Stakeholders in the culture sector can do more to celebrate Susanne Wenger’s centenary and the Osun-Osogbo Grove’s 10th anniversary as a World Heritage Site, writes Femi Macaulay, member of the Editorial Board, who was in Osogbo, Osun State, for the Osun-Osogbo Festival
It was supposed to be a special celebration.
This year’s Osun-Osogbo Festival coincided with two striking anniversaries: the centenary of the late Austrian artist and Yoruba-culture champion, Susanne Wenger, who died in Osogbo, Osun State, in January 2009 at age 93; and the 10th anniversary of the Osun-Osogbo Grove’s recognition as a World Heritage Site.
Apart from the usual and commonplace display of festivity connected with the Osun-Osogbo Festival, the celebration did not sufficiently highlight the special conjuncture of the two anniversaries. What was billed as “Susanne Wenger’s Sacred Colloquium 2015″ at the King’s palace in Osogbo featured a paper presented by Yusuf Abdallahi Usman, Director General, National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), to mark the anniversaries. Usman’s paper at the August 19 event organised by NCMM was titled “Late Madam Susanne Wenger and National Commission for Museums and Monuments as Springboards to the Development of Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove and Enlistment as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”
Usman described Wenger as “a phenomenal woman of different interpretations.” He added: “She was a great artist, culturalist, spiritualist and naturalist, intellectual, researcher, philosopher and philanthropist who devoted her life to serving nature, culture and people. She championed the beautification, preservation, adoration, conservation and unification of nature and culture in the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove.” But the event lacked the nature of a colloquium. Much of the period was devoted to indigenous music and singing and dancing by different groups.
The presence of a representative of the Austrian Ambassador to Nigeria reflected the significance of Wenger’s centenary. The young woman said when she arrived in the country some years ago the Osun-Osogbo Grove was among the first places she visited. She wore a gown made from gold-and-black Ankara fabric designed to mark Wenger’s death. The cloth carried a picture of Wenger and the inscription “Mama Susanne Wenger Iwinfunke – Celebration of Life – From July 4, 1915 – January 12, 2009.” Some locals, most of them women, were dressed in the same Ankara. In a cultural environment where important occasions are often marked by specially designed commemorative fabric known as aso ebi, it was strange that Wenger’s centenary did not generate such distinctive fabric.
The same anti-climatic atmosphere marked the finale of the Osun-Osogbo Festival in the Osun-Osogbo Grove on August 21. The river-side statue of the Yoruba water goddess, Osun, in whose honour the festival is celebrated every year, was draped with a white cloth and decorated with palm fronds around its neck. There was a large crowd at the water front where many people engaged in supplications to the goddess. Many devotees wore signature white clothes. A group of devotees from America, Europe and Asia stood out in their white ceremonial dresses. A lot of people fetched water from the mystic River Osun in white containers for spiritual purposes. In the grove and its immediate environs, the ubiquitous water-filled containers demonstrated the power of faith. The ceremonies of worship involving the virginal votary maid, Arugba, who climactically emptied the contents of a sacred calabash into the river, underlined the spiritually charged activities in the grove.
Numerous brand promotion materials, mainly by the festival’s major sponsors, created a marketing atmosphere. The biggest corporate sponsors of the 2015 Osun-Osogbo Festival were telecom giant MTN; Nigerian Breweries, using one of the company’s beer brands, Goldberg; Grand Oak Limited, brewers of Seaman’s Aromatic Schnapps and Kasapreko Limited, producers of Alomo Bitters.
But, again, apart from repetitive references to the 10th anniversary of the grove’s international endorsement in speeches, nothing uniquely celebrated its decade as a World Heritage Site. The Osun- Osogbo Grove is the site of the Osun-Osogbo Festival, which is a star tourist attraction and draws a high number of domestic and international visitors. Recognised for natural and cultural reasons, the Osun-Osogbo Grove is the second of two UNESCO-branded sites in Nigeria, coming after the Sukur Cultural Landscape in Adamawa State, which attained the distinction in 1999.
In May, there was news of a string of cultural activities abroad in celebration of Wenger’s centenary. “We are pleased to announce the exhibition schedule in the year of the 100th anniversary of Susanne Wenger at the Susanne Wenger Foundation in Krems and other locations,” said a programme released by the Austria-based organisation. “There will be shown oil paintings, batiks, drawings, photographs of the Sacred Groves and previously not seen works of art… On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Susanne Wenger, Doyin Olosun and Sangodare Gbadegesin Ajala from ‘Susanne Wenger family’ will be present at the opening…There will be guided tours and workshops…The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication SUSANNE WENGER : Artist, Priestess, Adventuress…Special exhibition at the Nigerian Embassy, Vienna, Austria, September 28-30.”
There is news that a Nigerian publishing company, Grasshill Books, is promoting a new book on Wenger as a way of specially celebrating her in the country where she lived for nearly 60 years before her death. The book is expected to be released to mark the 2015 World Tourism Day on September 27. It is a testimony to Wenger’s cultural celebrity that the Nigerian government in 2008 honoured her with a decoration, Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR).
A statement by the publisher said: “We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book, Alive In The Sacred Grove – Susanne Wenger from a Nigerian view, which will fill a vacuum that has existed for years.” The statement quoted the author, Femi Macaulay, as saying: “What I set out to do is unprecedented. In concept and execution, this new book on Susanne Wenger is unparalleled because it is written from a Nigerian perspective and with a Nigerian flavour… At the time I discussed my plan with Wenger, she responded positively, saying, ‘I bless your work and your good intentions’.”
The publisher also quoted the author’s description of the work: “This unique well-researched Wenger portrait offers a fresh experience of her. It consists of an extensive up-to-date close-up profile and exclusive interviews that I had with her. It explores not only her extraordinary life but also her thinking on Yoruba culture and tradition, especially at the transitional stage of her life. It is enriched with expressive pictures of Wenger and some of her eye-catching sculptures in the grove, as well as other important images related to her gripping story. It is a modest way of paying a well-deserved tribute to a loyal vessel of Yoruba divinities; her legacy is undeniable. The book also beams the spotlight on the Osun-Osogbo Grove and the Osun-Osogbo Fesival.”
With Wenger’s centenary year and the 10th year of the Osun-Osogbo Grove as a World Heritage Site still unfolding, there is time to redeem the under-celebration.
