I am thrilled that my review of George Osodi’s exhibition curated by Christa Clarke – Royals and Regalia Inside the Palace of Nigeria’s Monarchs: Recent photographs by George Osodi – at the Newark Museum in 2015 has just come out in the publication African Arts, Fall  2016, vol 49 published by MIT. You can read it online.

Creativity, fecundity and the magical: Zina celebrates the women from the Niger Delta.

Barely back from Lagos I turn around and fly to Houston not too thrilled about being on a plane again but very much looking forward to attending Zina Saro-Wiwa’s Mangrove Banquet at the Blaffer Museum where she is having her first solo show in the US. As she eloquently tells us “ this banquet is in honor of her father Ken Saro -Wiwa, in honor of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta and especially in honor of all the undervalued labor women of the Niger Delta put into farming the land.” “ This banquet celebrates the bounty of the Niger Delta, the other bounty that is not petroleum. It affirms fertility, female farm labor, and celebrates creativity, fecundity and the magical.”

I was soon to be immersed in the scents and flavors of the foods from the Niger Delta.

It was my first time at the Blaffer Museum and only my second time in Houston. In fact the last time I had been in Houston was to see the exhibition The Progress of Love at the De Mesnil Collection where Zina was showing her video Eaten By The Heart.

I walked in not knowing anyone beside Zina but after a few sips of her magic potion or Bespoke cocktail – Lumene Lemongrass Fizz (Rhum Agricole with Pineapple and Lemongrass Syrup topped with Soda) Kuru’s Cure All – I was ready to work the room as one says!

Tables had been laid out in the back garden. Pineapples dipped in gold paint  standing as symbols of welcome decorated the table and napkins designed by Zina and printed by Pamela Cyri-Edgware from Port Harcourt added some bright color to an overall white and gold scheme. Zina loves Pamela’s fabrics and is an enthusiastic supporter and buyer of her work. I discovered all of this on Instagram by the way.

With the help of Benjy Mason’s great cooking team she brought the flavors, scents, and ingredients from West Africa to our table. Zina had spend weeks planning this from afar and had brought back in her suitcase scent leaf syrup and curry leaf oil that she had made in Port Harcourt. At her arrival in Houston she had joined Benjy’s team and scoured the local West African supermarkets on the Southwest side of Houston, which in fact carry African produce grown by people from Congo in the Gulf!

She was thrilled to find scent leaves, which she used as garnish. Furthermore “ they added a herby quality to the hibiscus broth! “ she said.

Every dish was a discovery: All the guests were soon engrossed in the novelty of the ingredients, and the myriad of flavors Zina had put together for us.

APPETIZER

Egusi Deviled Egg (I never say no to a deviled egg even if it is bad for my cholesterol!)

STARTER

Cold-Smoked Snapped cured and smoked in Zina’s Invisible Man Tree Bark, served with carrot Ribbons and Curry Leaf Aioli. (It all sounded mysterious especially this Invisible Man Tree Bark)

SOUP

Hibiscus broth (I loved the texture of the slightly chewy things that were floating in the broth. She called them periwinkles and that really confused me because in my book periwinkle is a flower. I soon found out how ignorant I was: Periwinkle is also a small edible sea snail. It was delicious!)

ENTREMETS

Palm wine and Alomo bitters Granita

Hand-washing in warm water and shea butter soap (I did not have to wash my hands since I had yet to loose my inhibitions and eat with my fingers)

ENTRÉE (to be eaten by hand!)

Wood-Roasted Red Snapper stuffed with mustard leaf dressed in palm oil. Crayfish and coconut dressing, served with pounded Avocado and Roasted Sweet Plantain. (It took me awhile before I got over internal voices telling me I should not use my hands and reached out and grabbed the side of the fish with my fingers and stuffed it into my mouth!)

DESSERT

Poached Guava with Scent Leaf Syrup

Alligator Pepper Ice Cream

Crushed and Toasted Chin Chin.

Through out the meal Tyres Donnett’s masked performance with a mortar and pestle from Nigeria reminded us of the women of the Niger Delta who work the land and bring and prepare food for their families.

Obi James Ikechukwu Anyasi II, Obi of Idumuje Unor

George Osodi who is internationally famous for his powerful photographic series on the damage being done on the environment and life in the oil rich Niger delta, is now celebrating Nigerian cultural heritage.   His new series Nigeria Monarchs on view in a splendid exhibition Royals & Regalia: Inside the palaces of Nigeria’s Monarchs at the Newark Museum captures from an African perspective – Osodi emphasizes this point – the contemporary cultural relevance of today’s Nigerian kings in the process of peace making at a local level and in preserving a sense of cultural identity.

“ Nigeria is not only rich in natural resources but also in its religious and cultural diversity. I believe this should be a source of strength and unity among the country’s various ethnic groups, rather than something that creates division and instability. Documenting and archiving culture is a key to understanding cultural origins, and thus developing a sense of identity.”

The Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero

Osodi is driven here by a sense of pride and a timely desire to encourage unity in front of recent challenges such as stark inequality and continuous incursions by Boko Haram in the North. While Nigeria is a republic and those kings have no constitutional power the central government is very distant from the local populace and relies on the kings to keep peace. Osodi reminds us not to look at his country – artificially carved by the colonial powers – through the sole prism of our western experience with democracy but to understand and appreciate its own history and cultural ressources.

Pere Donokoromo II, The Pere of Isaba Kingdom

There are many kings maybe almost 2000 says Osodi who aims to photograph 100 of them. He has photographed 50 kings by now in full regalia in a setting of their choosing. Most of them are seated on a throne or standing in their palaces often with their attendants at their side in keeping with the more traditional way of recording power and privilege. Adorned with the traditional regalia – beaded headdress and necklaces – they exude quiet dignity and wisdom. What makes this series particularly dynamic is the inclusion of more candid shots of the kings, the emphasis on architectural setting, interior décor, and rich textiles. Visually it is a feast for the eyes. The monarchs’ love of color and adornment and their individual taste is wonderfully captured and adds whimsy to the serial quality of the project and the sense of permanence that exudes from these portraits.

Emir of Zauzau (Zaria) Alhaji Dr. Shehu Idris

Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse II, OONI of Ife

Osodi’s professional background is documentary photography and his Monarchs series situates itself within a longstanding tradition of African portraiture. However, he brings to this tradition a contemporary flair and an artistic eye evident in his conceptual approach and his play with color and texture.

Benjamin Ikenchucku Keagborekuzi I, The Dein of Abgor Kingdom

HRH Queen Hajiya Hadizatu Ahmeda,Magajiya of Knubwada

Some of these monarchs were crowned in early childhood: At a dinner giving by Christa Clarke, the curator of the exhibition, I sat next to HRM Benjamin Ikenchuku Keagborekuzi, The Dein of Agbor Kingdom who was crowned as the age of two. He was raised in the UK and straddles both worlds. I was quite happy to see that two women monarchs were included in the show. One of them has had a successful career in the US prior to taking on her regal responsibilities. Hers was not an isolated case; many of the monarchs are successful professionals in their civilian lives. The contemporary reality of their lives added to the fusion of the traditional and the contemporary evident in the outfits and settings took care of any feeling of anachronism that might have lurked in my Western mind.

Toyin Odutola’s latest work showing at Jack Shainman is exactly that. Toyin specializes in drawings and portraiture but her ink-layering process is very unique. In the past she worked almost exclusively with ballpoint (pen and ink) and focused mostly on the skin of her subjects creating a colorful shimmering effect.The figure was usually set against a white or black ground.

Toyin’s drawing technique with a ball point is a painstaking one and in a moment of frustration with the demands of this technique she decided to explore charcoal and pastel, which are looser mediums and allow for more freedom and broader range of movement.

In this new show the background has come alive. She has turned to a dense layering of pastels and charcoals and positioned her subjects – her two brothers – amidst rich textiles creating a dialogue between figure and ground.

While the subject matter is figurative, it was the sense of abstraction that caught my attention. She is still focusing on the skin of her subjects but now the patterns of mark making which map the skin geography become more abstract against the abstract motifs of the textile. She indicates to me that she sees the motifs on the textile as language and the marks depicting the skin as another language. One could say that the skin and fabric are engaged in a dialogue.

While traditionally the artist is meant to highlight the figure over the background here Toyin resists that impulse. Some of the figures actually feel like they are floating and don’t seem to be resting against the backdrop which enhances this sense of abstraction. My eyes shift continuously between background and foreground and have a hard time settling on either one; they are both so powerful. While Toyin moved to the US at a young age she embraces her African heritage. The pattern of the backgrounds can be found in the mud cloth of the Bamana weavers made in Mali. Set against the patterns of the cloth the marksof the skin remind me of scarification that one can see at times within certain tribes.

Toyin speaks of her wish to portray her brothers not having to adjust to any environment. She depicts them relaxed and just being themselves. Through formal means, by juxtaposing background and figure in a way that dispels any impression of spatial interaction she effectively conveys the sense that these boys exists independently from their context.

However, this is not the life experienced by either Toyin or her brothers who had to move from Ife, Nigeria to Alabama and had to adjust repeatedly to new situations. She is not choosing to reflect a reality, but more a longing/ fantasy. Perhaps in the process of doing this there is a measure of empowerment that takes place for the artist or even repair who in the process of art making is able to correct a painful history. In other words: Draw her loved ones in a way she would have wanted them to feel.

Toyin in her work challenges preconceived ideas and asks us to reconsider “our perceptions of others and imagine something different.” She speaks of her desire to discourage the viewer from objectifying the black body. “ I ‘m working on some pieces right now of my brothers in nude poses, and they’re not meant to be a spectacle. I ‘m trying to get the viewer to look at people being people. The only way to do that is to work the skin so much that it’s no longer just a flat surface for someone to wash over their ideas – they have to look and dig to find a person.” (Excerpt from an interview of the artist by Justin Allen)

More than anything, this series is an act of love, a reminder of its presence even when all else changes

Listen well: African women are talking about their hair.

I just finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s novel, Americanah, and was totally taken by her wonderful vivid description of a hair-braiding salon in Trenton New Jersey. I never realized it took six hours to have one’s hair braided and that it hurt so much! Being a person who hates going to the hairdresser – I don’t like getting my hair pulled- and who rarely styles her hair I also found myself quite amazed by the time, effort and even health risk that are involved in achieving the alternative soft wavy look many black women favor.

J.D. Okhai Ojeikere photographs of Nigerian women hairstyles have fascinated me recently.  They do feel abstract and impersonal however. While that is part of their appeal I loved getting Adiche’s insights into women’s daily lives and hairstyle practices. Suddenly, something that had felt distant and looked like an abstract art form came to life.

To give you an idea of how intricate, sculptural and varied these hairdos can be, here are wonderful photographs taken by J. D Okhai Ojeikere who sadly past away very recently.

These images come from his series Hairstyles. In the street, at the office, at parties, he photographed women’s hairdos from behind and highlighted their sculptural qualities and the play of forms. Beyond their aesthetic qualities his series offer a mix of ethnographic and anthropological insight into Nigerian culture.

I am a woman and I assure you hair matters very early on the life of a little girl. I remember trying different hairstyles as a child: braids, ponytails, with lots of colorful bows. It was about vanity but also identity and pleasure. However, in African culture and tradition cornrow braiding has much greater and deeper significance. It is much more than an expression of personal vanity. It has communicative power and traditionally speaks of religion, kinship, status, age and ethnicity. When a black woman chooses to braid her hair she is embracing and honoring her cultural heritage.

Adiche, born in Nigeria but now living both in Nigeria and in the US brings her personal Nigerian perspective to the discussion of race in the United States. In Adiche’s third novel, Ifemelu the outspoken Nigerian heroine is returning to Nigeria. In preparation of her return, she wants to have her hair braided. With no braiding hair salon in upper class Princeton where she was on a research fellowship she goes to Trenton to have her hair braided.

Ifemelu has all the characteristics of what Adiche calls an Americanah: After 14 years in the US she has given up some of her old habits and adopted American ways.  Sitting in a hair salon having her hair braided for six hours by ladies from French speaking West Africa she munches carrots and granola bars while they are eating spicy and greasy food. She reads an American novel while they stare in rapture at Nigerian Nollywood movies, which she dislikes.

Adiche weaves through out the novel the theme of Ifemelu’s black kinky hair and its care, here an index of Ifemelu’s race and gender. The evocative  hair braiding episode  followed subsequently by the many references to hair become a metaphor for Ifemulu’s struggles in the US as an African immigrant.   A Nigerian African contending for the first time with her blackness in a predominantly white society, Ifemelu gradually emerges as an independent and authentic woman.

Ifemelu is a blogger in the story. She is not afraid to speak her mind about issues of race and has the refreshing perspective of the outsider on America’s political correctness that looks so foreign to people that come from abroad. I loved the frankness and outspoken nature of her posts and it made me realize that my own posts could be spunkier.

All simplistic notions of race and identity particular to the western perspective and America’s “ tribal” approach to difference are challenged: People from Nigeria are different from people from Senegal, or Kenya or Mali, even though Americans would prefer to bunch them all under the term “Africans”. African-Americans are different from what Adiche calls American- Africans and there are many shades of “blackness”. She defies easy categorization, highlights differentiation while not minimizing prevailing deeply rooted racial prejudices.

Lets get back to the subject of hair.

“Can you imagine Michele Obama wearing her hair natural?” says Ifemelu.

Michele Obama has to have her hair relaxed and has to risk burning and scarring her scalp to achieve a look that voters are all comfortable with. The question begs to be asked. Would Obama have been elected if Michele wore her hair natural and short? Kind of crazy to think that we, voters, would have taken her hairdo into consideration. Yet, I think many would have.  So before any of you start thinking it is ridiculous to be spending so much time on ones hair, lets remember the magnitude of the consequences. Thank you Chimamanda Adiche for pointing it out! I take so much for granted and I really appreciate when I get a new awareness.   Hair is no joke in this country! It has huge symbolism though that is not the case everywhere in Africa. Trust me in the middle of the bush in Kenya it is a subject far from a woman’s mind.  However it does matter to the young male warriors!

According to Zina Saro-Wiwa, another Nigerian artist who has just returned to Nigeria after years abroad, one needs to pay attention to how black women in America are dealing with their hair these days. In spring of 2012 she made Transition a documentary video for the New York Times about the new natural look that many black women in America are adopting. She calls them “transitioning” women and points to a quiet revolution that is taking place.  I met her just as she had shaved off her hair and was keeping it short and natural. She was at the same time dealing with the long overdue grieving process over the violent death of her father Ken Saro-Wiwa. Determined to embrace her history, and in a courageous act of self-acceptance and honesty she included in a video recording of performances around the idea of “Grief” one scene where she allows herself to show her grief unabashedly and without any visual adornment. Her hair is cut very short and all the emphasis is on her expression.

She highlights the significance of this movement and its potential impact.

“[But] black hair and the black body generally have long been a site of political contest in American history and in the American imagination. Against this backdrop, the transition movement has a political dimension – whether transitioners themselves believe or not. Demonstration this level of self-acceptance represents a powerful evolution in black political expression. If racial politics has led to an internalization of self-loathing, then true transformation will come internally, too. It will not be a performative act. Saying it loud: “I’m black and I’m proud” is one thing. Believing it quietly is another. So the transition movement is much more profound and much more powerful – and I believe it offers lessons in self-acceptance for people of all hues and all genders.”

Zina is now in Nigeria working on  commissions for a couple of US museums and opening a pop up contemporary art gallery in her father’s old offices focusing on life and its struggles in the Niger Delta.

I find both Zina and Ifemelu’s determination, courage and self –acceptance deeply moving and inspiring. I thrive to be true to who I am and that includes cultural heritage and personal experience. I have learned from an early age that most people are attracted to you for the parts of you that are like them and not for what makes you different and separate.  With that in mind, choosing to honor difference, like Ifemulu or Zina are doing, can seem a risky proposition at times and yet I think it holds an abundance of richness. Holding at once what makes us similar and what makes us separate is the key to a rich and peaceful life and world.

From this point of departure – the hair salon – we follow the trials and tribulations of the two main protagonists Ifemelu and Obinze, who are lovers in high school in Nigeria then part ways as they try to improve on their choices in life. Obinze, a soft spoken young man with a passion for the US, cannot get a visa and ends up in London scrubbing toilets. He is deported back to Nigeria after he has been found to be working with false papers. He finds material success in Lagos. Ifemelu goes to university in the US where she struggles terribly to make ends meet. Her perseverance pays off and she becomes a very successful blogger. Despite her success she feels something deeply lacking in her life and returns to Lagos where she eventually reunites with Obinze.

The overriding narrative of boy /girl in love, going their separate ways and finding each other again is a time worn structure. More interesting are the insights into the life of Ifemelu when she was a young girl in Nigeria, highlighting the gradual disappointments and frustration with the way things were going in a country trying to find its way after independence.

Most of all, I love how Adiche highlights difference and creates a rich tapestry of colorful and unique experiences which are a powerful antidote to the toxic dangers of prejudice.

The first time I saw Nnenna Okore’s work was at the Newark Museum and I found it very poetic and compelling. Hung from the ceiling, transparent strips of shredded burlap dyed with clay like color, felt tactile and earthy yet paradoxically also ethereal and majestic. That dichotomy intrigued me.  Shortly there after, I found myself in Chicago where Nnenna Okore lives and works.  I got in touch with her and scheduled a visit to her studio at North Park University where she teaches.

Nnenna Okore completed her B.A in painting in Nigeria where she was the student of El Anatsui. It was under his guidance that she refocused her studies towards sculpture, which she studied at the University of Iowa completing an MA and MFA. She is now an Assistant professor at North Park University in Chicago.

Okore recycles discarded materials and objects and transforms them into intricate sculptures. While her work highlights the wastefulness of our consumerist society I feel that it is firmly grounded in nature, in the processes of birth and decay, in other words, in life cycles whether it be a tree, an object or her own body as it ages. This awareness of life processes informs her choice of materials. During our conversation she told me that as a young child growing up in southeast Nigeria in the town of Nsukka, she would walk through the rural communities and be on the lookout for objects, either man made or from nature, in partial decay whose texture and shape intrigued her.

I wanted to learn more about her working process. Okore showed me some of her burlap pieces at first and explained how she made them.

Listen to the follow video to hear her working process.

Making art is for Okore a very physical experience. Just as she saw women in her childhood community engage in repetitive daily tasks, she weaves, sews, rolls, twists, and dyes. She responds to the nature of her chosen material whether it is burlap, plastic, paper, or clay and rope and adapts her process. She takes what comes to her and works with it. The process is organic and she speaks of “ collaborating with the material”.  When she creates a large sculptural installation she starts with a broad idea of how it is going to look but no specifics.  The context and the nature of the chosen material play as much a role in determining the end result as her intervention. She has until now very much refused to take full control. However, in one of her more recent pieces, her approach is shifting and she is imposing more structural elements and deliberately aiming for something more visceral.

Finally we walked into the back room where one of her large clay pieces was rolled up and lying on the floor against the back wall. As we unrolled it, hundreds of small rolled clay pieces woven into burlap revealed themselves. This had obviously taken Okore hours to do.  While the sculpture seemed to not have a particular shape – it looked like a  very large wall hanging-  when she showed me how she installs it, I understood the second part of her working method. It is in the installation process that many of her pieces undergo a final shaping as she gathers the material in a particular way or hangs the panels on different planes sculpting the space.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

I was thrilled to see that finally Rotimi Fani-Kayode was getting a proper showing in New York. This tribute to his photographic work is long overdue. Indeed he was seminal in his portraiture of black African homosexuality.

“The first solo exhibition in New York of photographs by the British-Nigerian artist, presents large-scale color and black-and-white portraits created in the late 1980s by Fani-Kayode, before his untimely death in 1989. Fani-Kayode’s images interpret and reveal sexuality across racial and cultural differences, vividly merging his fascination with Yoruba ‘techniques of ecstasy’ and homoerotic self-expression through symbolic gestures, ritualistic poses, and elaborate decoration.”

While Mapplethorpe’s neo-classical photographs of the 1980’s with their emphasis on a perfect timeless body have become by now the acceptable norm in the representation of homosexuality and homoerotic desire as an art form, Rotimi’s enigmatic, theatrical, “neo-romantic” images of the black body engaged in some mysterious ritualistic exercise have encountered a reluctant establishment on this side of the Atlantic in particular. I am reminded of Caravaggio’s depictions of male youth, which were perceived at the time as highly provocative in their rejection of all classical normative rules of representation.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) was born in Nigeria in Ife, the Yoruba spiritual center, to a prominent family who were keepers of the shrine of Ife. Becoming political refugees his family settled in the UK and Rotimi went on to complete his education in the US at Georgetown University and at the Pratt Institute, finally returning to London where he worked until he died of AIDS at the age of 34.

Kobena Mercer in her essay Neo –Romantic, Afro-Atlantic: Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Aesthetic Singularity describes eloquently his photographic work at the Project Space. .

“ In the luxurious darkness of the photographer’s studio, various young men have been adorned with flowers. Petals and leaves brush against their skin in an atmosphere of sensual calm, yet each figure is visibly agitated by strange gestures whose meaning is inscrutable. “Nothing to Lose” is a series of color photographs that communicates a passionate feeling for human beauty that is all the more vividly intense because of the imminent presence of death. Rotimi Fani–Kayode died in December 1989, having produced in the previous years a unique body of work that remains utterly original.”

This selection of photographs was taken from two bodies of work, Nothing to Lose and Every Moment Counts, which he did in collaboration with his partner Alex Hirst as part of two groups shows that dealt with the impact of AIDS (Bodies of Experience: Stories About Living with HIV and Ecstatic Antibodies).  Fani-Kayode embraced the subject fearlessly and without self-pity.

Leaving behind the more typical realistic documentary photographic tradition Fani-Kayode embraced at once the Yoruba ritual heritage and his sexual identity and turned to the more adaptive studio tradition with its potential for creating imaginary spaces. These images are mostly provocative not because of an overt sexuality, but more because in depicting a black male nude engaged in enigmatic rituals they become windows into the unknown: an intangible spiritual world where mysterious forces are at play and where spiritual and physical ecstasy merge provocatively.

These images are confounding. There is no obvious point of entry in Fani-Kayode’s fabricated world. While I feel drawn in by the theatricality of the composition, the rich and sensuous coloring, dramatic lighting and luscious flowers, leaves and feathers, I am unable to access the meaning. I feel ultimately kept at a distance.  Fani-Kayode deliberately aims to create a complexity in order to hold the viewer at bay. I am reminded of the tradition of the Yoruba masquerade rituals where the spirits of the ancestors are brought forth through the presence of masks and yet, at all time, are shielded from view. One does not enter their world.

A more comprehensive analysis that would take in account Yoruba rituals might give further helpful insight into the meaning of these images.

Last week was fashion week in Lagos, the host of the Arise Africa Fashion Show where seventy seven African designers were represented. Well established and internationally known African designers were present such as  Ozwald Boateng, Tiffany Amber, Lozo Maleombho, Gavin Rajah, to name a few. The show was inaugurated in Cape Town in 2009 and was a big success this year despite the two day delay caused by the lack of electricity. Very glamorous they all say! There was lots of color, lace, transparent fabrics and sleek, sexy black designs. The look is international but with a very clear African sensibility in terms of patterned fabric, use of color, and traditional references.  If you want to see  more images check out Fashionista .Some people are born with style no matter the circumstances: Here is an elderly Turkana man strolling in the desert North of Kenya.