Uche
Okeke: A Profile
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 Uli art practice in
Nigeria.
Uche Okeke was born on April
30, 1933 in Nimo, Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra
State, Nigeria. Between 1940 and 1953, he attended St. Peter
Claver’s (Primary) School, Kafanchan, Metropolitan College,
Onitsha and Bishop Shanahan College, Orlu, during which time
he had already begun to demonstrate an avid interest in
drawing and painting. Before being admitted to read Fine Art
at Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, now
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Uche Okeke had already
exhibited texodermy work during the Field Society meeting in
Jos Museum, participated in the preparation and presentation
of Nigerian Drawings and Paintings with Bernard Fagg
as curator and had a solo exhibition of drawings and
paintings, in Jos and Kaduna with Sir Ahmadu Bello in
attendance.
As an undergraduate in 1958,
Uche Okeke together with Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya,
Demas Nwoko, and others inaugurated the now historically
significant Zaria Art society. In that same year he opened a
cultural centre at 30 Ibadan Street, Kafanchan which later
grew into the world famous Asele Institute, Nimo, where
among other cultural activities a part of the
Smithsonian-Institution sponsored educational film
Nigerian Art-Kindred Spirits was shot.
In the early 1970s when he
was appointed lecturer and acting head of Fine Arts
Department at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he reviewed
the entire course programme introducing new courses and
research into Igbo Uli art tradition. In 1973, he also
designed the first course programme of the Department of
Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Management and
Technology, Enugu and initiated postgraduate courses in the
Department of Fine Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
He has been Director,
Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka,
Visiting Professor to the Department of Creative Arts,
University of Port Harcourt, Honorary Deputy
Director-General (Africa) of International Biographical
Centre, Cambridge, among numerous other engagements with
many educational and cultural institutions in different
parts of the world.
It is certainly difficult to
encapsulate all of Uche Okeke’s activities and contributions
in contemporary art in a brief sketch such as this one.
Beginning from the 1950s, he has literally traversed the
landscape of modern art in Nigeria, leaving in his stride
bold, remarkable, and enduring foot prints which have
inspired many Nigerian artists and Africanist art
historians, including some of the world’s avant-garde.
That Okeke carried the Uli
experiment beyond the walls of Zaria and stood in the
forefront in its transformation into a modern idiom in the
1970s in the studios at Nsukka remains a feat of inspired
originality. That his “natural synthesis” philosophy
blossomed to become fount and factor in the development of
modern art in Nigeria represents a logical and sustained
triumph of both vision and imagination. All these have
transformed him into a father figure in the history of
Nigerian modernism and he has carried the burden of history
so gracefully that his ideas and legacies are sure to find
followers among generations of artists to come.
