The commemorative activities of the “The Rediscovery of Tradition”, the on-going project by Pendulum Centre for Culture and Development have ended in Nigeria. The final leg of the exhibition is now on in Worcester, South Africa.

The exhibition, workshop, roundtables and documentary were preceded by a 15-month research commissioned by Pendulum Centre for Culture and Development. The research was carried out in five villages in Igbo land, namely, Nri, Agulu, Ogidi, Nsugbe (all in Anambra State, Nigeria), and Inyi. Nigerian painter and theorist, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, who had done some work on uli in the early 1990s, led the exercise. He was assisted by Okey Nwafor (painter and art teacher), Ozioma Onuzulike (ceramist and art critic), and musician, O’dyke Nzewi who had done some previous workshops on uli with some Igbo women classical painters in Nsugbe, Anambra State, Nigeria,  in the early and mid 1990s.

Besides commissioning the women to demonstrate their painting skills on the human body and some walls, they were also encouraged to try out some of their ideas on paper, an angle that had been successfully explored in Nsugbe by O’dyke Nzewi while he worked with the traditional women painters under the directorship of German painter, Doris Weller.

The results of the painting sessions in the different villages and some of the actual works made by the women on paper all informed the exhibition organised by Pendulum, including the present one we are about to witness here in this hall.

Although one of the aims of the project is to bring the women classicists to limelight in recognition of the impact their works have had on some modern Nigerian art, as exemplified by the works of the Nsukka-trained artists and their followers, its principal aim is to return to uli in the cradle and possibly incite artists, craftspeople and product developers to examine it from fresh perspectives and see how it could be caused to transcend “the ivory tower of high art” and assume a more functional essence that can  assure its pertuity in the present and, perhaps, the future.

For these reasons, the works of the uli women classicists are juxtaposed with those of their modern followers as a way of underlining the dynamic nature of culture and the futility of the absolutism that is the misfortune of modern Nigeria and Africa as a whole. A few functional designs are also included as pointers to the coming possibilities in uli. Although this happens to be the real fulcrum of the exhibition, we have not been able to stress it as should be due to paucity of funds. The original idea was to commission/encourage some artists and product designers to create some functional items employing the lyricism of uli motifs and their aesthetics. Although this could not happen effectively due to the afore-mentioned reason, it remains a major plank in the project to be further pursued by Pendulum Centre in the coming years from a Nigerian perspective.