From ''Anya'' to ''Anyawu'': The Epistemology and Metaphysics of Perception in Igbo Thought in a Comparative Context as Demonstrated by the Art and Thought of Chiagoziem Orji, Part 2 of Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, ''My God Affirms, When I Agree"
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Abstract
This is the second part of the serialization of a book that presents the first sustained study of the art and thought of Chiagoziem Nneamaka Chivụzọ Orji, an artist whose photographic and digitally inscribed works transform the ancient Igbo concept of chi—the individual divine essence—into a compelling contemporary visual philosophy.
The book is a philosophical, aesthetic and comparative exploration, taking Orji's photographic and digitally inscribed self portrait Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe ("My God Affirms When I Agree") as its point of departure. It argues that Orji transforms photographic self-portraiture into a sophisticated visual philosophy in which the human face becomes a meeting place of body, spirit, culture and cosmos.
The study demonstrates how Orji's art synthesizes
indigenous Igbo cosmological thought, Uli body art traditions, and digital
media to create a visual language that speaks simultaneously to the specificity
of Igbo culture and the universality of human spiritual aspiration.Orji's photographic and digitally inscribed images construct a symbolic language through which personal identity becomes an expression of universal reality. Rather than treating these works simply as aesthetic objects, the book interprets them as philosophical propositions, visual meditations and spiritual practices.
The book argues that Orji's sustained sequence of inscribed self-portraits, distributed across social media platforms across years, constitutes a philosophical autobiography—a visual meditation on the relationship between individual agency and divine will, between cultural inheritance and personal creativity, between the visible body and the invisible spirit. Integrating Orji's artistic practice with her own written commentaries, this study positions her work within the broader context of the Nsukka art school, Igbo philosophical traditions, and global currents in spiritual art and thought.
Tracing resonances between Orji's imagery and thought and philosophical systems from Aristotelian metaphysics to Islamic mysticism, Yoruba epistemology to Igbo divination practices, this section of the book reveals how Orji, a contemporary African artist, is reimagining her indigenous cosmology for a global audience, revealing remarkable convergences in humanity's understanding of consciousness, creativity and the sacred.
Through this
comparative framework, a model of philosophical
aesthetics emerges in which visual art becomes a mode of metaphysical
inquiry and the human person is actualized as a living microcosm of
the universe. Orji emerges as a significant voice in contemporary African art,
demonstrating how the self-portrait can become a site for exploring the most
profound questions of human existence: the nature of consciousness, the
relationship between the material and the spiritual, and the individual's place
within the cosmic order.
The links to quotations from ChatGPT lead to particular pages of my account with Chat in which the AI composed those ideas.
First edition of this work.
Part 1 of expanded second edition in progress.
Contents
Abstract
Self as Cosmos in the Self Portraits of Chiagoziem Orji
Part 1: Historical and Conceptual Context and Exploratory Method
An Enduring Fascination
Chi, the Divine Self
The Title of the Work Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe
This Essay as Preliminary to Main Essay
Images and Text: Vision Beyond Vision
From Intellect to Beyond Intellect
Self Portraiture at the Intersection of Self, Culture, Cosmos
A Straight Line Drawn by God
The Illumination of Anyanwu
Self as Cosmos in the Self Portraits of Chiagoziem Orji
This book uses a self portrait by the artist Chiagoziem Nneamaka Chivụzọ Orji, Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, ''My God Affirms, When I Agree'', as an entry into the philosophical and spiritual scope of her art and thought, demonstrating it as an exploration of the individualistically cultural and yet universal resonance of classical Igbo arts and philosophies.
Through a combination of photography and digital inscription, Orji develops self portraiture, one of the most powerful forms of art across time and space, into one of the visually richest and symbolically resonant expressive forms of her multi-media art.
This is the first in-depth study of Orji's work, integrating into a seamless whole major strands of her art, as well as her writings, dispersed across her social media accounts, demonstrating the potential of her art and thought for mapping an approach to studying and practising her understanding of indigenous Igbo philosophy and spirituality.
Orji's art is attractive of such study because of its thematic depth, evocative power and technical mastery, its force amplified by the scintillating penetration of her thought and the rich lucidity of its verbal expression, placing her amongst the galaxy of stars of the Nsukka art school in Nigeria, where she studied, and within the firmament of African art and thought, resonating in rhythm with great masters in spiritual thought, philosophy and art across time and space.
These are correlative with the work of Orji (1997-), an artist of a much younger generation amongst the contemporary masters, who demonstrates a similar sensitivity to the conjunction of the everyday and the cosmological, the material and the spiritual, projecting her immersion in the artistic, spiritual and philosophical realities of her native Igbo culture in a manner that amplifies the spiritual, philosophical and artistic achievements of cognate Nigerian cultures, resonating with related ideational and artistic creativities across geographies and history.
Part 1: Historical and Conceptual Context and Exploratory Method
On waking every morning, I meditate on the marvellous self portrait by Orji titled Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, which may be translated from Igbo as ''I Affirm and My God Agrees''. The expression is stated by Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart as ''When a Person Says 'Yes', their Chi Says 'Yes' ''.
Chi, the Divine Self
Chi [ may therefore be understood as ] ''an infinitesimal manifestation of Chukwu's infinite essence given to each of us separately and uniquely, a single ray from the sun's boundless radiance" ( "Chi in Igbo Cosmology'', Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays), a ray from an inexhaustible sun, a spark from an eternal flame.
The title of the central work discussed in this book, Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, ''I Agree and my God Affirms'', is a perspective from indigenous Igbo thought unusual amidst the world's myriad cosmologies which are yet unified in affirming the existence of God, an ultimate identity responsible for the creation and sustenance of the universe. Achebe translates Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, as ''A Person Says 'Yes' and their Chi Says 'Yes' ''.
The conventional understanding across most schools of thought is that divine will is predominant, even though the human being is described as having a degree of independence of the divine.
This Igbo concept holds, however, that human will is dominant while divine will concurs with human will.
Achebe translates ''Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe'', as ''A Person Says 'Yes' and their Chi Says 'Yes' '' but, in relation to the tragedy of Okonkwo in his novel Things Fall Apart, an observer concludes that Okonkwo was a man who said ''yes'' and his chi said ''no'', a comment that may be linked to the Igbo folktale, told in the same book, of a great wrestler who defeated all opponents in the world of the living and that of spirits, but persisted in seeking more opponents in spite of being advised to withdraw in victory, upon which he was confronted by the last of the spirits, a thin creature who defeated him with little effort.
This spirit was his own chi, his own personal spirit, his own creator, a creative mandate exercised under the authority of Chi-Ukwu, the Great Chi, the superordinate creator , from whom ''every chi branches'' as an individualised expression of the ultimate reality in all forms of being, the quoted words adapted from the Yoruba poem ''Ayajo Asuwada'' which develops the same idea of derivation from an ultimate source ( Akinsola Akiwowo, ''Towards a Sociology of Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry'').
While affirming human agency, therefore, the Igbo conception also recognises a tension between human and divine will. Achebe's novels Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God and his short story ''The Madman''( in Girls at War and Other Stories) translate this tension into probing the question of the ultimate validity of ideas of spiritual influence in contrast to human agency.
This work echoes the milkmaid motif- a young woman carrying a calabash of milk on her head- once prominent in Nigerian art as an indigenization of that art through a focus on local and contemporary subjects. In this piece, the reverberations of this motif reach a fusion of the literal and the symbolic, the realistic and the abstract.
The evocative potential of a self portrait is mobilised through digital reworking to arrive at a profound cosmological image. The individualisation of visualities originating from beyond the individual generates a powerful symbolic field. Rising from the generative capacity of Igbo art and thought a personal actualisation of communally developed cosmologies is created, unifying African and Western thought systems, and reverberating beyond even those into a global network of associations.
A philosophical portrait criticism thereby emerges. In this approach, each image becomes an occasion for investigating metaphysical questions: the nature of selfhood, consciousness, destiny, memory, creativity, and humanity's relationship with the cosmos. The artwork is treated not merely as an aesthetic object but as a mode of philosophical inquiry.
The self-portrait is understood not simply as the representation of a face but a technology of self-knowledge. I explore how, through photography, digital inscription, and symbolic intervention, Orji transforms her own face, a possibility open to any human face, into a philosophical landscape where body, mind, spirit, culture, and cosmos converge.
Moving from asking "What does this image mean?" I probe into how a single image becomes the source of an entire philosophy.The project operates therefore, not only within art history but also in relation to works like Erwin Panofsky's Studies in Iconology, Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, and Henri Corbin's writings on Ibn Arabi, where images are treated as inexhaustible generators of thought rather than objects awaiting definitive interpretation.
The freshness of
youth, concentrated in the lustre of the eyes, framed by the
naturalistic splendour that is the engineering of the human form, projects
a vision that is Igbo rooted, yet universally humanistic and cosmic. I name this picture Anya, the Igbo word for eye/eyes, since I have not found a name for the picture by the artist herself.
The elegance of the solar depiction on the artist's forehead amplifies the rhythms of nature represented by the curve of the eyebrows in tandem with the symmetries of eyelids and eyes.
This elegance further empowers the symbolic resonance of the solar inscription, evoking conjunctions between solar luminosity and the radiance of the eyes, thereby entering the domain of Anyanwu, the Odinani goddess of the sun and its material and metaphorical significance in enabling life on Earth.
Human existence is further advanced by the creativity of consciousness empowered by that solar nourishment. The radiance of the sun symbolizes the awareness generated by consciousness and its capacity for escalation through creativity.
Orji observes in relation to her images emphasising eyes:
''Eyes mean a lot in both physical and spiritual space. They stand for wisdom gained through experience. They also represent the ability to see beyond the physical.''
-Agoziem, X, June 15, 2026
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle opens his Metaphysics, his intellectual exploration of the unity and dynamism of existence, by recognizing the strategic significance of sight in a way that incidentally resonates with Orji's visual and verbal expressions, ''[ Everyone] by nature desires to know'', Aristotle states. ''Most prized of all'' he continues, ''is the sense of sight, for it enables people recognize the differences between things''.
Beyond the differences between things, however, lies the search for their underlying unity. Aristotle suggests that the various explanations of terrestrial and cosmic order are, at their deepest level, different approaches to understanding this fundamental oneness.
Along a comparable, though independently developed, trajectory of inquiry, a quaternary constellation is inscribed between Orji's eyes.
This motif suggests the privileged place of binary and quaternary patterns in Igbo conceptions of metaphysical and social order. It evokes a vision of reality structured through complementary dualities and fourfold organization. This extends from the understanding of duality as intrinsic to existence to the four-day traditional Igbo week, in which each day possesses its own distinctive spiritual significance.
Indigenous Igbo numerical values include the expansive symbolism of numbers in Igbo thought as developed by Oma ( Odinani Mystery School), in relation to the structure and dynamism of existence.
It also involves the extensive associations of the organizational structure of Afa, a central Igbo information and divination system, which also has the number four as a primary unit in its organisation, four being the first of the even numbered multiples of the binary organisation of Afa.
Afa is the Igbo version of a West African knowledge and divination system known in Yorubaland as Ifa, in Dahomey as Fa, among the Twi as Afan, and is very similar to the Benin Oguega and the culturally distant Chinese I Ching.
In Ifa, the organizational categories of the system, the odu ifa, understood in terms of numerical combinations such as the number four, go beyond structural forms to be perceived as self conscious entities, individuals, spirits ( O.V. Adepoju, ''Joseph Ohomima's Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being''; ''The Metaphysics of Language in the Yoruba Origin Ifa System of Knowledge in a Comparative Context").
In referencing Afa, we enter the knowledge worlds of Agwu, the Odinani deity representing unusual creativity in various forms of endeavour, and particularly in navigating the intersection of matter and spirit demonstrated by the work of dibia afa, a particular school of diviner/healers/magical experts in Odinani.
The four sided image and the solar symbol converge in the idea of the universe, at the beginning of time, and the day at daybreak ''breaking open'' like the four lobes of a kolanut, a primary cosmological, ritual and hospitality symbol and instrument in Igboland
( Ogonna Agu, The Book of Dawn and Invocations: The Search for Philosophic Truth by an African Initiate, 1997, 12-13).
The four sided radiation of the image between Orji's eyes in the self portrait may suggest the breaking open of knowledge in a consistent stream, organized into the orderly structures evoked by the spatial ordering of the symbol, a cognitive process akin to the kolanut ritual at daybreak, conjuncting the rising of the sun with divine creativity at the beginning of time.
In this way, Orji's image becomes a visual meditation on the structure, dynamism, and the temporal rhythms of existence as conceived within Igbo philosophy. The image achieves this in relation to human potential for grasping these unifying rhythms, doing this through a visual symbolism ranging from the solar luminosity of Anyanwu to a quaternary structuring that may be associated with Agwu.
From Intellect to Beyond Intellect
Aristotle's emphasis in trying to understand the unity of existence is through intellectual exploration, which may lead beyond the physical universe into a comprehension of the Unmoved Mover, responsible for all motion, all change in the cosmos. Orji also emphasizes moving beyond the physical universe, accessible through corporeal sight and physically grounded experience, to perceptions beyond the physical, penetrating into the spiritual.
She sums up this orientation:
''Amamihe na Ahumahu
The eyes (whether one eye or three)[ representing vision within and beyond the conventional, as explained below by Umeh] represent knowledge and experience drawn from both the physical state and experiences beyond the body.
When Igbo people say “Ahula m ọtutu ihe na ndu a,” they are not speaking of what they have merely seen with their eyes, but of what they have lived through, understood, and perceived as spirit beings existing in a physical body. These experiences cultivate the ability to understand what is invisible to others.''
-Agoziem, X, May 4, 2026
A particularly striking summation of this style of thought comes from the cognate Yoruba philosophy of oju lasan and oju inu, as described by Babatunde Lawal:
''Since the face is the seat of the eyes (oju), no discussion of aworan (representation), especially portraiture, would be complete without relating it to iworan, the act of looking and being looked at, otherwise known as the gaze.
To begin with, the Yoruba call the eyeball eyin oju, a refractive "egg" empowered by ase [cosmic life force] (mediated by Esu) [the deity of connections between diverse beings and possibilities], enabling an individual to see (riran).
As with other aspects of Yoruba culture, the eyeball is thought to have two aspects, an outer layer called oju ode (literally, external eye) or oju lasan (literally, naked eye), which has to do with normal, quotidian vision, and an inner one called oju inu (literally, internal eye) or oju okan (literally, mind's eye).
The latter is associated with memory, intention, intuition, insight, thinking, imagination, critical analysis, visual cognition, dreams, trances, prophecy, hypnotism, empathy, telepathy, divination, healing, benevolence, malevolence, extrasensory perception, and witchcraft, among others. For the Yoruba, these two layers of the eye combine to determine iworan, the specular gaze of an individual.''
( " Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art'',The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 3, 2001, 498-526; 516.)
John Anenechukwu Umeh complements this perspective from within Igbo philosophy:
''In Afa language, Ose naabo is the two eyes with which one sees the mortal world, while Ose ora is the eye with which one sees the Spirit and the world in addition''.
Umeh describes the duality represented by Ose naabo as both integrated and transcended through the higher perception of Ose ora. He visualizes this relationship as a triangle where the two physical eyes constituting Ose naabo form the base while the spiritual eye that is Ose ora occupies the apex.
This image is incidentally reminiscent of the position of the solar symbol on Orji's forehead in her self-portrait. Umeh associates this superordinate mode of perception with the deities Agwu and Anyanwu, both regarded as sources of superlative wisdom and insight. He presents this perception as capable of climaxing in a divine vision of cosmic unity, an insight into the underlying unity of the cosmos.
( After God is Dibia: Igbo Cosmology, Divination and Sacred Science in Nigeria.Vol. 2. 1999; 71-73).
What Orji's image of her face in Anya, with its deliberate focus on the eyes projects is therefore a metaphysical statement, a visual evocation of the fundamental order of reality. At the same time, it articulates an epistemological vision, exploring the possibilities of perception both through the physical eyes and beyond them, into forms of insight that transcend ordinary seeing.
Self Portraiture at the Intersection of Self, Culture, Cosmos
''Orji's Anya transforms portraiture into a meditation on consciousness, identity, and culture by reducing the human face to its most expressive element: the eyes. Through the fusion of photographic realism with delicate hand-drawn inscriptions, it presents the face not simply as a physical presence but as a symbolic landscape.
The repeated inscription "IGBO" within the irises projects Igbo identity as not merely inherited or displayed externally but in relation to schools of thought, ways of seeing the world, epistemologies through which reality is perceived, as developed in relation to Igbo contexts.
The luminous markings around the eyes and the vertical sequence of symbols descending from the forehead evoke illumination, intuition, and communication between human consciousness and transcendent reality, transforming the face into a cosmogram in which body, mind, spirit, and cosmos converge.
The portrait therefore operates simultaneously as self-portrait, philosophical statement, and cultural manifesto. It proposes that vision is never culturally neutral but is shaped by memory, ancestry, and spiritual orientation, while the human person becomes a meeting place of the visible and the invisible. By combining the intimacy of a photographic close-up with the abstraction of symbolic drawing, the artist creates an image that asks not simply, "Who am I?" but "How do I see, and what world does that way of seeing reveal?"
In this way, the work elevates the gaze into an emblem of consciousness itself, presenting an Igbo identity that is both a lived inheritance and a luminous mode of knowing.''
( ChatGPT)
A Straight Line Drawn by God
"A straight line drawn by God" is how an Igbo oral poet celebrates a woman in the poem "To a Young Lady," included in Igbo Traditional Verse by Romanus Egudu and Donatus Nwoga. The expression evokes "pure perfection, grace, and flawless beauty" (Google AI), presenting the beauty of the human form as a direct manifestation of divine artistry.
The creativity embodied in a particular human person is thus understood as an expression of the same creative intelligence that enables the ordered magnitude of the cosmos. Human beauty is not merely physical in that contest; it is understood as a revelation of the divine power that animates and structures the universe.
Orji's self-portraiture, particularly Anya, which focuses most directly on her eyes, embodies a similar vision. The sublime elegance of the human face, animated by the peerless brilliance of the eyes, aesthetic potencies further galvanised through symbolic inscriptions, suggests a profound conjunction of the human and the divine.
The symbols, particularly those evoking Anyanwu and perhaps Agwu, present the human person as both an expression and an embodiment of divine reality. This and similar self portraits of Orji's thus become meditations on the co-inherence of the human and the divine, the terrestrial and the cosmic, revealing them not as separate realms but as distinct yet unified dimensions of a single continuum of being.
In Anya the luminosity of the skin and the vitality of the eyes combine with exquisite architectures of face-eyebrows arcing in winged majesty, eyelids curling outwards in lyrical poise, the graceful balance of the nose-to generate an expression of Anyanwu, the sun as physical illuminator and expression of divine illumination, the internal combustion of a star the light of which enables life on Earth and the orbital frequencies of the Milky Way solar system, a point in space reflecting the idea of a force upon which existence revolves, a radiance that sees everything, consuming everything unwholesome even as it galvanizies insight into the most hidden of possibilities.
The Illumination of Anyanwu
anya (eye) and anwụ (sun)-"eye of the sun"-"face of the sun."
[ representing ] the sun not merely as a physical celestial body but as a spiritual presence, the visible manifestation of divine watchfulness over the earth, the eye through which the supreme being sees all things on earth, the omnipresent aspect of the divine, the light that reaches everywhere and sees everything, Anyanwu Eze Chukwu Okike, the sun, the Lord God, the creator, the light of divine wisdom and the collective spirit of holy beings carried by that light
truth, justice, knowledge, wisdom, the conjunction of chi, the divine essence of self and the ultimate source of existence, Chukwu, chi visualized as descending from the sun at daybreak, all personal spiritual forces originating from and returning to the divine solar presence
divine light and truth, the symbols of which are inscribed on the body in ichi facial art, in a line running from the centre of the forehead down to the centre of the chin, with further lines radiating outward to represent the rays of the sun, carrying the symbol of divine light and truth on the face as a permanent statement of spiritual status and connection to Anyanwu.
( Adapted from ''Anyanwu'', Wikipedia)