[nn] Fwd: Women's Role Through Artistic Periscope
nige...@yahoo.com
November 8, 2000
Krydz Ikwuemesi
Lagos
Unlike other such events that come up now and then in these parts,
Katy Deepwell's lecture on feminist art and theory held at the
British Council on March 20, 2000, was well attended.
Katy's lecture was a success in itself. Although, from my own
observations very few people in the hall trudged along with her
discourse on contemporary feminist art production and theory in
Europe. Her talk, aided by slides of some exemplary works, was quite
illuminating. As techno-art, performance, installation and their
other siblings are not quite common in these parts, her presentation
provided the audience an opportunity to encounter and appraise
current trends in the thinking of artistic thought in Europe.
As Katy herself confessed, she had studied very little of the works
of African women artists. So what she had in her collection of slides
were mainly works (illustrations and performances) by Western and
Asian women artists. Anchoring her discourse on the theme, Re-
presenting Art, Katy who is also the editor of N Paradoxa, a feminist
art journal based in London, sought to re-image the work of women in
the international art space as produced and perceived in the last few
decades. The issues she examined through the eagle eye of art ranged
from the role of women in society, the image and perception of women,
women empowerment, and the woman's place and role in culture and
development. Although, the works were by non-Africa artists, some of
the issues raised thereof were at once universal and multiversal.
Understandably, as in other centres (Lagos and Zaria) where Katy
delivered the same lecture, people were once challenged as to what
the meaning of art has been or should be in our time. Not only were
people wondering should where the paintings and sculptures were,
others found it difficult to accept as art, the work s presented by
Katy. If they were art, some people in the audience queried, how
could they be preserved for prosperity, that is given the ephemeral
nature of installation and performance? These questions were not put
directly to Katy, but hearing them being raised outside the hall only
awakened similar fears some of which have been expressed at other
fora, namely, Is painting dead? Is the history of art ended? And
perhaps the most frightening, What is art?
I shall not joggle with these issues here but they are surely the
same issues that will guide us as we emerge from the adventure in
that forest known as postmodernism en route the next destination in
the common trajectories of history, culture, and civilisation. For
me, the issue is not whether the works in Katy's presentation are
art, because I am sure that it will resolve itself in time as the
wheel of art continues to turn. The issue, as I see it, is where lies
the relevance of Katy's presentation to this environment? Since she
claims that postmodernist discourse is closed in Europe, where does
one place her own presentation and its varied components? And if
postmodernism is really expired, what does Africa gain by worrying
about such a moribund idea?
If Katy's aim was to share experience and idea, which I think is part
of the object of the organiser of the event, it is most worthwhile,
given the increasing demands and realities of globalisation, which
most disadvantageously is led and policed by the Western avantgarde.
Although, the lecture opened up some new creative vistas for some of
those who witnessed it, it also reinforced the contention that art's
universalist conception has given way to rather multiuniversal
meanings which can derive from culture, history, and identify, and
that avantagardism is a relative concept whose essences are only
validated by the givens and peculiarities of an environment. The
point being stressed is that the works shown by Katy in her lecture
do not illegitimise the prevalent trend here. They were not intended
to be. They are an alternative face of a coin and should be seen as
such if they area to make any sense to us. It is also on that
pedestal that the lecture itself is to be viewed - a critic's attempt
to share her wide-ranging experience with a pleasantly unfamiliar
audience.
But the experiences peddled by Katy are ground through the mill of
imagination. If feminism is a concept that goes beyond the mere
chatter about women liberation, then I should say that our women here
have not come to grips with it.
It is, perhaps, along this line that Peter Essex wanted to argue when
he averred in a comment during the lecture that women artists in
Nigeria are not necessarily marginalised. Girls, he argued, are now
going to school more than boys do. A good number of these girls, he
said, are also taking to the arts. Not only that, he continued, some
of the best arts produced in these parts up to colonial times were
done by women. A good example is the Uli painting tradition of the
Igbo which the women so perfected that it was able to inspire a new
departure in modern Nigerian art in the hands of such artists as Uche
Okeke, Obiora Udechukwu, Chike Aniakor, among others.
At this juncture, Katy Deepwell was quick to retort that her
presentation did not necessarily focus on the African environment nor
on the work of its female artists. But it was Olabisi Silva of the
Institute of Visual Art and Culture, Lagos (organisers of the
lecture) who dropped the bombshell. Reacting to Peter's statement,
she opined that although Katy's focus was dehors Africa, it could not
honestly be claimed that women artists here are not marginalised.
After all, where are all those Uli painters which Peter spoke about?
Were they not just exploited by the contemporary male artists who
appropriated their style and then abandoned to fizzle out in
ignominy? Although Peter hastily countered that some of those women
have recently been the subject of serious research mainly funded by
foreign agencies, the truth that emerges is that the situation of the
classical Uli women is not an isolated example. Most "traditional" or
classical African artists, both male and female, were exploited and
largely abandoned by their postcolonial counterparts who saw in their
works the path to the re- discovery of Africa's lost glory. The major
reason for this could not have been an intention apriori to exploit
and jettison anybody. Oral tradition was more or less the chief means
of chronicles, and art in precolonial Africa was a communal affair.
Art, in spite of its spiritual connections was not individualistic or
elitist. This fact is echoed by Chinua Achebe when he described the
(pre-colonial) African artist as that cock in the distant private
compound but whose voice has become the community's common asset.
This reality has been the bane of African arts and civilisation as a
whole ever since the partition of Africa and not just the burden of
Africa female artists per se. Although the culture and aesthetic
exertions of Africa have influenced the course of history in other
parts of the world, including the almighty Occident, very little of
this is acknowledged in international discourses. Was it not African
art aided the birth of modernism? Yet how many of those fanciful
critics who sane the praise of Picasso - for his vision and
ingenuity - ever took the trouble to unearth and acknowledge those
artists whose works provided the new spin-off for the inimitable
Picasso in the first decade of the 20th century? Even now in the
twilight of the 21st century, classical African art is still the
object of careless exploitation. Artists inside and outside the
continent continue to appropriate African masks and other forms and
motifs without any credits to the original artists.
The trend, of course, could be blamed on the lack of adequate
documentation and serious critical discourse among Africa artists and
critics, a pattern which Evelyn Nicodemus contends is a negative
hangover from the era of oral tradition. But it is worrisome that
Africa scholars do not bother themselves with this reality and its
multifarious implications. That attitude was starkly reflected in
Adis Iroh's contribution at Katy's lecture when he stood up and
advocated more efforts at the promotion of African art by the West.
As a few people quickly countered on the spot, for how long will
Africa be content with being represented by the West? Is it not time -
for Africa to rise up and talk to the rest of the world in direct
terms? Katy's lecture and others following it, along with all their
contents, represent a challenge towards the attainment of the above
objective. For Africa, the 21st century should be one of real counter-
penetration (a la Mazrui). The Institute of Visual Art and Culture,
Lagos (organisers of the lecture series) may have to lead this
imperative.
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