MOYO OKEDIJI: in the studio of Òbàtálá
Since the focus of the essay has been on diasporic artists, it is time to explore the character of anamnesis and historical transmission in the work of an African artist. To what extent is the issue of recollection relevant to African artists who are located within their specific cultural milieu. How does one recollect when one is immersed in one's ancestral culture? Under what conditions would a need for recollection arise?
In 1971 while Olugebefola was declaring his political position in the Reflection Orion exhibition, Nigeria had just emerged from a traumatic civil war and was in the process of ethnic reconciliation, rehabilitation and massive reconstruction. With a notable novelist in Yorùbá for a father, and a Yorùbá wall painter for a grandmother, Okediji was just about to commence his art education at the University of Ife, whose art department, with its all-Nigerian teachers, focused on bridging indigenous and Western artistic traditions. Raised in a home in which Yorùbá language, rites and rituals played dominant role socialization, Okediji moved to Ile-Ife between 1973 to 1977 to study art at the University of Ife. There, he met and interacted with a broad range of students from different parts of Nigeria, and with African American artists and students who either had come to study Nigerian art, or were on personal pilgrimages. The 1970s were an exciting period in Nigeria's social, economic and cultural history. Awash with petroleum dollars communities engaged in cultural revival, and the Federal Military Government initiated grandiose construction projects designed to accelerate the pace of modernization. An indigenization policy was also promulgated to expedite the transfer of economic resources and means of production into Nigerian hands. A kind of indigenization policy occurred in education too. In Ife, historians like Obaro Ikime, Segun Osoba, Akintoye, and Philip Igbafe emerged to interrogate and re-think history, and to produce a body of critical writings that restored agency to Africans, and presented African history from the agents' perspective. In the visual arts, Ben Enwonwu, then professor of Fine Arts at Ife laced his critiques of students' work with ideas on African Personality and consciousness. Meanwhile Agbo Folarin, in sculpture and textile, and Ige Ibigbami, in ceramics, pioneered the incorporation of Yorùbá stylistics in their respective media.
Between 1973 and 1978 Nigerian economy boomed as oil revenues poured into national coffers. Everything seemed possible. Intent on celebrating the cultural richness of black people globally, Nigeria audaciously hosted a cultural extravaganza named FESTAC `77. Held in Lagos, then capital of the country, this Second World Black Festival of the Arts and Culture was a follow up to the 1966 First World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar, Senegal, and the 1968 Pan African Cultural Festival held in Algiers. FESTAC provided an extraordinarily impressive homecoming of global proportions for African and Diasporic artists, performers, writers, and musicians. The conference and celebrations made the pointed statement that Africans are a global people, and that wherever they are, they have made important contributions in reshaping and enriching cultural heritages around the global. The polyglot debates on creative expression and cultural identity that occurred at the conference provided extremely valuable cultural and artistic connections between artists from different parts of the Pan African world - Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
While crucial cultural links were being built, FESTAC proved to be an economic fiasco. The vast economic mismanagement that accompanied the feverish construction of venues, the staging of the cultural extravaganza resulted in harsh economic restrictions. Internal political discussions on the fragile state of the economy, and on the dangers of Nigeria's growing dependency on imported goods resulted in a sweeping imposition of import restrictions by the Federal Military Government. Ushering in an austere period, the "Low Profile" lifestyle that followed was designed to curb Nigerians' desire for foreign goods. Unfortunately, the policy impacted negatively on art students, whose programs depended largely on imported art materials that were suddenly banned. Except for the few programs on ceramics, many art programs had no alternative resources in place for their students. Consequently, many promising students in painting who could not afford the high black market cost of oil paints abandoned the program and moved into other areas of art. Creative ones like Okediji, sought alternative solutions that resulted in their rediscovery of indigenous art-making traditions.
Though located in their indigenous culture, individuals are often inattentive to the details and specificities of their cultural tradition and practices. Recollection, however, occurs when queries are raised that challenges one's knowledge of history and traditional practices, and forces cultural tradition to be learnt in the context of purposive action. At moments like this individuals seek out elders who are widely perceived to know, as Okediji did with his grandmother, Madam Oyewùnmí Okediji, when he needed to learn about Yorùbá painting tradition during the research for his master's thesis.
Upon completion of his Bachelor's degree at Ife, Okediji moved to the University of Benin to commence a MFA program with Clara Ugbodaga Ndu, the premier female art educationist. The MFA program provided Okediji with the requisite opportunity to study the painting techniques of his Yorùbá heritage. Before beginning to paint indigenously, Okediji had to learn about the colour qualities of differing soil types (clay, kaolin, and laterite) and abandon pictorial conventions in painting. To succeed in his new endeavor he had to locate favorable places to mine his supplies. From the Òrìsàìkirè and Olúorógbó women shrine painters, he learnt about the three-colour groupings of pupa (redness and yellowness), funfun (whiteness), and dúdú (darkness) as well as the principle of composing with close gradations of soil colors (Okediji 1986). While Okediji liberally borrowed the stylistics and shrine iconography of the muralists to articulate an alternative contemporized medium of expression, he differed from the women in two ways: he contemporized the technique by adding binders into his colors to give them permanency; and he expanded the range of media by executing his compositions on cotton cloth, woven jute fibers, and raffia mats rather than on walls. His new earth palette of dark indigos, hues of soot-blacks, ochre, reddish sienna, and silvery hues of kaolin gave a certain earthiness to his creative output.
Recollection is a process to knowledge and self-knowledge. Okediji's major work of the period was the circlescopes series, which utilized the circle as the primary shape of creative exploration. Striving to become visible to himself as a conscious subject of history, he defiantly abandoned the rectangular surfaces of hardboards on the ground that such shapes force us to conceptualize the world as necessarily square. His selection of a circle as the appropriate shape of creation is intimately connected to the pre-figurement of the moon and sun in his psychic imagination, and in Yorùbá folkloric tradition. Under awakened consciousness, the circle becomes a relevant medium for presenting planetary events since the Yorùbá conceptual scheme takes the spherical rotund form of the calabash as the shape of the world. Opting for circular canvases of cloth, jute or raffia to create this optical effect, he confronted class biases with his unconventional style of painting. This bias was further amplified when he irreverently tacked his paintings onto the ubiquitous round flat basket trays used by tomato and pepper sellers for hawking their wares.
Nearly all the paintings in the circlescope series are free-flowing abstract designs that are sometime evocative of El Salahi's linear style and sometimes of Obiora Udechukwu's Uli drawings. Though some of Okediji's works have a geometric quality, others are fluid images suggestive of human beings, Ifá divination paraphernalia, trees, lizards, faces, bicycles, combs, and houses (Series Figs. 5-15). These are either juxtaposed against each other, or superimposed one on top of the other.
Reconnecting with his local history, Okediji's series on Yorùbá Genesis portrays an anamnestic dialogue with the metaphysical roots of his reality. The seven clay/mud paintings in the series are pictographic narratives of different stages of Yorùbá cosmological account, beginning with Olódùmarè, the Supreme Force of the universe, moving over the watery void to commence creation fig. 5, to the last stage when archetypal Ife became inhabited. The anamnestic objective of this work is to assert the centrality of Yorùbá conception of the world, and to check the rapid erasure of Yorùbá values and beliefs by either Christian or Islamic ideas. Explaining the series, Okediji states:
In the beginning was Olódùmarè. At that time in the beginning, the earth was full of water.39 Water covered the face of the earth; and Olódùmarè sent the Òrìsà [divinities], to populate the earth below (fig. 6). There was Òbàtálá [divine sculptor], there was Ògún [the intemperate Òrìsà of iron, instantiating the destructive-creative principle], there was Òsanyìn [the Òrìsà of herbs, pharmacognosy, and herbal medicine], there was Òrùnmìlà [the patron of Ifa], and others. Òbàtálá, who had a tendency of getting drunk, was initially the leader. At one point during the expedition to earth, Òbàtálá got drunk and slept off. Ògún40 then stepped forth and took the mantle of leadership from the intoxicated Òbàtálá, and proceeded on the journey to earth.
When the divinities arrived at the gap or entrance between òrun [the invisible otherworld] and ayé [the visible world], Ògún had a chain, a chameleon [recall Olugebefola's visual reference], a fowl, and some earth. Ògún sprinkled the earth on the surface of the water, and the fowl scattered the earth. Wherever the earth touched, that place became land41 and the other part remained water. Using the chain, the divinities then descended to earth, and settled in Ile-Ife.42
The paintings in this series affirm a cosmic principle of relatedness of life. It establishes vital connections between the Òrìsà, the animal and vegetal kingdoms (fig. 8 & 9), between geography and identity, between life force and power, and between creation and art. The mud-paintings visually present the salient stages of the creation process, as well they raise important philosophical questions about the relationship between art and life.
The multivocal layers in Okediji's itàn (narrative) reflexively introduces a discursive element of the concept of itàn that, Olabiyi Yai charged is usually neglected by scholars of Yorùbá culture (Yai, 1994). He contends that accurately represented, Yorùbá attitude towards tradition and history are not stable or static as is routinely supposed. It is not a narrative of stable facts, but an interpretive history of events that reflects a set of shifting sometimes conflicting interests. Okediji successfully captures this element in his visual itàn since he is aware of competing versions of the cosmological narrative. Like Wole Soyinka from Western Yorùbá land, Okediji, an Òyó indigene, accords greater emphasis to the creation narrative that gives greater importance to Ògún whom, is portrayed as superseding Òbàtálá and Odùduwà, the preeminent Òrìsà in Ife. This Òyó-based counter-narrative differs from the conventional account in eastern Yorùbá land including Ife, where Odùduwà is heralded as the preeminent Òrìsà that successfully completed the expedition to Ife. Although both accounts treat Olódùmarè as the Supreme Creator, the First Principle, and the primary organizing force of the universe, the points of divergence in the narratives occur at points where different political states utilize specific deities to promote spiritual legitimacy and to anchor certain historical narratives and political developments. Though on the one hand, Okediji's narrative seems to discursively counter the dominant tradition in Ife. On the other hand, regional challenge is discursively muted in the Ife version since the Oòni's propitiation of Ògún during the Olojo festival of rededication seemingly anticipates and domesticates this counter history.
Invariably, while Okediji's cosmological narrative subtly engages in a meta-level discourse on the genesis of Yorùbá. It also illuminates cosmic issues about creativity and art to which the verb tàn (to tell, narrate) alludes. The content of his visual representation grounds creativity on a metaphysical plane in which the Supreme Creator is an ungendered, non-individuated Being and the basis of creative order. This Supra-Force Olódùmarè is identical to the ungendered creative Ra in Egyptian cosmogony, but different from the gendered Jehovah/God of the Judeo-Christian faith.43
In Okediji's account, as it is in biblical account, creation is initiated through sound and it has two moments or characteristic traits: the first moment, emphasizes collaboration and functionality; and the second moment, highlights the infusion of life-energy into matter to bring the creative process to a completion. This comes across in the following account:
In the beginning were Olódùmarè and the other divinities. Olódùmarè asked Òbàtálá to create the human body. After Òbàtálá [viewed as masculine] created the human body, he did not create orí, but [in the collaborative spirit] delegated the duty to Àjàlá called Alámò tí nm'orí [the-sculptor-that-makes-the-head]. Àjàlá made all sorts of heads and after, would fire them when the clay was dry. Of course, it is only the fired head that is good, but not everyone knows that.
Àjàlá was a debtor. When "the spirits of people" moved from Òbàtálá 's studio to Àjàlá's studio to choose their orí, as soon as they knocked on the door, Àjàlá would quickly run out to hide thinking that it is one of his creditors. The "spirits of people" would enter the studio only to find Àjàlá absent. After waiting awhile, "they" would go ahead to choose any head. [In ignorance, yet exercising their agency] some of these "spirits" would choose the very fresh looking, unfired head.
They would take the head/orí and set out to earth only to develop problems at the zone of transition between òrun [the invisible otherworld] and ayé [the visible world] where there is a lot of rainfall. The rain falling on the unfired head would gradually cause it to disintegrate. By the time, the person gets to earth and sets out to live their life, he or she will not prosper. Whatever positive achievement would have resulted from their endeavors, would have to be converted to sweat to rebuild their damaged orí. Those who, on the other hand, chose a fired head will prosper as they would not have any problems. Their fired well-prepared head would have withstood the potentially destructive effects of the rain in the zone of transition.44
In this first moment of the Yorùbá notion of art when Olódùmarè asked Òbàtálá to create the human body. Olódùmarè sets creation into motion by means of vocalization or the word. Okediji addressed the metaphysical resolution of matter and spirit since human beings are constituted of both spirit and matter. Olódùmarè's utterance to Òbàtálá constitutes ofò the power word or utterance that makes things happen. This notion of power sound or utterance is identical to the concept of Ka (in ancient Egypt), the logos (in Heraclitian philosophy), and the Word (in Judeo-Christian religion). Not only is creativity a divine attribute in these traditions, it is an activity with transformatory consequences. Olódùmarè creates the world in collaboration with other forces: Òbàtálá and Àjàlá expand creation by producing humans and orí; Ògún leads the way to ayé to populate it; people extend creation by recreating themselves as we saw in the art of Montgomery.
In the second movement of the notion of art, human beings have the potential of becoming fully realized beings on the provision that they obtain an orí inscribed with a specific ìwà (character) by Orí the Òrìsà of destiny. In this complex network of interdependency, a divine model for creativity unfolds with spirit being infused into matter for creation to terminate. Possessing ìwà (character or being), each object attains actuality in the context of use, where its efficacy is evaluated. This stage occurs for humans once the spirits move to ayé to function according to the ìwà (character) of their orí. This principle of functionality is crucial to Yorùbá conception of art, and begins where art conceptually ends for the Eurocentric mind. Thus the currently privileged Eurocentric view of art as consisting of inanimate objects and events without utilitarian value is a very limited view of art. Within the broad life-oriented framework of Yorùbá artistic scheme, art possesses the principle of multifunctionality which, interestingly, displaced Africans in the New World retained, and are invoking when works are produced as a means of (re)membering themselves.
Text and images from Nkiru Nzegwu "Memory Lines;Art in the Pan-African World" Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World (2000) at http://www.ijele.com/vol1.2/nzegwu2.html
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