Category: Life – The Midweek Magazine

How differently can African art be displayed at home to ensure that its full meaning is well understood? How can Africa use its fast-growing art establishments to reform African art history? These and other questions were examined by collectors, artists and critics at a presentation titled: Displaying traditional art in contemporary African time: A critical analysis on the best practices for contextualising traditional art within its home environment by Kenyan curator Lydia Gatundu Galavu in Lagos.

Galavu’s presentation, which held at  Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation (OYASAF) facility in Maryland, Lagos, recently, was a pre-study of the Foundation’s collections. It formed part of a larger research for the development and installation of Kenya’s first permanent art gallery at the Nairobi National Museum in 2018.

Galavu, a resident artist at OYASAF, said the location and display of African art at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC, United States, undermined the value and appreciation of the collection. She noted that some of the exhibits lacked detailed information that would elevate the historical relevance of the works.

“The National Museum of African Art is located in the underground galleries of the Smithsonian together with the Freer and Sackler galleries that hold art from non Causacian nations with history of collection put together by people in colonised contexts.

“As an African, it is a difficult collection history to face. On one hand, the works of art are very beautiful, and one can appreciate that history took them to Western museums. On the other hand, it is difficult to forget that this history was unpleasant and that because of it information about the artworks has mostly been lost,” she added.

She said such art displayed outside its original cultural context often lost its full identity and meaning.

According to her, in these foreign spaces, African art is subjected to cultural disorientation, it is displayed outside its original cultural context thereby losing or distorting its full identity and meaning. “Ironically, with training on best museum practice coming mainly from the West, African museums have tended to adapt similar display methods at home. Currently, contemporary African art is at the centre of world attention but with the prejudicial neo-colonial perceptions derived from early study of traditional African art persisting today, contemporary African art may face the same predicament of misinterpretation,” she said.

Galavu said to redress the neo-colonial and xenophobic attitudes of western scholars, curators and art historians, a well-educated and articulated art historical practice had to be designed across the continent.

How can Africa use her fast-growing art establishments to reform African art history? She identified scholarship, patronage, museum donation and education as factors that will enhance creative thought and improve critical thinking in all subjects.

She observed that unlike in the West, the advantage in African museums was that the information for these objects is not lost, noting that only a little bit is provided as (per standard –Western – curatorial practice) such that in the absence of a guide one could not interpret the object meaningfully.

She suggested that application of strategic cognitive attributes in the display, application of emotional/affective attributes to determine the feelings and mood of museum’s visitor and application of behavioural attributes in the display will further redress the situation.

“Create displays that encourage visitors to do something interactive. This could be by use of multi media or using an exhibit to set pace. The display of art works in the OYASAF garden begins with a sequence that emulates real life cultural activities of all rural communities in Nigeria,” she added.

Galavu, who has been applying for OYASAF residency in the last two years, said Nigeria’s creative industry is booming and it is at the forefront of arts in Africa- film, literature and visual art.

Founder OYASAF Omooba Yemisi Shyllon urged Nigerians to invest in African identity and heritage, which must be promoted. “We owe our children the duty of not losing our identity. Art is the only area where we have comparative advantage. We need to invest in African identity, and it must be promoted. It needs reawakening because it is beyond the art,” Shyllon said.

Distinguished scholar and novelist Prof Isidore Okpewho, 74, died last Sunday in the United States. The news of his death shook  the literary community. EVELYN OSAGIE writes.

like the symbolic fall of a great iroko, the news of death of distinguished literary scholar and novelist Prof Isidore Okpewho, dealt a big blow on the literati. It was received with a heavy heart by his colleagues and literary fraternity.

“The news came as a shock to me. His significant contributions to the development of literature, especially oral literature, is highly commendable,” former Minister of State for Education and past President, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Prof Jerry Agada, said.

For former ANA Bayelsa State chapter chairman,G.’Ebinyo Ogbowei, “It was a shocking news: a formidable voice  has suddenly gone silent! I’m still trying to absorb the blow.”

The famous Oral Literature scholar, who died at 74, would be remembered for his immense contributions to the advancement of oral literature in Nigeria and Africa. He reportedly died on Sunday, September 4, 2016, at a hospital in Binghamton, Upstate New York, United States. Before his death, it was said he “battled an undisclosed illness’’.

Okpewho, who hailed from Delta State, served as President International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA). He was a writer of repute who wrote, co-authored and edited several books and articles. His creative prowess earned him the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature, and 1993 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book Africa.

The late Okpewho was elected Fellow Folklore International by the prestigious Finnish Academy of the Sciences in Helsinki (1993).

A Nigerian Canada-based professor at Carleton University, Nduka Otiono, said: “Africa’s foremost scholar of Oral Literature and award-winning novelist, Isidore Okpewho, has passed on at 74. He was a prolific author, co-author and editor of about 14 books, dozens of articles and a seminal booklet, A Portrait of the Artist as a Scholar. Prof. Okpewho died peacefully at a hospital in Binghamton, a town in Upstate New York where he had lived and taught since 1991.

“With his two earliest seminal academic monographs, The Epic in Africa: Toward a Poetics of the Oral Performance(1979) and Myth in Africa: A Study of Its Aesthetic and Cultural Relevance (1983), Okpewho quickly established his reputation as a first-rate scholar and a pioneer of Oral Literature in Africa. For his distinctive and prolific output he was honoured with a string of international academic and non-academic awards that included the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), in Humanities for the year 2010.’’

His odyssey into the academia began in 1964 with a First Class Honours in Classics from the University of London, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Denver and from the University of London with a D.Litt. in the Humanities.

He taught at the University at Buffalo. He also taught in University of New York at Buffalo (1974 to 1976), University of Ibadan (1976 to 1990), Harvard University (1990 to 1991), and State University of New York at Binghamton, where he lived and taught since 1991.

For seasoned writer and Editorial Board Chairman of The Nation, Mr Sam Omatseye, Okpewho’s writing warns the government and insurgents on the need for peaceful resolutions. He said: ‘’Isidore Okpewho wrote not only as a Nigerian but also as a Niger Deltan. With strong Urhobo lingo, he embodied both the local and the universal. We saw that in his signature novel, The Last Duty, which was about the Nigerian Civil War, in which he x-rayed the pathology of post-war syndrome.

“He was able to show that a war never really comes to an end; and nothing pays poignant tribute to him than the constant reminders by Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), Niger Delta Avengers about what Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, calls the doctrine of eternal return. In other words, the war that he wrote about in The Last Duty still calls us to duty today.”

His other novels include are: The Victims, Tides and Call Me by My Rightful Name.

Past ANA Lagos chairman, Chike Ofili, said: “What a loss! He has been out of circulation for long now. I remember reading his book, The Last Duty as an undergraduate. It would be difficult to generate views on a man who was hardly present with us.”

His non-fiction publications are The Epic in Africa: Toward a Poetics of the Oral Performance; Myth in Africa: A Study of Its Aesthetic and Cultural Relevance; African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity and Once Upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity.

Social critic and  child Chido Onumah, said: “Prof Okpewho will be remembered for his great contribution to African literature. I never met him, but he was for me, and for many young people of my generation, an inspiration. His novels in the Longman Series set some of us on the path of enjoying and appreciating literary works. He will be sorely missed, not only by the community of oral literature, but by all lovers of creative writing.”

Okpewho was also a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in 1982; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1982; Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences in 1988; the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute in 1990; National Humanities Centre in 1997 and Guggenheim Fellow in 2003.

On his part, literary critic and journalist with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Alkasim Abdulkadir, said Nigeria’s literary sphere has lost an important voice. “Okpewho’s depth and understanding of the psychology of human behaviour and dynamism as exemplified in his works, such as The Last Duty will be missed on Nigeria’s literary firmament. Above all is his keen sense of scholarship, which has raised a generation of scholars, that will be missed most. We have lost a literary gem. But Okpewho’s legacy is eternal,” he said.

He is survived by his wife,  Obiageli; his children: Ediru, Ugo, Afigo, and Onome.