A Thumbnail Bibliographic Introduction to Nigerian Aesthetics
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
A Thumbnail Bibliographic Introduction to Nigerian Aesthetics
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
A very short presentation of approaches to Nigerian aesthetics, perspectives on beauty and art intimately related to Nigeria.
Aesthetics refers to ideas about the nature and significance of beauty and of art. It relates to the value of patterns beyond their practical functions or the relationship between those values and the functionality of those patterns.
Nigerian
aesthetics is aesthetics developed amongst the various
peoples of Nigeria, or created in relation to their art or constructed in response to art by Nigerian artists.
This bibliographic introduction is centred in open access texts, texts that can be freely downloaded online. This emphasis is meant to enable accessibility in Nigeria where purchasing scholarly texts on aesthetics from other continents could be prohibitive on account of currency exchange rates making those texts expensive.
The guide is organized in terms of classical and post classical Nigerian aesthetics. By classical, I refer to the period before the reshaping of African societies by the Western incursion. The post-classical involves developments emerging after this restructuring. This list represents what I can immediately recall from my admittedly often unsystematic reading. It's a small map from my cognitive journeys, which others could find inspiring. It addresses only a very small spectrum of the subject.
Classical
Yoruba
The best summation of Yoruba aesthetics known to me is Rowland Abiodun's "The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective"
Lucidly presented, conceptually rich
and systematically ordered yet flexible in the interpretive and
combinatory possibilities of it's concepts.
Abiodun's essay can be very profitably complemented by "The Yoruba World", the first chapter of Yoruba:Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, by Abiodun, Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton III and Helen Wardwell.
This is a summation of Yoruba cosmology in terms of aesthetics, specifically the aesthetic implications of the Yoruba concept of àse, creative life force imbuing each existent with individual creative power. A magnificent book in which superb images vivify the stirring presentation of ideas.
The book is better appreciated in relation to Olabiyi Yai's review of it, a review that is an inimitable exposition of a perspective on Yoruba philosophy ( Review of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought by Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton, Rowland Abiodun and Allen Wardwell, 1990, in African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1992, 20+22+24+26+29 ).
Edo
Norma Rosen's "Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship" is a magnificent demonstration of Benin Olokun chalk art in it's enfolding by a glorious aesthetic of the convergence of the evanescence of chalk and the intersection of spirit and matter in the context of eternity. It is superbly illustrated with deeply sensitive black and white drawings of this art and rich colour pictures of Benin Olokun priests and priestesses.
Classical and Post Classical
Classical Uli Aesthetics and its Post-Classical Adaptation
The most impactful example of classical Igbo aesthetics in post-classical Nigerian art and thought known to me is Uli, on account of its study and adaptation by Uche Okeke and his successors such as Chike Aniakor and Obiora Udechukwu
at the Nsukka Art School of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Okwui Enwezor's ''Uli at the Skoto,'' his review of a show of Uli inspired art at the Skoto gallery in New York, provides a vividly crafted, thumbnail but broadly encapsulating description of Uli in describing its Nsukka adaptation.
Sandra Smith's "Uli:Metamorphosis of a Tradition into Contemporary Aesthetics," grounds Uli in a careful study of its classical context and examines the institutional and individualistic adaptation of this aesthetic by generations of Nsukka artists.
My essay "Uli Philosophy and Mysticism 2," integrates the classical achievement and it's modern institutional reworking in relation to its philosophical implications within and beyond the African context. The text aspires to carefully coordinated ideational breadth, vivified by a striking selection of images from both classical Uli and the art of the post-classical adapters of the Uli aesthetic, constructed through a rich bibliographic landscape. It complements my earlier "Uli Philosophy and Mysticism."
These texts focus on Uli and it's philosophical significance as these have been developed in classical and post-classical contexts. They thereby reference only a small aspect of the vast breadth of Igbo aesthetics, though perhaps the best known in contemporary times. Even then, they are an inspiring window into the glories of this body of thought and expression.
Ibibio/Ejagham/Igbo/Efik Nsibidi and Victor Ekpuk
One of the world's richest symbol systems
is Nsibidi of Nigeria's Cross River, used primarily by the Ibibio, the
Ejagham, the Efik and the Igbo, perhaps among other ethnic groups. It integrates graphic art and writing, physical posture and motion, arrangement of objects and perhaps speech, within a range of social, nature based and cosmological references.
"My Sources," is a very brief but incisive introduction to Nsibidi by post-classical artist Victor Ekpuk, where he sums up the relationship between Nsibidi aesthetics and his own aesthetics, suggesting Nsibidi's combination of tantalizing mystery and evocative meaning, qualities powerfully adapted by Ekpuk.
Jordan Fenton's Take it to the Streets: Performing Ekpe/Mgbe Power in Contemporary Calabar is priceless in depicting, through images and verbal descriptions, the various expressive forms through which Nsibidi operates, in relation to its institutional context.
My essay collection ''Nsibidi/Ekpuk Philosophy and Mysticism: Research and Publication Project" aspires to a conceptually and visually powerful summation of the complete range of Nsibidi aesthetics as available in published texts as of the time of writing, in relation to breadth and depth of study of Ekpuk's adaptation of this aesthetic. It examines the philosophical significance of the powerful artistry of the classical achievement and the philosophical resonance of its adaptation by Ekpuk at the intersection of arresting visuality and elusive but potent meaning.
These essays were written before the publication of the first print book on Ekpuk, the magisterial Victor Ekpuk: Connecting Lines Across Space and Time, 2018, edited by Toyin Falola, so the essays do not reference the book.
Any links that are not working in the list of essays could be reported to me.
African Aesthetics and El Anatsui
"El Anatsui : Beyond Death and Nothingness" by Olu Oguibe is a great essay in it's blend of magically evocative analysis, conceptual dexterity and profound sensitivity to the balance of artistic technique and philosophical value in Anatsui's pottery, regrettably now eclipsed in prominence by his visually more explicit large scale works. Oguibe's description of the relationships between Anatsui's art and it's endogenous African ideational contexts is masterly and mesmeric.
Post-Classical
The scope of ideas represented by what follows are all centred on art but might go beyond aesthetics. They represent strategic frontiers in the study of artistic thought relating to Nigeria which need to be highlighted in the development of the study of this field.
Okwui Enwezor
A colossus whose work I am inadequately acquainted with to suggest any of his myriad texts freely accessible online.
How did this Nigerian-American, who relocated to the US at 16, if I recollect correctly, become one of the most impactful figures in the global art world, even though his academic education was limited to a BA in Political Science, breaking barriers beyond most people, African and non-African, reshaping the global engagement with art from it's commercial and disciplinary centres in the West, specifically in the US?
The answer lies in his scholarship, his intellectual entrepreneurship, his social dexterity, his organizational capacities, qualities encapsulated in visionary drive, orientations enabling him to take maximum advantage of his location at centres of the global art world in the US.
Enwezor's work is critical in the study of Nigerian related aesthetics and of Nigerians and Africans in art in 20-21st century global art. A general Google search and Google Scholar search for ''Okwui Enwezor'' and "Okwui Enwezor pdf'' bring up a large amount of texts by Enwezor and relating to him, a lot of it freely accessible.
The No. 48, May 2021 issue of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, of which he is the founding publisher and former co-editor, is dedicated to his work. A presentation of the journal's vision by the Cornell Africana Studies and Research Centre and co-editors Chika Okeke-Agulu and Sallah Hassan's recollection of the founding of the journal and their charting of its progress make clear the combination of sensitivity to immediate challenges and the practical and yet visionary acumen Enwezor brought to the project.
I have created a Facebook page, Exploring Okwui Enwezor, for compiling information on Enwezor. This page contains ''Okwui Enwezor, Olu Oguibe and the Contexts of Global Impact'' my compilation of a summation of his work by friend and colleague Olu Oguibe, along with a rich body of responses to the summation.
Olabisi Silva
Olabisi Silva was a curator and
scholar of the arts who
devoted herself to contributing to the task of making Africa a centre for the engagement
with African art as opposed to gravitating round the West.
Also critical to her achievement are her posts and the debates on her Facebook wall, debates of enduring value, examining various aspects of modern African art.
I have begun compiling the debates on her wall in the Facebook page I opened to study her work, Exploring the World of Olabisi Silva, Great Curator and Scholar. The first of these in the page is ''Can Biblical Figures be Black?:Jude Onah’s Christian Art and the Politics of Racial Representation: Bisi Silva in Dialogue.'' "Greatness and Modernity in African Art : Edosa Ogiugo Examined," is another compilation I made of those debates. I also use the Facebook group The World of Olabisi Silva, Great Curator and Scholar in compiling general information about her work, person and impact.
Silva describes her
vision and professional journey in ''A Discussion Between Bisi
Silva and Kerstin Pinther'' as well as in the BISI SILVA:FACE-TO-FACEBOOK Art Talk of June 24 2013 at the University of African
Art Facebook group.
Gabriella Salgado provides a rich survey of her life, work and impact in "With the King's Permission." Talia Lieber and Rebecca Wolff sum up both Silva and Enwezor in ''Renewed Commitments: In Memoriam: Bisi Silva and Okwui Enwezor," their editorial for Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, Vol. 41 Issue 2,2020. A general Google search and Google Scholar search for Bisi Silva is also very revealing of information on her.
I
Moyo Okediji
A US based scholar who has published a good number of academic essays and books but whose work is best known to me through the discussions he organized and led on his University of African Art Facebook group and through posts on art on his Facebook wall. He pioneered, to the best of my knowledge, serious discussion of African art on social media, using the dialogical format.
The University of African Art is an open group, meaning you can read its contents without joining although you will need to join the group to post in it. To find the major debates on African art on the group, do a search for ''Face to Facebook Art Talk'' using the group's search function.
His social media work complements his academic scholarship, examples of which are the essays "Museums, Modernity, and Mythology : A Semioptic Review," and "Whither Art History : African Art and Language as Semioptic Text."
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