LIGHTING The Artscape:
The Triumph of Asele
By
Emeka Agbayi
In the articles “Exhibition Circuit” (Daily Times, April 5, 2003), Okechukwu
Uwaezuoke had written: “a numbering predictability discredits the Lagos art
scene. This fact alone robs it of its glitter. Hence no gift of prophecy or
clairvoyance is required to discern its course as well as its main actors.
Those who are likely to hold exhibitions and those who are not are known.”
Okechukwu further writes: “It is as though the crème de la crème of the
local artists do not hold exhibitions. Are exhibitions then exclusive
preserve of the young?” This stance of Okechukwu will be given the lie from
May 10th to 23, 2003. This is because the artscape from Lagos to
Anambra will be lit up by activities to mark the 70th birthday
anniversary of Prof. Uche Okeke.
The celebration tagged “The Triumph of Asele:
Uche Okeke at 70” will feature a colloquium, two exhibitions, and a book
presentation. The Colloquium will be on May 10th, 2003 at Uche Okeke’s Asele
Institute,Nimo, Anambra State at 11.00am. Speakers are artist-historian
Professor Ola Oloidi, Dr. Kunle Filani, Deputy Provost, Federal College of
Education, Akoka, Lagos, Prof. Osa Egonwa, Dean of Humanities, Covenant
Universities, Ogun State and President of Society of Nigeria Artists, SNA.
Others include the international journalist and anthropology lecturer, Peter
Ezeh, and Jerry Buhari, former Dean, Faculty of Environmental Studies,
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The Colloquim will be chaired by Emeritus
Professor Simon Ottenberg, and moderated by Sculptor Okay Ikenegbu, Director
of School of Communication at Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu.
Special guest is Monsieur Paul Petit, Director Alliance Francaise, Enugu.
On May 17, at 2.00pm, Pendulum Art Gallery
will throw open its gates for the opening ceremony of the exhibition:
The Triumph of Asele: The Works of Uche Okeke.
The exhibition lasts up on May 31. A highlight of the opening ceremony will
be the public presentation of the book The Triumph of a Vision:
An Anthology on Uche Okeke and Modern Art in Nigeria.
Homage to Asele: An Exhibition in Honour of Uche
Okeke (Also organized by Pendulum Art Gallery) opens at National
Museum, Onikan, at 2.00pm on Saturday May 23 and runs until May 31.
Born April 30, 1933, the man in whose honour
all these will take place, Uche Okeke, it was who in 1958 as an undergrauate
at Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology, now Amadu Bello
University , Zaria, together with Yusuf Grillo,Bruce Onabrekpeya, Demas and
others, inaugurated the now historically significant Zaria Art Society,
whose members later to be known as the “Zaria rebels”, with their disdain
for European naturalism and orthodoxy and their theory of “natural
synthesis” were to change permanently the Nigerian art scene. Uche Okeke at
the end of the civil war was brought to the art department of the University
of Nigeria, Nsukka, as Head of Department. He took along with him his love
of Igbo folklore and uli art practice and belief in “natural synthesis” to
Nsukka where, together with Chike Aniakor, Chuka Amaefuna and others, he
fostered an abiding interest in Igbo Uli body and mural painting. An
outstanding artist of international repute, Professor Uche Okeke remains one
of the pillars on which contemporary Nigerian art rests and the unarguable
kingpin of Ulism in Nigeria, which received international attention at the
exhibition: The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the
Nsukka Group. Held at Sylvia H. Williams Gallery of Modern Art at
the National Museum of African Art, a part of the Smithsonian Institution.
The exhibition was accompanied by a symposium and the book: The
Nsukka Artists and Nigeria Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Ottenberg.
Still as part of his contribution to the
development of art in Nigeria, Uche Okeke in 1973 designed the first course
programme of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of
Management and Technology, Enugu and that of Alvan Ikoku College of
Education, Owerri, which has served as model for other colleges in south-easthern
Nigeria. And as part of his constructive engagement with numerous
educational and cultural institutions in the world, Uche Okeke has been
Director, Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka,
Visiting Professor to the Department of Creative Arts, University of Port
Harcourt, External Examiner, Faculty of Arts, University of Science and
Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, and Deputy Director-General, (Africa) of the
International Biographical Centre, Cambridge. In 1958, Okeke founded Asele
Institute at Kafanchan which he later transferred to Enugu and eventually to
Nimo. Asele Institute has since grown into an international cultural
institution through which the artist has touched the lives of many in very
meaningful ways.
As a writer, Uche Okeke won first prize in
poetry with “Young Munchi Rowers” in a national literary competition
organized by the National Arts Council in 1960. He has been featured in many
anthologies alongside Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, J.P Clark, Gabriel
Okara, Okogbule Wonodi, Mable Segun and others. In 1971, he received a drama
award from the African Studies Centre, University of California, USA, for
Ekeama: An Ogbanje Drama. All these transform Uche
Okeke into a figure in the history of Nigerian modernism; all these justify
the month-long activities billed to honour an art icon and hold up a role
model for Nigeria’s young artistic talents.
While the Colloquium promises to be a deeply
satisfying cerebration, The Triumph of Asele, which is
purely an exhibition of Uche Okeke’s works surely challenges Uwaezuoke’s
contention quoted earlier that the art scene has become predictable and now
seems to be the exclusive preserve of young talents. Uche Okeke is certainly
no young talent. The exhibition will give art lovers in the country the rare
opportunity of peeping into the master artist’s oeuvre. The accompanying
exhibition, Homage to Asele, will, among other things, give
art critics and historians the chance to draw inferences and perhaps reach
certain conclusions regarding the direct and indirect influences of Uche
Okeke on younger artists and on the state and direction of contemporary
Nigerian art in a post Uche Okeke era.
The Triumph of Asele: Peter Areh’s Pendulum
Art Gallery in association with Art-in-Africa Project (APP) is organizing
Uche Okeke at 70.
(APP) is a non-governmental organization
involved in the promotion of the arts and culture in Africa. An old player
in the field, APP had, as far back as 1997, organized a Workshop on Drawing
for select students of the art departments of University of Nigeria, Nsukka
and Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu. The Workshop had Krydz
Ikwuemesi and Ayo Adewumi as resource persons. Drawing emergent from the
workshop were exhibition at the British Council, Enugu as Dance of the
Lyrical Lines ’97, curated by Emeka Agbayi. In 1998, APP organized something
similar to The Triumph of Asele when it honoured Pro. Ossie Enekwe,
one of Nigeria’s most anthologized and translated writers, at the British
Council, Enugu, during one of its Art Summit.
With his outstanding achievements, it is only
fit and proper that Uche Okeke, ambassador of culture and artist par
excellence be honoured and celebrated. It is also fit and proper that the
celebration be done by many. But it becomes unfortunate when it engenders
distrust and suspicion in the art community as seems to be the case between
Art-in-Africa Project and an art foundation in Lagos. Had the foundation,
which was sent the proposal for The Triumph of Asele for a possible
collaboration with Pendulum Art Gallery and Art-in-Africa Project, opted out
of the collaboration and gone on to organize something entirely different
and unique in its own way, it would have been most welcome as another
enriching encounter with art. But what it is organizing seems to be a rehash
of the proposal sent to it, a re-rendering of what is already being done by
Pendulum Art Gallery and APP. While this development is a source of worry,
the enthusiasm to celebrate a master whose achievements are daunting as they
are varied may be cited as an excuse for the unfortunate incident.
Anyhow, all through the month of May, The Triumph of Asele: Uche Okeke at 70
promises to give art lovers something different from the run off the mill.
Asele, an apt metaphor for Uche Okeke, is the mythical artist who defeated
artist-humans on earth and artist-spirits in the land of the dead to emerge
as the master artist in Igbo mythology. One can only hope then that at the
end of the day The Triumph of Asele stands tall as the man it
celebrates.
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