Between a Modern Artistic Master and an Ancient Deity: Bruce Onobrakpeya, Agbarha Spiritual Arts and Ekene

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Between a Modern Artistic Master and an Ancient Deity: Bruce Onobrakpeya, Agbarha Spiritual Arts and Ekene 

                     

A superb, though incidental example, of an Onobrakpeya blend of the sublimely mysterious and the everyday.

A lucky shot by myself at an edition of the Lagos art fair Art X, showing an Onobrakpeya sculpture foregrounded by an elegantly dressed and delicately seated young woman, with a partial image of another young woman disappearing into the right of the picture,  black skin radiant.

The verticular majesty of the sculpture, its pyramidal formation and intricate inscriptional network concentrating a universe of mysterious yet powerful communicative force through every inch of the regal surface, is vintage Onobrakpeya, qualities highlighted by the exquisite display of the piece, values the presence of the women amplify by similarity and contrast.

Is the humanoid figure evocative of an angelic presence, a divine messenger, as suggested by its towering elegance?

Is it an extraterrestrial, its form emblazoned with symbols aspiring to bridge the gap between its own thought systems and ours, an identity travelling as a sentient information stream from a distant galaxy,  filtered and concretized by Onobrakpeya in his wide ranging creative wanderings, without his knowing that what he takes as a work of art is that and more, a sentient entity he has given form as it waits for whatever length of time it may take-years or millennia, for its message to be decoded by its brethren on the third planet from the dwarf star in the Milky Way galaxy, the very terrestrial brethren whose presence is on display in their beauty and cultural refinement around the mysterious Onobrakpeya elongation,  akin to ancient stone monuments in centuries vanished civilisations, yet brought to life by a disciple of the convergence of the eternal and the temporal, the perennial and the immediate, the ancient and the contemporary?

Concentric circles of dispersion and integration, of expression and coordination, rthyms of harmony between center and circumference, evoking Japanese poet Matsuo Basho's miracle of poetic condensation and evocative force, "breaking the silence of an ancient pond, a frog jumps into water, a deep resonance", contemplative  mind sinking into cosmos, drinking from the bowl prior to entering the tea house as one observes the sea beyond, juxtapositions evoking the relationship between sea and bowl of water and between self and cosmos, a strategic motif of Japanese gardening; expanding and contracting circlesv surmounted by a rhombus, a stylised shape of two triangles facing upward and downward, evoking balance; topped by what may be seen as an eye of vision, itself surmounted by another stylized diamond structure, and another, marching upward in a straight sequence towards the integrative centre represented by the head of this mysterious figure as the hands frame its body in a circle of unity, of completeness, of wholeness, radiating centuries of archetypal symbolism manifest across the world.

Forms of life. The women's presence dramatizes biological, human life in its blend of sentience and skeletal,  neural and muscular coordination, radiant within flesh and cultural constructs represented by clothes and even a style of elegant sitting and the process of reading, highlighting  the object the woman is reading from, likely a mobile phone- a reading experience dramatizing a dialogue between artifact and human, akin to the sculpture positioned to inspire such a dialogue between itself and its viewers.

On the left of the picture is another strategic Onobrakpeya image, a circle with an arrangement of forms at its centre and a network of abstractions round its circumference and concentrated in a square at the top of the space, an expression of Onobrakpeya's recurrent experimentation with an instrument of arcane knowledge, the opon ifa of the Yoruba Ifa system of knowledge through which intersections of relationships between fate and free will at the intersection of self and cosmos are explored.

Scriptic forms play around the circumference, evocations of humanity's explorations of implications of infinity, abstractions further constellating in a square at the stop of the space,  a cloud of expressive forms suggesting condensations of enquiry and its outcomes, a network of ideational possibilities distllations of possibilities of knowledge akin to the odu ifa, the spatial/graphic/numerical and verbal networks through which existence and its development are explored in Ifa, suggesting a template through which symbol configurations such as the elegant majesty of the pyramidal personage may be explored.

   

             Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                         Compcros 

                           Abstract 

This essay locates the art of the Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya, complemented by his writings, as one of the greatest dramatizations of of the contributions of African spiritualities to the meaning of existence.

The essay focuses on a comparison between Onobrakpeya's work and the spirituality of Ekene, the water spirit that is the central deity of Onobrakpeya's natal Agbarha community in the Niger Delta.

Ekene metaphysics of the mysterious presence of the animate within the inanimate is described as correlative with Onobrakpeya’s use of conventional forms such as African, Christian and technological references in unleashing a globally resonant projection of the animation of cosmos by mystery and meaning.

This analysis is complemented by a close study of a picture of two works by Onobrakpeya juxtaposed  with images of two people in the same space as the works when the picture was taken, a dialogue between artistic and human presence the discussion explores. 

Introduction: A Convergence of Creativity and Spirit across African Thought and Arts

Some of the most powerful and enduring expressions of African thought are found in works of art—whether visual, literary, or performative. 

These creations demonstrate the profound capacity of indigenous spiritualities and philosophies to give existence meaning and purpose. These creative forms do not merely reflect culture; they shape and sustain meaning, offering pathways into the metaphysical and existential dimensions of life.

Akan Adinkra visual symbols, for example, embody philosophical concepts of wisdom, strength, and interconnectedness, influencing modern design and thought, catalytic for such artists as Owusu-Ankomah and Rikki Wemega-Kwawu.

The Nigerian Cross River and Cameroonian Nsibidi scripts, with their intricate ideographic systems, echo in the contemporary abstractions of artist Victor Ekpuk, who transforms these ancient signs into vibrant explorations of meaning across various domains.

Igbo Uli body and wall painting traditions, rich in symbolic motifs drawn from nature and cosmology, have profoundly enriched the art and thought of Obiora Udechukwu, Uche Okeke, and other luminaries of the Nsukka Art School, fostering a post-colonial aesthetic rooted in cultural revival.

The transformation of the Osogbo Osun forest into a visual dramatization of Yoruba Orisa cosmology through the sculptures and architecture of Susanne Wenger and the New Sacred Art movement—documented in writings by and about Wenger—exemplifies how sacred spaces can become living artworks, merging ecology, spirituality, and creativity.

This tradition is not limited to visual art. It permeates literature, as seen in the works of Wole Soyinka, celebrated as unique projections of the ideational and inspirational force of classical Yoruba spirituality and philosophies, weaving myth, ritual, and existential inquiry into narratives plumbing depths of ultimate value in the African cosmos. 

Akan nature philosophies, emphasizing harmony with the environment, shape the narrative of Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah's novel The Healers, portraying healing as an individual and communal process, in unity with nature.

Malian scholar Ahmadou Hampâté Bâ's retelling of Fulani mythic thought in Kaidara: A Fulani Cosmological Epic from Mali and his essays on Bambara and Fulani epistemologies illuminate the intricate worldviews of these communities, offering mythic, metaphysical and epistemic insights into West African cosmologies, demonstrating the philosophical depths of oral traditions.

 It finds epic scale in the poetry and magnificent introduction to Masisi Kunene's Anthem of the Decades, which maps Zulu cosmology, structure of the universe,  and epistemology, ways of knowing, celebrating the interplay of the human mind, nature, and cosmos.

All these examples, demonstrating how art serves as a vessel for philosophical inquiry, spiritual expression, and cultural continuity, 

highlight the dynamic creativity inherent in African knowledge systems, particularly those indigenous to the continent.

 

The Journey of a Master

One of the greatest visual artists in this spectrum of masters, extending into inimitable engagements with Christianity, his  art complemented by his writings,  is Bruce Onobrakpeya.

Rising from its Urhobo origins in Nigeria's Niger Delta, his work creates a unique dialogue with Benin, Yoruba, Akan, Fulani and Christian cultures, as well as with modern technology represented by  electronic devices and combustion engine vehicles exemplified by cars, reworking their visual identities into ocularly sensitive projections of numinous power,  a sense of the awesome and sublime, the intimate and glorious, though multi-media installations,  prints and paintings, amplified through poetry and prose across a career he sustains in his ever developing inventiveness into his 90s, embodying a lifelong dialogue with the cosmos.

How did such a unique configuration of creativity and decades powered  work emerge? 

What fuels the master's rocket propelled journey from his emergence on the national scene through membership of the famous Zaria Rebels, a student society at the Amadou Bello University, Zaria whose  insistence on creating art inspired by and speaking to their environment rather than focusing on  art fed by colonial models  proved pivotal in the development of post-clasical Nigerian art, his work evolving into a constellation of influences, drawing from his Mushin, Lagos neighborhood, his Urhobo heritage, and his broader Nigerian, African and global interactions?

Exploring  the Master's Configurations and Catalysts

My explorations of the artist's journey is taking me into the various books and articles written about him and by him as well as interviews with him by different people, into my own discussions with him and his neighbours in his Mushin, Lagos neighbourhood, and with people who have been close to him across various points of his career.

Attending the annual Harmattan Workshop, and international artists' conclave organised by the Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation in its February 2024 edition proved particularly strategic in this quest, taking me into zones yet uncovered in the decades of Onobrakpeya scholarship. 

Not only did I have the privilege of observing the artist's daily life over a two week period,  dialoguing with him in the context of interaction with artists from various parts of the world converging for the workshop, and studying first hand the magnificent cascade of art by Onobrakpeya and other artists at the two galleries at the Onobrak Art Centre in the workshop site, I was privileged to commence immersion in the spiritual thought, practices and arts of Onobrakpeya's native Agbarha community where the worksop is held, specifically in Agbarha-Otor,  the largest of the twenty six communities constituting Agbarha. 

I was at last able to move beyond textual study of  relationships between  Onobrakpeya's work and Urhobo thought and arts to experiencing firsthand  those endogenous cultural forms and their resonance with the creativity of the contemporary artist as it constellates an intercultural matrix of influences.

Understanding the art of the  greatest Christian artist ever, Michelangelo Buonarroti, along with that of his fellow Renaissance masters, such as Raphael Santi and Leonardo da Vinci, is immeasurably  aided by a study of the Bible, the Christian scripture from which the artists drew their subjects.

Without such knowledge,  as well as an appreciation of the classical Greco-Roman artistic and philosophical traditions that shaped the interpretation of the Christian message, the sublime art of those masters lose half of their communicative force for the viewer. 

The same holds about the relationship between Japanese gardening and Zen Buddhism, between classical Indian dance and Hinduism, among other examples of such cultural synergies and creative reworkings.

Classical African spiritualities and philosophies, unlike the Christian, Hindu and Buddist examples, are more oral than written, more performative than documented, a cultural landscape in which widespread writing is a recent development of perhaps the last one hundred years in traditions that have been growing for thousands of years, reaching beyond even that span into the origins of human existence in Africa.

Engagements with such traditions through textual study, observation and practice has been transformative for my understanding of the universe,  intersecting with my journeys across Asian and Western thought as these have blossomed across time.  

Hence, the encounter with Agbarha spiritual masters and their arts, particularly in their physical proximity to Onobrakpeya's art in his two Agbarha-Otor galleries, within the inspirational force created by the contemplative ambience of the location of those galleries in the Onobrak Art Centre in the sparsely developed outskirts of Agbarha-Otor, has been mentally and emotionally  reconfigurative for me, enriching the associative possibilities of the plenitude represented by the Onobrakpeya universe.

       The Ekene Cosmos

Drops of water pervading air. Liquid nutrition suffusing the human form. Aquatic nourishment feeding earth. Dynamic flows structuring the material cosmos.  

"Dew fall quickly

dew fall slowly...

thus was the earth created

filled with purpose"

Aquatic images of terrestial and human structuring, of cosmic creativity,  derived from Benin and Yoruba Olokun, from Chinese thought, and others, filtered through the Yoruba poem "Ayajo Asuwada " represent for me the associative force of Ekene, the central deity of Agbarha, whose worship I stumbled upon on a fateful day as I passed through Agbarha-Otor on leaving its outskirts where the Harmattan Workshop is held.

Journeys from distant regions to an Agbarha concentration. Creative dynamisms travelling to converge at a point in space. Reconfigurative potencies flashing at the eyes, yet enclosing depths beyond  immediate gaze.

Those are my conjunctions between Bruce Onobrakpeya and Ekene, the water spirit described as travelling from outside Agbarha to concentrate his presence in the Agbarha-Otor sacred groves every fifteen years as he is called upon during the Ekene festival.

Ekene belief embodies the mystery of the transcendent within the mundane. Water—ubiquitous, nourishing, and invisible in its vaporous form—becomes a metaphor for divine presence and cosmic creativity.

    Arcane Dyamisms Between Onobrakpeya 

    and Ekene

The aesthetic force of Bruce Onobrakpeya's greatest art travels from an arcane depth to achieve visibility in the everyday.

Ekene represents the belief that something transcendent of the everyday exists within the everyday, within the ubiquity and commonness of water, something gloriously projective of the possibilities of the universe, enabling life and consciousness even within the inanimate, its marvel enhanced by its invisibility to conventional sight and its ability, in its intangible form, to move across physical locations. 

Onobrakpeya's art is pervaded by and concentrates such sensitivities,  a sense of wonder at the cosmos as something mysterious and glorious, a senstivity projected through the visual forms of classical African art, Christian thought and modern technology.

Like Ekene, understood as an intelligence distant from conventional perception yet represented by water in its spatial and biological ubiquity, Onobrakpeya's art resonates with that profound senstivity even as it does so through the use of material forms made familiar by classical African ritual art, Christian art and the technological universe.

Onobrakpeya’s visual language, shaped by classical African ritual forms, Christian iconography, and technological motifs, mirrors Ekene’s metaphysical essence—an intelligence beyond conventional perception, yet intimately woven into the fabric of existence.

In this convergence of artist and deity, of gallery and grove, of pigment and prayer, we glimpse the enduring power of African spirituality to animate art and illuminate life.