Shrines and Shrine Masters: D.O. Ebengho and Bruce Onobrakpeya: Brief Comparative Photo Essay and Research Funding Quest 2
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
A brief comparative study of two masters of shrine art, D.O. Ebengho and Bruce Onobrakpeya, in the context of a funding quest to support novel studies of both artists.
The pictures of Ebengho's art were taken by myself in early November 2022. The sources for images of Onobrakpeya's work are indicated in the essay.
Research logistics and costs are in part 1 of this essay. Donation details are available at this link.
Discursive Gaps
Cosmological Vision between Ifa Hermeneutics and Ebengho's Shrine Construction
The outcomes of this exploration will be published for free access on social media. Other possibilities, such as book publication, could follow. A completed project of mine on another Nigerian master of shrine construction is ''Nsibidi/Ekpuk Philosophy and Mysticism: Research and Publication Project.''
A picture of Chief Dr. D. O. Ebengho, 82, above an image of a table of completion, where newly completed shrines are placed, of shrines to Orunmila, deity of supreme wisdom and knowledge, witness to the creation of the universe, and therefore cognizant of the possibilities of every entity in existence, and according to Wole Soyinka's retelling of Yoruba myth in The Credo of Being and Nothingness, even consulted by the supreme creator at the time of creation.
Behind Ebengho as well as on the shrine completion table are Orunmila shrines belonging to various people, which he constructs and maintains on their behalf. Ebengho's own Orunmila shrine is visible at the foot of the table, in an elaborately designed bowl between the two pieces of cloth dropping from the table. Ebengho's artistry is demonstrated in his modification, in the table, of the standard Orunmila shrine convention of a ceramic bowl, as seen in the images of the various Orunmila shrines in the picture.
A regal presence is generated in the shrine completion table by raising the bowls off the ground through placing them on a raised surface garlanded with exquisite cloths elegantly positioned on the flat plane as they drop towards the floor displaying their beauty of design. The ensemble is further complexified through a mirror standing upright at the table's centre, and, resting on the mirror, a central symbol of authority in Benin culture, the ada and eben.
The relatively ornate character of the shrine completion table signals the grand ambition represented by Ebengho's primary, overarching spiritual system, the Ifa system of knowledge and divination, the cognitive power described as initiated and overseen by Orunmila, a system embodying Orunmila's comprehensive knowledge and far reaching wisdom.
Cosmological Vision between Ifa Hermeneutics and Shrine Construction
The aspiration to cosmological vision in its relationship to the specificities of existence represented by the figure of Orunmila may be seen as resonant in Ebengho's shrine complex, constituted by shrines to various deities and to the creator of the universe.
This cosmologizing and particularizing orientation is demonstrated by the shrine's explicit invocation of the presence of Osanodoze, the creator of the universe, in terms of an iroko tree in front of the shrine where supplication to the creator takes place.
It is also suggested by the scope of the diversity of deity shrines that come after the iroko in the shrine complex, like explosions from a primal matrix, as the deities are depicted as erupting from a primordial centre in Yoruba cosmology, an ''intense vibration'', ''resting in the sky like a swarm of bees'', yet a source of the creative cataclysm in which the One becomes the Many, multiple dynamisms radiating from a primal core, the human being henceforth taking forward the creative process initiated at cosmogenesis through, adapting Karen Barber, ''how man makes God in Orisa tradition'', this interpretive sequence drawing from ''Invocation of the Creator'' in Ulli Beier's edited African Poetry, 1966, Beier's interpretation of those poetic lines in The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger and Barber's ''How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes Towards the Orisa''.
This movement towards the complementation of comprehensiveness and particularity is also evoked by the presence, at the back of the shrine, of another iroko, for calling upon the Powers of the Night, human figures at the intersection of the human and the divine, a subsummation of the arcane universe the shrine reflects, mysterious figures deeply implicated in the creative and destructive possibilities of human life.
Ebengho's Divination Table, Divination Chain and Mami Wata Shrine
Eloquences of colour define Ebengho's shrine, as demonstrated by the visual harmonies composing the image, directly above, of the central forms and surrounding space of his divination table, where he sits to consult Orunmila through the symbolic patterns of the opele, the divining chain of Ifa, shown above under the red cloth.
Behind the chair is the visual opulence, shown directly below, of Ebengho's Mami Wata- Mother Water- shrine, dedicated to feminine entities believed to live in bodies of water and with whom humans may relate for wealth and good fortune, blessings represented by the cornucopia of delight indicated by the contents of the shrine, chosen and arranged to suggest well being across a broad spectrum of possibilities- sweet drinks for refreshing the self, fine smelling powder for beautifying the skin and generating attractive fragrances, exquisite flowers to delight the eyes, perhaps also inspiring pleasant touch and giving off delightful smells, beautiful plates, of various colours, suggesting wealth of property, cowrie shells, an old form of currency, indicating abundance of money, dolls of what look like children, their skins rich, their hair glorious, on the wall a painting of a beautiful house, as the entire assemblage is cocooned in curtains of brilliant white and multi-coloured glitter, further amplifying the sense of superlative well being, evoking the magical suffusion of good fortune understood to be enabled by Mami Wata while giving intimacy of presence to the space, concentrating its feast of fulfillments within spatial circumscription, suggesting a magical zone where glorious wonders may be experienced, magic further signalled by a sculptural figure on the wall representing the half-fish half-human form ascribed to Mami Water, and, not visible in these pictures, another image of Mami Wata wearing a garland of snakes, snakes being among the citizens of her underwater kingdom.
Ebengho's Mami Wata Shrine
Ebengho's Mami Wata shrine may be understood as projecting an image of the goddess in terms of symbols drawn from the human world, an externalisation of powers whose inward dynamisms are largely beyond the gaze of humans.
What could the world of Mami Wata be like, however? Is it visible to the eyes of underwater divers? Why are various reports of underwater denizens across the world, in folklore, in myth, in claims of eyewitness accounts, not corroborated by images from underwater photography? Are these beings visible only to those who they wish to see them? Do they exist in a dimension within or intersecting the human world but ordinarily invisible to human beings? Questions at the intersection of objective and subjective realities, responding to the question of why these beliefs emerge across the world.
Onobrakpeya's Egodo Emamiwata, Urhobo for Abode of Mami Wata, a 1976 lino engraving imaged directly below, visualizes the mysterious universe in which this entity of beauty, wonder and power lives.
Venerational presences, evocations of multidimensional existence as quasi-humanoid forms converge with geometric structures within unusual shaping of perspective, various levels of depth emerging in the image through sequential positioning, spatial possibilities unified by the concentric circles from which the votive figures rise, the whole suggesting a futuristic city or a supernatural universe.
Who are these figures, their elongations, their not-so-human forms, suggesting something intersecting with human biology but not identical with it? Are those forms hands raised in veneration? Who are the elegant figures entering the tableau from the right of the space as a rain of enigmatic inscriptions drizzles behind them?
Unifying the dazzling composition of forms is the strangely horizontal elongation of a figure with the face of an animal, radiating a sense of pathos as it both lies and stands within the space at the centre of these visual convergences, wonderfully varied intricacies of design resonating between the creature who stands/lies down, the quasi-humanoid forms and the geometric structures, as a majestic building dominates the background, a space around which the other figures seem to constellate, perhaps a dwelling of the entity who inspires this image, the entity towards whom veneration within the scene is directed towards, Mami Wata.
Onobrakpeya describes his inspiration for the series of evocations of the Mami Wata universe to which this work belongs in the chapter ''The Mamiwata Jebba Bridge Myth'' in Dele Jegede's edited Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Spirit in Ascent, 1992, 233-235.
Could this be the kind of world devotees of these underwater powers enter into, through expansions of consciousness in ritual , trance, and other strategies?
Seating in front of the glorious space of his Mami Wata shrine in order to divine, Ebengho may be seen as positioned between an evocation of favourable outcomes and his instruments seeking to divine how such outcomes may be gained in relation to the issues he enquires about. Such enquiries are carried out through opele symbolism, the symbolism of the spatial patterns assumed by the opele when cast in divination.
Opele symbolism integrates the entire universe of humans and non-humans, linking the ultimate creator, humans, deities and the Night, as the latter figures are called. This symbolism develops correspondences between diverse phenomena, constituting a cosmological totality in constant motion of realignment between forces that shape existence, a scope reflected in the structural complexity and referential breadth of Ebengho's shrine, as the words of Chief Obaseki, Ebengo's acolyte, may be interpreted.