The intellectual cosmos of Dele Jegede resonates with two interlocking motifs: the artistic imagination of visualisation and the cerebral articulation of scholarship. For him, art defines his stratosphere and his creative galaxy is propelled by both theoretical and studio activism.
Jegede is one of Nigeria’s few artists/scholars, who never shied away from making critical commentary on sensitive social issues. However, the acerbic penetration of his visual and intellectual remarks is often cushioned by his amiable disposition to life. He understands perfectly the need for the artist to attract his audience with affective rhetoric while delivering potent messages. He, thereby, engages dynamic cultural and aesthetic motifs such as humor, ambivalence, paradox, and parody in order to creatively assert his authority.
An artist of exceptional talent and intellect, Jegede bagged a First Class Honors degree in Fine Art at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1973. The visual arts curriculum in Nigerian Universities concentrates on art practice and didn’t encourage specialisation in art history at the bachelor’s level. Only recently did a few art departments start graduating students with Art History major. However, there was adequate provision for theoretical courses in both the humanities and social sciences to nurture art graduates in scholarship.
Nuanced Art History Curriculum
The art history courses in most Nigerian universities in the 1960s and 1970s were limited in scope and did not include contemporary African art. Nigerian historians were very few and were mostly trained abroad. Their focus of research was mainly on traditional African art. It was, therefore, convenient for the curriculum designers to exclude the emerging areas of the more recent African art history.
In the case of the available courses such as Egyptian art and Western European art, the narratives celebrated European creative supremacy over that of the others. Most of the reference books were written by Eurocentric scholars, who out of bias, considered African art as primitive.
African scholars of the 20th Century such as Sheikh Anta Diop of Senegal, however, through scientific research, established that some Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs were indeed, Black Africans. Cornelius Adepegba, an Africanist art historian, also identified similarities of form and content between Egyptian art and Sub-Saharan African art thereby, reinforcing the fact that Egyptian civilisation is typically African. It was against this backdrop of Eurocentric art historical scholarship that we must locate Jegede’s determination to become an art historian in spite of having a robust career as a popular cartoonist and a venerable painter in Lagos, Nigeria.
Jegede obtained M.A and PhD in 1981 and 1983 respectively from the Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. His doctoral thesis, perhaps the first on contemporary African art, was supervised by Roy Sieber, a reputable American professor of African art. The continuing relegation of contemporary art of Africa, especially by some ethnocentric scholars, warranted Jegede and a few others to still courageously assert their allegiance to the Africanist perspective in art historical discourse. This is in spite of their allegiance to the West because of their career and residency in the U.S.A.
Galaxy of Duality
Jegede’s milestones are marked by humanistic notion of dualism. His bilateral approach to life is oftentimes symbiotic rather than disparate. His latent talent and creativity find lucid expression in visual arts, poetry and insightful essays. He successfully assumes significant recognition both as an artist and a scholar. Apart from his simultaneous engagement as artist/scholar, Jegede’s worldview is enlarged by his academic training both at home in Nigeria, and abroad in the United States (US). It is this duality of artist/scholar worldview that shaped his active career in Nigeria and the US.
The notion of duality is equally expanded by his Diasporic citizenship, having relocated to the US in the 1990s. Paradoxically, his heart never left Africa, especially his homeland Nigeria. He maintained constant physical and psychological return to Nigeria, thereby validating stories of socio-political interests. He constantly subjects his consciousness to the continuing cultural dynamics in Africa. His interrogation of trans-cultural realities of the African–American historiography afforded him a robust perspective on the colonial and post-colonial struggles in contemporary Africa. His activism is evident in his critical and sociological dissection of topical national issues through his cartoons, paintings and well-researched essays.
With a deep sense of history, Jegede partitioned contemporary African art into two streams, namely: the Formal and the Informal Schools. The formal school represents the artists that had the academic mode of training, while the informal school represents those who developed their creativity from workshop centers and the apprenticeship system of training. His seminal doctoral thesis is the first major work on modern Nigerian art, a milestone that departed from the usual recourse to traditional African art studies.
Septuagenarian Strut
Jegede attained the septuagenarian status in 2015 and was adequately celebrated not only in the US where he has sojourned for decades, but more significantly in Lagos. The three-day event for “Jegede at 70” in Lagos included colorful opening ceremonies, with creative performances and lead papers from three foremost Nigerian intellectuals. There was the open academic conference and bazaar-like confabulation of creative activities that culminated in a group exhibition in his honour. It is difficult to remember any living contemporary artist or art scholar that was so well celebrated with so much panache in Nigeria. This exhibition can thus be seen perhaps as a continuation of the celebration; an icing on the 70th birthday cake.
The two major areas of focus of this exhibition, according to Jegede, are “Celestial Aesthetics series and the Boko Haram Imbroglio”. While the first is introspectively personal, the other is expressively nationalistic. The interpretation of the exhibition themes conforms to his humanistic philosophy that expresses reality in contemplative binaries.
Art is better appreciated when there is a basic understanding of what inspired the forms. Content of art is therefore a major criterion in art appreciation. It is important to briefly analyze the context of Jegede’s themes. The first is rooted in severe personal loss and stoic self-recovery while the other is on the traumatic after-effects of Boko Haram attacks with paradoxical comical contemplations.
Visualising Memory
It was Ali Mazrui, the erudite professor that quoted William Wordsmith’s definition of poetry as “powerful emotions recollected in tranquility.” Mazrui was justifying his first short novel titled The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, which he wrote in 1971 after the untimely death of Christopher Okigbo in 1967 during the Biafran war. Jegede’s anguish was intense even if disguised behind his sagacious gaze when on the 23rd December, 2011, he lost his beloved son Ayo. He bore the grief with stoical equanimity. The devastating loss however left a gaping vacuum in his heart, which he continually fills with visual and poetic metaphors.
It is therefore instructive that a few years thereafter, Jegede’s emotions were sufficiently conditioned to ruminate over personal and national losses thereby culminating in the production of robust visual illusions and realities that further define him as a master aesthete.
While explaining the concept behind the Celestial Aesthetics series, Jegede noted that the paintings represent his fascination with terminality and infinity. They were to draw attention to what he described as “cosmic vastness”. This is a conscious and subconscious reaction not only to the physical realities of the universe, but also to the ecstatic rhetoric behind life and death. Beyond the incomprehensible depth of the earth’s geological diversity, there is the infinite vastness of the Solar System where global secrets lurk.
Religion has paved fluid pathways in the arid desert of human imagination, and human contemplations have adduced spiritual presence to the shrouded essence of the universe. With binocular vision, it is possible to perceive metaphysical entities. It is even assumed that the abode of all departed saintly souls is in heaven—a blissful haven located in spatial infinitum. Having contemplated on the origin and the magnificence of the universe, Jegede’s artistic mind therefore indulged in the visuo-spatial poetics of cosmic realities.
Celestial Aesthetics
The Celestial Aesthetic Series shares formal affinities with the paintings exhibited in his 2011 Peregrinations solo exhibition in Lagos, Nigeria, in which he explored issues relating to environmental pollution in the Niger Delta region as a result of crude oil spillage. He also examined the resultant armed militancy of the Ijaw Youths who protested the lackadaisical attitude of the Nigerian government towards environmental safety.
In Peregrinations, Jegede matched visual forms with thematic relevance by employing stylistic and content correlation. In depicting the oil spillage and the pollution that devastated the Niger Delta land and rivers, Jegede used marbling effect to create liquidized features. He used colordrips to run over the canvases thereby generating pictorial fluidity. He tamed out recognizable forms that defined his chosen themes. This sub-style is equally present in the current exhibition and can be seen in the Boko Haram series.
However, the works in the Celestial Aesthetics series have less defined images because the central preoccupation of Jegede was to depict the “inexhaustibility and prowess of cosmic vastness”. It is also instructive that while the paintings in Peregrinations exposed earthly problems, the celestial series celebrates the eternal glory of the Milky Way and its galaxies. Employing a masterly manipulation of the marbling technique, he turned the color-splash accidents to deliberate designs by conditioning the marbling to generate volume and void schematic splashes into discernable images.
He appropriated the ambivalent volume and void effect of the color splashes into deliberate visual illusions that depict infinite depth of the heavens. Jegede used the Celestial Aesthetics series to elevate human imagination from mundane realities into the esoteric realm of celestial escapism. He lured our mental sensibilities to appreciate prophetic possibilities of life thereafter by conjuring colors with varying degrees of intensity and value. In Celestial Aesthetics Series 1, the dark night skyline became effervescent with sparkling dots of brilliant tones. Speckles of tinted hues illuminate the depth of the heavens and thus animated the spatial constellation.
Celestial Aesthetics Series 1 is particularly interesting because it allows associated cultural imaging of Jegede’s creative mind. He seems to have extrapolated the chromatic taxonomy of the Yoruba and appropriated the emotive relevance of color symbolism. In Yoruba palette consciousness, all colors are classified into three generic groups namely dudu (darkish), pupa (reddish) and funfun (whitish). This chromatic connotation accommodates all cool and warm hues including the achromatic black and white colors. Jegede used his knowledge of Yoruba visual and verbal poetics to explore color symbolism in Celestial Aesthetics Series 2. He applied blue, red and white which are major colors in the chromatic lexicon of the Yoruba to articulate and contextualize the thematic relevance of the painting.
It is therefore plausible to associate the emotive content of the painting with a popular Yoruba dirge often chanted by the bereaved while lamenting the loss of a beloved. The chant rendered in Yoruba can be translated to English thus;
“He who knows the blue touraco
Mourn the death of Indigo
He who knows the red wood cock
Lament the demise of cam-wood pigment
He who knows the cattle egret
Empathize with the transition of white chalk.”
The above Yoruba dirge conceptualizes grief in colors by personifying some beautiful birds with comely plumages as visual metaphor for cherished personalities. It was perhaps the above dolor that prompted the use of blue, red and white colors in Celestial Aesthetics Series 1. The series of paintings were done by Jegede in memory of Ayo, his beloved son whose sparkling sun set so suddenly.
Although there are more discernable facial forms rendered in flaming red and mauves of blue and purple, Celestial Aesthetics Series 2 is similar to Celestial Aesthetics Series 1 both in form and content. Jegede created depth of spatial illusion by painting glowing cloudy images that dissolve into space. A close look at the pictorial surface reveals series of painting techniques that crystallize into sparkling and colorful visual wealth. Jegede elevates color far above form in the celestial series in order to prick our affective domain and therefore allow us a peep into the inner crevices of his emotions. We hereby witness the enormous potentials of creative imagination that an artist wields when “emotions are recollected in tranquility”.
The Boko Haram Insurgency
The Boko Haram series is the second strand of Jegede’s creative exposition. While the first is celestial in concept, Boko Haram series is based on earthly experiences where defined forms were used to illustrate and express temporal emotions. The paintings and drawings in Boko Haram series are formally characterized by precise expertise in draughtsmanship. Jegede seems to pointedly display excellent painterly attributes and profound understanding of pictorial composition. He appreciates the necessity of using illustrative forms to clearly depict the theme and sub-theme of Boko Haram, which has become a scourge in the history of Nigeria.
As a social commentator, Jegede’s visual activism found appropriate expression in painting and drawing the unfortunate terror activities and the devastating mass displacement of people following Boko Haram’s invasions and attacks. The members of the Boko Haram group are self-acclaimed Islamic Jihadists that pretentiously hate and fight against Western education and civilization. The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria came with disastrous terror attacks in most parts of the North-eastern Nigeria. Many villages and towns were completely sacked with houses bombed and razed down. Women and children were violently kidnapped and enslaved while farm products including herds of domestic animals were looted and confiscated. Cities and suburbs including Abuja the capital of Nigeria were bombed with heavy human and capital casualties. These dastardly acts led to unprecedented migration of people from the Northern part, especially the troubled-spots to the relatively safer central and Southern Nigeria. The Internally Displaced People (IDP) became refugees in their own country. They suffered hunger and were emotionally traumatized with many children and the aged losing their lives.
Jegede’s witty impulse as a cartoonist manifested while dealing with the social problems caused by Boko Haram insurgency. In the IDP series, he lessened the burden and tension of the havoc by introducing comical interventions in paintings such as Internally Displaced Politician and Internally Displaced Police (Rofo Rofo Fight).
The Internally Displaced Politician is a political pun played on the immediate past President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Dr. Goodluck Jonathan whose tenure witnessed the peak of the Boko Haram terror activities. Indeed, the unabated escalation of insurgency during his presidency was a major factor that led to his defeat and the ousting of his party from the leadership of the country. Jegede painted Goodluck Jonathan wearing a tattered bowler hat and looking despondent with a jaw-in-hand pose. A dark bird perched on the tip of the hat with ominous premonition. The worn-out hat symbolizes agony of defeat and the trauma of political displacement.
A white dove that connotes peaceful handing-over of the presidency roosted on the shoulder of the man whose lonely figure is silhouetted against a reddish background. The painting satirizes the reign of Boko Haram terror and the agony of displacement suffered by the people. It castigates Jonathan’s leadership and holds him responsible for the consequences of his actions and inactions.
IDP (Internally Displaced People) is typical of Jegede’s early advanced compositions with excellent painterly renditions. The displaced people are depicted with loads on their heads migrating to unknown destinations. The human figures seem to levitate in spatial vacuum since the pictorial field was rendered in birds’-eye view. The composition is very rich in palette considering the variety of receding green tones used to paint the foreground and background. The figures and especially the head-loads were made dynamic by the colorful hues used in defining the forms. The painting looks enchanting in formal presentation despite the unmistakable thematic discomfiture.
There are more thematic and formal pranks played by Jegede in order to enrich the exhibition. He engaged excellently rendered pencil drawings to highlight the plights of people who experienced displacement in works such as Internally Displaced Persons and Generation What (Selfie). Using large paper surface, he explored the impact of digital and sophisticated information/phone technology on the older generation who are generally considered ‘analogue’ in thinking. The two elderly displaced people were snapping themselves in the ‘selfie’ style; thereby asserting their ‘youthfulness’ in spite of the trauma of migration and age.
In this exhibition, Jegede reconciles the theory and practice of art through a dynamic interplay of cognitive and psycho-motor series. A versatile scholar who has distinguished himself as a researcher into contextual aesthetics he is sensitive to the nuances of artistic production and appreciation. Having survived the tough and slippery paths of creativity and scholarship for over four decades, Jegede has sufficiently mastered the principles of his trade and can therefore generate fresh strategic template for aesthetic considerations.
His humanistic philosophy constantly translates to multiplex visions that are often rendered as visual activism. He parodies the state of the Nigeria nation and wittingly draws attention to the ills of the society. With uncanny visual and verbal poetics, Jegede speaks to the core essence of living. He entices the audience with profound technical skills in writing and painting and delivers his messages in coded comical punches.
In this septuagenarian strut, Jegede’s emotional contemplations are revealed through his articulation of abstract concepts that are converted into visual reality. He referenced memories by addressing the physical vastness and the metaphysical depth of the universe in the celestial series. He continually demonstrates patriotic concerns on Nigeria national issues despite his dual citizenship as a bona fide resident in the United States of America. He captures the enervating effects of Boko Haram insurgency and forecast the rot and profligacy of corrupt officials that hindered the defeat of terrorism in Nigeria. He reminds us of the albatross around the non-release of the kidnapped Chibok girls in one of the paintings titled Boko Haram (Bring Back Our Girls). He reconciled the two painting styles used for the exhibition by rendering the head of the perturbed Chibok girl in naturalistic approach, while treating the trunk of the girl in abstract expressionism peculiar to the celestial series.
It is plausible to observe that Jegede has upheld to a large extent his revolutionary manifesto declared in the brochure of the 1986 exhibition titled Paradise Battered. He had solemnly pledged to do nothing else than use his art for social and political activism. The Celestial Aesthetics series stands out as an emotional visual dolor that equally elevates the soul as much as the avowed expressive radicalism.
