend ancestral traditions with Christian influences in their work.
“And what does that work look like, if you could give some kind of idea?”
Show all 16 chapters
Art as a Reflection of Post-Colonial Narratives
28:07 to 29:54
Explore how contemporary artists use historical narratives to comment on post-colonialism.
“synthesis, right, that he was talking about.”
The Role of Intellectual Elite in Nigerian Society
29:54 to 32:54
Discuss the connection between educated elites and their communities in colonial Nigeria.
“I guess my question for you is, how popular was this art?”
Cultural Events and National Identity
32:54 to 36:25
Learn about key exhibitions and cultural movements that shaped Nigerian art during independence.
“the biggest fair in the history of Nigeria in 1960.”
The Impact of the Nigerian Civil War on Modernism
36:25 to 40:06
Understand the effects of the Civil War on Nigerian artistic movements and national identity.
“And then this sort of optimistic period does end.”
Legacy of Nigerian Modernism and Art
40:06 to 42:01
Examine how contemporary artists responded to the challenges of post-war Nigeria.
“Because what then happens is that all of that ambition to create what Frantz Fanon in 1958 had called national culture ended with the war.”
Exploring Ucho Keke's Revolutionary Art
42:01 to 43:31
Learn about Ucho Keke's painting and its significance to Nigerian history.
“in terms of this question of natural synthesis and how that helped them invent new formal modalities, but also in the way that they had begun to diagnose the problem with the nation.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Demas Nwoko:Even as they are commenting on the politics of the present, sometimes they are framed within the context of older historical traditions and narratives and strategies of storytelling.
0:20Uche Okeke:I'm Ben Davis and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Art.net News.
0:31Uche Okeke:Nigerian modern art is having a moment. In London, the Tate has opened a critically acclaimed exhibition called Nigerian Modernism, featuring more than 50 artists who experimented with vibrant new styles in the mid-20th century in the giant and influential West African nation. In general, the artists of this era have become more recognized outside of their home country in recent decades, from early figures who laid the groundwork like Aina Anabolu, to a towering figure of the 1950s like Ben N. Wanwu, to younger innovators of the 50s and 60s, such as Uche Okeke and Demas Enwoko, with many other important names to know and bodies of work to discover.
1:10Uche Okeke:This was an earth-shaking time in Nigerian history, when a near century of British colonial domination was shed and the many problems of a fragile new independent nation had to be faced. These artists were part of figuring out how to express that new sense of identity in images, but their art was not always so celebrated, sometimes dismissed as derivative of European art. Chika Okeke Agulu has been important to the recent re-estimation of Nigeria's art history. He teaches at Princeton and is the author, among many other things, of Postcolonial Modernism, Art and Decolonization in the 20th Century Nigeria, a book that personally excited me very much when I first found it, I have to say.
1:50Uche Okeke:With the taped show drawing a fresh wave of interest, I thought Okeke Agulu would be an excellent guide to what this art was, what it meant, and why it still demands attention today. Chika Okeke Agulu, you are on the shortlist, or have been on the shortlist of guests I've wanted to have on the show for a long time, so I'm very excited to get the chance to talk to you today. Same here. I want to talk about your book, Postcolonial Modernism, but before I talk about your scholarship, I wanted to mention your curating because you begin the book talking about how you were kind of called into this field in 1992 with this unexpected project with an artist.
2:29Uche Okeke:So tell me about that.
2:32Ben Enwonwu:Sure. In 1992, I was a junior lecturer in sculpture and advanced drawing at my alma mater, the University of Nigeria, Nsoka. And I had a teacher and still today my mentor, an artist, Obiara Udechuku, a poet of incredible power. He had called me in to ask if I might be interested in organizing an exhibition of Ucheokeke's work. Right. Now, Ucho Keke at the time was this legend, but he was going to be 60, right, the following year. And I hadn't met him before. He had left the University of Nigeria, Nsoka, before I was admitted as a student. But his shadow was all over the place, given his role in the story of modernism in Nigeria, but also especially the establishment of the Nsoka School.
3:43Ben Enwonwu:there at the UNN, University of Nigeria, Ansoka. So I was like, of course, yes. I hadn't curated an exhibition before. And so to be asked to curate an exhibition of an artist that I had never met, but who was such an influential figure in Nigeria at the time, was an opportunity I wasn't going to miss. And so I said yes, even though I wasn't sure what I was saying yes to in terms of, you know, How do you put on a show? And I went on to organize the retrospective, still remains the most comprehensive retrospective of Uchokeke till today. That opened in 1993 at the Gotha Institute in Lagos. And so that was my initial foray into the history of modernism in Nigeria.
4:39Ben Enwonwu:and from then on, years later when I left University of Nigeria and Soka and Nigeria, I was forced out of the system during the military dictatorship that I had to leave the country. And so what was my option? The easiest one was to get a student visa to the U.S. I had friends who could help with that. And so what was I going to study? I already had my MFA and I wasn't going to do another MFA. So the closest thing to that was art history. Previously, I was a critic for several newspapers and magazines in Nigeria. So I was doing art criticism before then. And so I decided the most adjacent intellectual preoccupation would be art history.
5:29Ben Enwonwu:And so I applied to the University of South Florida to study anime in art history. And then I picked up on where I stopped with the Ucho Kekka exhibition because there had been many questions about not just his own intellectual path and biography, but also the story of all these artists that I had seen in his diaries that he was talking about and this thing called the Art Society. So the MA gave me the opportunity to begin the process of studying that history.
6:03Uche Okeke:And that's the history that I want to dig into today. It's the history that's sort of having its moment now, well, in Europe and America, at least. And before we get into the art history, I want to talk about the history history, because one of the interventions of your book is to connect the art history to the politics and society of this very important time of the mid 20th century Nigeria, which when you move from the period of British indirect rule, they call it British domination of Nigeria to decolonization. So maybe just give a thumbnail sketch for the listeners of what's happening in the mid-20th century in Nigeria.
6:43Uche Okeke:Sure.
6:44Ben Enwonwu:The British effectively annexed and ruled Nigeria as an empire from the very late 19th century through most of the first part of the 20th century, the amalgamation of the northern and southern regions that became Nigeria in 1914. All through that period, it was decades of struggle between the colonial regime and administration and the emerging intellectual elite in Nigeria who saw colonialism as antagonistic to modernity. And Olufemi Taiwo has published on this a book that's very fundamental to me. It's called How Colonialism Preempted Modernity. In other words, he uses the term
7:46Aina Onabolu:socio-cryonics, that colonialism froze cultures and societies where they found them, rather than
7:57Ben Enwonwu:establish the infrastructure for modern state, whether it's education, civil rights, capitalist market capitalism, and democratic dispensation. All of these elements of the
8:14Aina Onabolu:modern state and society, colonialism was not in support of them, right? And so what you then had at the midpoint of the century during the decades of decolonization after World War II is an arm top process of decolonization. And so what artists and writers had to deal with in this moment was to ask themselves how they might participate in this decolonization process.
8:45Ben Enwonwu:The political decolonization, what about the cultural and artistic decolonization of colonial education?
8:53Demas Nwoko:And that meant finding alternatives to the standard educational system that the British imposed, which, as they saw, was not sympathetic to their ambitions, right, for
9:08Aina Onabolu:sovereignty, both political, cultural, and artistic sovereignty. And so that was where things were by mid-century. And so the artists that I was very much interested in were very much in the mix of this moment.
9:23Uche Okeke:So yeah, formal decolonization happens in 1960. And one of the interventions of your book or the provocations of your book really is I think there is a kind of stock or pop postcolonial narrative that you get in a lot of things that there's the organic traditional Nigerian culture. and then there's outside traditions of autonomous art like easel painting for instance that are imposed as cultural imperialism for instance on Nigeria and it's not that you reverse that narrative but you definitely think it's too simple and in some ways you do think that misses how the realities of what the educational system that Nigerian intellectuals were rebelling against in this time period actually was the actual conversation they were having.
10:18Ben Enwonwu:You're absolutely right in reading what I was trying to do in post-colonial modernism. It's standard fair to hear stories about how Europe brought education. In other words, they brought modernity because they brought education. What I was asking is, what education did they bring? What brand of education did they bring?
10:40Demas Nwoko:And that connects to Olufemi Taiwo's sociocryonics, that that education was anything but sympathetic to intellectual sovereignty, intellectual progress of the colonized peoples.
10:54Uche Okeke:Like they didn't actually want to teach them for certain aspects of European history. Like, I love that in your book where they say like, well, maybe we want to Europeanize them, but we don't want to teach them about Oliver Cromwell. You know, we don't want to teach them about...
11:10Aina Onabolu:History was discouraged, for instance, right? Because that's what you learn and they start making trouble
11:17Demas Nwoko:when you know about history. And that's why dictatorial regimes frequently are against the teaching of history, even in post-colonial conditions.
11:28Ben Enwonwu:And so that was the core of my problem, right?
11:33Demas Nwoko:with the way that the history of art in Nigeria and many places on the continent were taught and told. In other words, that these early European teachers that had established some form of art training and so forth, that they brought modernity. In other words, they brought modern art. Actually, I say, absolutely not. They were, in fact, against that. in the same way that indirect rule was against democratic dispensation. That's why they had to empower chiefs and kings and make up chiefs where they didn't have any as nodes of power, rather than encourage the rise and growth of civil society. And so what I was arguing then is that it's not in colonial education that we should look for the source of modernity and modernism.
12:32Demas Nwoko:in Nigeria. Instead, it's in the early work of Nigerians and Africans that, you know, went out on their own to learn forms of art that were alien to their tradition, such as Izo painting or such as figurative naturalism. That these were modernist gestures in the same way that in Europe you had their contemporaries. I know Nabolu, the Nigerian, was a contemporary of Pablo Picasso and George Braque that were going in opposite directions. That in Europe, you had their avant-garde looking to new forms of image making and constructions of images, which they found in other cultures, in Africa and Oceania and elsewhere.
13:26Demas Nwoko:On the other hand, you had people like Aino Nabolu who were coming from these traditions that were not based on figurative naturalism, for whom newness and novelty was in figurative naturalism.
13:41Uche Okeke:One of the provocations of your book is to challenge us to see these Nigerian artists adopting European forms, not as them copying something or some kind of belated form of art, but as a provocation of the same order as Picasso looking to African sculpture for inspiration.
14:03Ben Enwonwu:Precisely the reason why I would, out of half-generosity, hesitate to say that Picasso and Braque and Matisse were copying African sculptors, right? But instead, they were looking to them as sources of inspiration for inventing new forms and modalities for the modern age, similar to what was happening on the African continent where they were looking to figurative
14:31Demas Nwoko:naturalism and photography. because Aina Onabulu was an ardent follower of portrait photography as he was emerging at the time because there was nothing, there was no basis for that kind of image making on the African continent. So photography and figurative naturalism were the ciphers of the new for artists that were coming from those traditions in Nigeria and elsewhere.
14:57Uche Okeke:Yeah, Aina Onabulu, who you have talked about is this, I guess you might call him the grandfather of Nigerian modernism, goes to England in 1920 to study, comes back. And it's interesting to me that you frame him in tension with, he actually was part of bringing the first Western art teacher to Nigeria, this Brit, Kenneth Murray. And the interesting tension is that Kenneth Murray is like basically insisting that Nigerian artists not study European art, but focus specifically on traditional crafts. And it's Aina Anabulu who is saying, no, there's this other tradition. I want to claim that. I think that's very interesting.
15:40Uche Okeke:Is that more or less as important, you would say?
15:41Aina Onabolu:That's the tension that I was pointing to that complicated, a rather simplistic view,
15:48Demas Nwoko:of modernism and modernity in Africa, that he goes and brings this European teacher, but not realizing that the reason he was appointed, that is Kenet Moray, was precisely because he had bought into the ideology of indirect rule, which was simply keep their old traditions because that's a site of their authenticity. To the extent that they align with us and our cultures and so forth, they lose their authenticity, right? And so that tension that began with Kenneth Murray's arrival and Onabulu's insistence on academic realism became for me the basis for articulating the project of modernism in Nigeria at that point.
16:41Demas Nwoko:Because what then happens is that the next generation turned, in some senses, against that early Onabolu naturalistic realism that he brought. And that, for me, is a way of signaling that these artists were not mindlessly taking what was given to them, but instead had participated in a constructive discourse. right? They made clear choices in terms of how they wanted to relate with the past, the present, and the future.
17:16Uche Okeke:That's sort of the prehistory. And Nigerian modernism really refers to, yes, the period of decolonization, the 50s and 60s. You conclude your book by calling it a short-lived yet historically significant, complex, tangled, multilayered, and fraught artistic modernism. How would you describe it? As a style, as a time period? What are the characteristics of Nigerian modernism?
17:41Aina Onabolu:One of the things I did in the book is to, first of all, to
17:45Demas Nwoko:say that this notion of avant-garde is not culturally specific, right? But instead that we can look at what is the primary condition for the avant-garde.
Read the full transcript
18:00Ben Enwonwu:And what I point to is three things. One is a desire to renegotiate one's relationship with the past.
18:12Aina Onabolu:Two, an idea of progress.
18:18Demas Nwoko:And three, intensive formal experimentation. Those three conditions you can apply to any avant-garde. And so when we look at what was happening in Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent during the mid-century, you have these three elements in play.
18:41Aina Onabolu:And so with that, we would then say, how does that apply to Nigeria? And this is where I look to the work of the art society. Right.
18:52Uche Okeke:This is the important part in the story. 1958, the founding of the Art Society Zaria?
18:59Aina Onabolu:Yes. Yeah. So with the founding of the Art Society, what you find is these young art students looking at these three elements that I've identified, right? What is their relationship with past artistic and cultural traditions? So this traditional African art, right? That someone like Kenneth Murray was promoting
19:27Demas Nwoko:as inalienable to the modernist experience. In other words, for Africans to make sure that they continue with the art of their ancestors. This was basically the Kenneth Murray model. The art society says, no, we're not here to continue, But we are here to negotiate our relationship with that tradition, but also the European tradition to which they were already introduced. In other words, they were claiming these two traditions, but at the same time to decide the terms of engagement, right, to that tradition. The same thing that you can say about the European avant-garde, right? They were rejecting earlier traditions, but they were not necessarily jettisoning them.
20:12Demas Nwoko:They were renegotiating their relationship with that. The second part is, you know, this notion of progress that was already written into the politics and ideologies of decolonization.
20:27Aina Onabolu:This very idea of building a new nation that is different, better than what we had in the past. And one must never forget that this was what was happening in Europe at the time of the emergence of the avant-garde.
20:41Demas Nwoko:the reshaping of nations and states and societies in Europe at the time. And then the third part is the intensive formal experimentation, which is connected to the decision they made on the first question in terms of traditions that they were playing with. And so this intensive formal experimentation meant studying specific artistic traditions and experimenting with them in order to come up with new forms.
21:19Uche Okeke:Uche Okeke, the artist that we began with, that sort of began your journey into all this, he is one of the artists associated with the Art Society. And he has this concept that's very important to the concept of Nigerian modernism, which is natural synthesis. So what is his concept of natural synthesis? Why is it important?
21:38Aina Onabolu:Sure. So given what I have just described, how do you negotiate your relationship with the past and promulgate a studio process of intense experimentation in order to align with that first question? And so his theoretical proposition was what he called natural synthesis. In other words, and he had a poem that articulated this idea of natural synthesis, which talks about the contemporary person connecting with the art and practices of their ancestors, but also embracing the new, the modern, and that this process should be natural. It should not be artificial. This was his phrasing. Although I sort of step back and say, actually, it's not natural.
22:30Aina Onabolu:It's actually a very vigorous intellectual process for you to think about what aspect of these elements do you synthesize.
22:41Uche Okeke:This is where it's not about rejecting the Nigerian past either. It's just not in the cryonic sense where the European art teachers sort of froze it in position. The importance is the active process of figuring out what in that is relevant to the present, correct? Yeah.
22:58Aina Onabolu:I was also mindful of the other history of European interpretation of African cultures and practices, which is to suggest that they were naturally disposed to creativity. In other words, they don't have to think, they just do it. They don't have to learn to dance, they are naturally disposed to dance.
23:24Uche Okeke:You mean the stereotype?
23:26Demas Nwoko:Yes, the stereotype of the African. And we saw that in earlier forms of modern artistic expressions. When you think about the work like Romain Defosay's work in the Congo, where the idea was that these Congolese did not need any form of education, Just give them paint and paper or canvas and their natural instinct will eventuate into incredible pictures. This was the model of artistic training that you had prior to this moment. And so I was actually arguing against that because the natural synthesis implied that form of, yes, it can come naturally.
24:11Aina Onabolu:This really vigorous experimental work. And so what I was arguing in the book is that it's anything but natural. This process of synthesizing what of ancestral traditions and what of European traditions do we bring together in order to form new aesthetics or artistic dispositions and elements that then would characterize the modernist work that we saw at mid-century. And what does that work look like, if you could give some kind of idea? Sure. So it depends on who you're looking at. They were not insisting that everybody must do the same kind of work, right? Like some of the avant-garde that we've seen earlier in the 20th century.
24:57Aina Onabolu:What they did was to ask each individual to think of what aspect of their ancestral arts that they identify as important to them. And on the basis of which to conduct their formal experimentation. And so for someone like Ucho Keke, it was not sculpture, which is the classic African art, right, of the European avant-garde. but instead it's body drawing and mural painting among the Igbo,
25:31Demas Nwoko:an art form called Uli that his mother practiced. And so it was in this art form that he identified crucial formal elements with which to engage in a modernist studio experimentation processes. At the same time, he was mindful of the work of the European avant-garde
25:54Uche Okeke:Yeah, he studied in Munich, right? He studied in Munich.
25:57Demas Nwoko:He studied in Munich, but even before then in art school in Zaria, one of the things that they were doing in art society were to read about the European avant-garde and talk to each other about what they had read. So they introduced themselves to the work of the European avant-garde. And so that modernist sensibility that they identified with the European avant-garde was what they brought to bear in their process of experimenting with traditional Nigerian and African art forms. So for him, it was Uli. Demas Ngoko, it was not terracotta.
26:36Uche Okeke:In Uche Okeke's case, sometimes it goes back and forth between Nigerian myth and also sometimes very Christian, correct? Yes, indeed. Because again, this is part of the synthesis
26:48Aina Onabolu:that he was talking about, right? That the contemporary Nigerian artist has as much claim to Christian traditions as to their ancestral ritual traditions and folklore.
27:04Demas Nwoko:And so we see in his work references to Christianity, to Old Testament histories of the creation of Adam and Eve and things like that. Because for him and for many Africans, that sounds very familiar to ancestral traditions
27:24Aina Onabolu:and folklores about the primordial ancestors, right?
27:29Demas Nwoko:Which, of course, that was what Adam and Eve represented in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And so when you see them slip across Christian and traditional African histories and sources, it's in fact because they identify correspondences in these histories and traditions and bring them together seamlessly.
27:51Aina Onabolu:Although he was a Catholic Christian, he was also very much invested in the ritual traditions of his Nemo people at the same time, because that's the ultimate expression of this synthesis, right, that he was talking about.
28:09Uche Okeke:And in either case, using these myths, not just to reference religious tradition, but in your reading, as metaphors for the journey of post-colonialism.
28:21Aina Onabolu:Indeed, because how do you tell your story of the present if not by inserting it within older histories, older social, cultural narratives and stories? The same thing that societies have done all over the world.
28:44Demas Nwoko:Why is it important for Euro-American societies to still connect to Greece and Rome? even if historically it makes not a lot of sense, but it's part of an insistence on a longer history, right? Which is the basis of nations and nationalism, as Benedict Anderson had informed us,
29:06Aina Onabolu:this idea of constructing old histories, even for societies that didn't really have them. They make them up. Imagine communities. Yeah, they imagine old histories as a way to argue
29:17Demas Nwoko:for the integrity of their claims to nationhood. And so we find similar gestures and tactics in the work of these artists that even as they are commenting on the politics of the present, sometimes they are framed within the context of older historical traditions and narratives
29:39Aina Onabolu:and strategies of storytelling.
29:42Uche Okeke:So it's a convention of a lot of art theory that the idea of the autonomous art object is a European invention and imposition in some cases. What I find so inspiring and provocative in your book is, yes, but it's also where in the colonial context that it finds its most revolutionary form, where the assertion of artistic autonomy, that I'm an independent artist, you basically find politics of this art of the early period of decolonization almost as much in that as the idea that assertion of artistic autonomy is a parallel for these artists to political autonomy and cultural autonomy, even if that is drawing on some European forms.
30:27Uche Okeke:I find that very fascinating. I guess my question for you is, how popular was this art? I mean, is it art of an educated elite? Certainly, that was something the colonial administrators threw back at them. It's like, you don't actually speak for the people. So, So did it have an audience?
30:43Ben Enwonwu:Yeah, this is a very interesting question and very important one at that, because it's often the case that once you are talking about an avant-garde, by implication, you're already talking about a network of agencies that are not connected to the socials, to whatever
31:05Aina Onabolu:their community is, because they are in advance of that community.
31:10Demas Nwoko:And that, you're right, was one of the accusations by the colonial regimes against the intellectual elite, that they were not naturally connected to their societies and that that was what informed their insistence on traditional rulers, right, as the ciphers of authority.
31:30Aina Onabolu:Yes, the British as a cipher of authority in colonized territories.
31:35Demas Nwoko:But what you then find in that history also is, and I tell a little bit of this in my book, is the decision by these intellectual elite to prove to the colonial regimes that in fact they were deeply connected to their societies. That was why they were the most ardent advocates for polygamy, for instance. in Lagos. They were the ones defending polygamy in the courts against the colonial regime. They were the ones who set up town unions that then eventually became the basis for political parties in Nigeria. So Nandia Zikiwe, with all his education in the US and all of that, returns to Nigeria and sets up the Igbo State Union.
32:22Demas Nwoko:The same thing with Obafemi Awolowo, who was highly educated. He was instrumental in the setting up of the Yoruba ethnic sociopolitical formation. And the point was to prove to the colonial regime that they were not disconnected to their people, right? The same thing that you find in the art,
32:44Aina Onabolu:that when you look at these artists that I was talking about in my book, but even in the way that their work was disseminated
32:54Demas Nwoko:around 1960, they were commissioned to produce an exhibition for the Independence Celebration,
33:03Aina Onabolu:the biggest fair in the history of Nigeria in 1960.
33:09Demas Nwoko:Ucho Keke and Dema Asmoka and Bruce were commissioned to create a pavilion for us. The Art Society artists, yeah. Yes. And so the work was seen by everyone who attended the Independence Fair in 1960. But also, it was the case that their colleagues in the media and in literature were promoting this work. There was a Nigerian Television Authority program that invited the artists to come in on TV and talk about their work. In addition to that, you also find that, as in the case of Ucho Keke, in his later career,
33:50Aina Onabolu:he was instrumental in the eastern region in setting up the Eastern Nigerian Festival of Arts, right? And so what you find is that as they were arguing for a space of autonomy as artists,
34:07Demas Nwoko:They were also embedded in socio-political frame walls that were emerging in this moment in Nigeria in the early 60s. And so when you think about the Mbari Ibadan or the Mbari Oshobo on the…
34:23Aina Onabolu:What does that just say? So the Mbari clubs were set up by Uli Baia, the German expatriate, who was very instrumental in the development of African modern art and literature from 1950 onward, alongside some
34:40Demas Nwoko:of the best known writers and artists of the period. Chino Achebe, Wole Shoinka, Ucheokeke, Eski Amfaklele from South Africa, Ibrahim El Salahi from the Sudan, and so forth. So the Mbari was the convening of some of the most significant artists, writers, critics, and intellectuals of the period at Ibadan.
35:02Aina Onabolu:And so through their work, and as I tell the story in my book, Mbari Ibadan was situated in the market. And anyone who knows about African markets, those are the public spheres of African societies, are the markets, right? And the Mbari Club was situated right in the center of the market alongside a beer parlor, right? And so the work that they were doing in literature, the exhibitions, were visited by anyone who came to the market, right?
35:36Demas Nwoko:So it was not the kind of experience that we know of the European avant-garde
35:43Aina Onabolu:that were completely distanced, except, of course, the Soviet in the early phase of the Soviet artists that were trying to align their work with the revolution.
35:53Demas Nwoko:But, of course, that's why they were shunted out the modernist story, because they became too embedded with the politics of the revolution.
36:00Uche Okeke:Speaking of which, as a parallel, Nigeria is a hugely complex country and the story of Nigerian modernism is hugely complex. We can only scratch the surface. People should read your book or the catalog for the Tate show and so on. But there is a trajectory in Nigerian modernism that I do want to get to because there's this optimistic period of the construction of this positive new national culture kicking out the British. And then this sort of optimistic period does end. And in particular, the 1967 Nigerian Civil War is a big deal. So Nigeria is a construction of the British. It brings together all these different cultures in one unit.
36:56Uche Okeke:And when it becomes a nation, there are all these tensions that climax. And that has cultural effects that are pretty important and that the artists you've talked about already are engaged in working out those things. And it affects their art. So maybe just give a sense of the end of the story or this chapter of the story of Nigerian modernism. Sure. I indeed end my book in this moment of the Civil War.
37:28Aina Onabolu:And that's also because the Civil War marks the end of a dream, the end of a process.
37:39Ben Enwonwu:The decolonization happened. the progressive society that the partisans of decolonization, this progressive society that
37:51Aina Onabolu:they imagined and desired did not happen, right? And so the book, in other words, tells the story,
38:01Demas Nwoko:how it started, how it ended, and the impact that that had on artistic production, discourse, and dissemination in Nigeria in this moment.
38:11Aina Onabolu:And so what we find right after the political independence, Mbari Ibadon was the center of intellectual production and Lagos was where... That's in the north? No, Mbari Ibadon is in the southwest. So Ibadon is a few hundred miles northwest of Lagos in the southwest. It was clustered around there. At the same time, in 1962-63, Mbare-Enugu was formed in the east, where Uchoakeke comes from with other Igbo members of the art society. So in other words, they moved from Lagos-Ibaran axis to Enugu. And that already anticipated the breaking up of the national imaginary. And so as the nation was fragmenting politically, artistically and culturally, it was also doing the same.
39:15Aina Onabolu:That increasingly, these artists focused on their own region through Mbari Enugu, Chokeke set up his cultural center also in Enugu that then captured art and cultural production there. We also see in the subject matter of the work, and that's how I end the book, looking specifically at the work of Demas Ngoko and Uchokeke himself, in the sense that the subject of their work began to reflect this fragmentation of the nation. beginning with the first military coup in 1966, the arrival of the soldiers, and then the mass killings, the pogroms of Igbo people in the north, and the eventual civil war.
40:01Aina Onabolu:And so the end of this story, right, the political story is also the end of modernism as a chronological phenomenon. Because what then happens is that all of that ambition to create what Frantz Fanon in 1958 had called national culture ended with the war. From beyond the war, there were very few artists that were talking about national culture. Instead, what then happens with a contemporary art that came after was an art that was more or less critical of the nation. because of the problems that had emerged, right, in the political promulgation of the new nation. With all the military coups, the civil wars, the economic downfall of many of these societies, contemporary art became, renegotiated its relationship with the idea of the nation.
41:02Aina Onabolu:And that's really how I end the book.
41:04Uche Okeke:It's a tragic story. It does produce some art that's very moving or affecting. Is there a work that sticks in your head?
41:12Aina Onabolu:Obiora Udechuku's Blue Figures is very important because it's work that he made during the Civil War. I also think of, since we've been discussing the art society, Ucho Kekke's About Women's War from 1965, or Demas Moko's Soldier.
41:35Demas Nwoko:These are works of incredible power, visually, formally speaking, but in the way that they speak to the historical experience of Nigeria in that moment.
41:49Aina Onabolu:captures as any creative meditation might, not just where they had come artistically in terms of this question of natural synthesis
42:04Demas Nwoko:and how that helped them invent new formal modalities, but also in the way that they had begun to diagnose the problem with the nation.
42:15Aina Onabolu:And so, if I must end with the About Women's War was about an event that is Ucho Keke's painting,
42:25Demas Nwoko:an event that took place in 1929 when Igbo women engaged in really serious, if you might, violent resistance of the colonial regime in Eastern Nigeria.
42:41Aina Onabolu:why Ucho Keke will return to this subject in 1965 is really what I find very important because for him to recall this moment of revolutionary action by Igbo women against the colonial regime to what was happening to Nigeria in that moment of political and national fragmentation and so So that one work, I think, signifies all of the journeys, right?
43:13Demas Nwoko:I was describing in the book from the early 20th century to the ending point of the mid-century.
43:20Uche Okeke:Well, there's no way to do justice to all this history in a 40-minute podcast. I only hope that we can excite people about it or get people engaged with it. Chico Akeke Agulu, thank you so much for your generous time. Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate doing this with you. That's it for this week's episode. If you like what you've heard, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Also, take a moment to rate and review The Art Angle. It helps other listeners discover what we're doing. The Art Angle is produced by Sonia Manalili with contributions from Kate Brown, Ben Davis, Caroline Goldstein, and Naomi Rae.
44:00Uche Okeke:Thanks for listening and see you next week.
44:08Thank you.
From the publisher
Nigerian modern art is having a moment. In London, the Tate has opened a critically acclaimed exhibition, called “Nigerian Modernism,” featuring more than 50 artists who experimented with vibrant new styles in the mid 20th century in the giant and influential West African nation. More generally, the artists of this era have become more recognized outside of their home country in recent decades, from early figures who laid the groundwork like Aina Onabolu to a towering figure of the 1950s like Ben Enwonwu to younger innovators of the 1950s and 1960s such as Uche Okeke and Demas Nwoko, with many more important names to know and bodies of work to discover.
This was an earth-shaking time in Nigerian history, when a near-century of British colonial domination was shed and the many problems of a fragile new independent nation had to be faced. These artists were part of figuring out how to express that new sense of identity in images. But their art was not always so celebrated, sometimes dismissed as derivative of European art.
The scholar and curator Chika Okeke-Agulu has been important to the recent re-estimation of Nigeria’s art history. He teaches at Princeton, and is the author of, among many other things, of Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, a book that personally excited me very much when I first found it. With the Tate show drawing a fresh wave of interest, art critic Ben Davis thought Okeke-Agulu would be an excellent guide to what this art was, what it meant, and why it still demands attention today.
