By Anote Ajeluorou
Africa is regarded as
ahistoric continent, with outsiders narrators giving it grudging space for
whatever history latter day narrators, mostly from the continent, may ascribe
to it. Contemporary efforts to accord the continent its proper place in history
have therefore met with resistance. But the continent’s historical narrators
have wielded all manners of weapons in their arsenal – be they historicism, art
or other humanistic endeavours – to unsay what has been negatively said about
Africa. The result is that the world is beginning to listen, with a keen ear!
Several prominent names have been spurned amongst the
wronged children of the continent who are fighting the ahistoric status of
Africa. One such young ones is a visual artist, Onyema Offoedu-Okeke, whose
accomplishment as an artist, has been brought into fuller perspective by the
publication of a coffee-table book of his works entitled, Contemporary
African Art: My Private Collection of Onyema Offoedu-Okeke (Brown Bommel Ltd, Lagos; 2011) by Dr. Okey
Anueyiagu.
This kind of defining publication is only recently becoming
part of Africa’s art patrimony with the dire awareness that Eurocentric
dominance of art discourses at the international scene has been taking place
for too long now at the expense of Africa’s huge contribution to world
knowledge. This position is affirmed by one of the contributors to the volume,
Prof. Sheri Fafunwa-Ndibe, who declaimed the marginal position African art has
occupied until very recently when the continent’s scholars, researchers and
cultural producers began to mount articulate megaphones in defence of the need
to accord it its glorious in world discourse.
As she submits in her piece ‘Global Importance and Impact of
Contemporary African Art’, “…some critics have chosen to be stuck in the static
discourse. They have succumbed to the temptation to view any African art that
employs ‘modern materials’ and technology somehow non-traditional, lacking
authenticity and originality. In fact, such art is often deemed illegitimate or
corrupted”.
On the other hand, works of Offoedu-Okeke and others of his
ilk have become really dominant in recent years in espousing Africa’s cultural
philosophy, as Fafunwa-Ndibe states, “In the 21st century, contemporary African
art seems to be asserting itself in an extraordinary way. At any rate, it has
begun to receive some of the attention and focus it so richly deserves. In the
last five years, the world has witnessed an explosion in the contemporary art
market”.
This explosion is easily credited to the astounding works of
masters artists Ben Enwonwu, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Yusuf Grillo and younger
artists like Offoedu-Okeke and many of his peers who are redefining the
landscape of artistic performances in ways never before known since
colonialism. It is against this backdrop that Offoedu-Okeke’s work can be
viewed.
And in putting this book together, Anueyiagu has lent a big
hand both in boosting the artistic repertoire of Offoedu-Okeke and raising the
profile of African art. In this wise, Offoedu-Okeke’s work shows the necessary
continuum between ancient African art so much idolized by the West on account
of it having gone into stasis, with colonialism interrupting its flowering, and
modern cultural productions that are advancing the frontiers of African art and
intellect.
Five eminent, informed commentators, who are art scholars
and art historians contributed to the book. They take different narrative approaches
to Offoedu-Okeke’s works and explicate his styles, techniques, media and
themes. These eminent critics and scholars provide viable lenses through which
to view Offoedu-Okeke’s painterly endeavours and the unique place he occupies
in contemporary art discourse. While Prof. Chike Aniakor in the foreword
examines the ‘Legibility of Art as a Vector of Aesthetic Experience’ of the
works of Offoedu-Okeke, the art collector and documentarist, Anuenyiagu
provides the introduction; Fafunwa-Ndibe’s piece has been aforementioned.
Also, Dr. Ozioma Onuzulike writes on the ‘Pictorial
Scripture and Colourful Lines: The Art of Onyema Offoedu-Okeke’ while Dr.
Francis Ugiomo writes on ‘Still in Search of an African Renaissance: Re-mapping
the Past in the Contemporary’. Capping off the commentary is a director with
Standard Chartered Bank, London, Mr. Richard Howarth. These informed
commentators have shared and experienced of the rich banquet that is
Offoedu-Okeke’s artistic work and poured their heart in it.
In foreword, Prof. Aniakor sums up Offoedu-Okeke’s works
thus, “Undeniably, his works delight in the seamless range of their
compositional phrasings, as well as the kinetics of colours, under the effect
of ennobling brush work. These I contend serve as ample vectors of aesthetic
experience, fore grounded by the fecundity of his creative imagination”.
In this apt summation, Aniakor points out the direction of
Offoedu-Okeke’s painterly vision. His works traverse a wide range of issues and
subjects as he has lived them in his social discourse; these subjects he has
also skillfully narrated in this rare presentation by Anueyiagu. The range of
Offoedu-Okeke’s art is astonishing, as he succeeds in bringing together visions
of the past, problems of the present and prospects to come. His art traverses
ancient art type of masks and other ancestral totems and modern concerns.
This wide-ranging artistic vision thrusts Offoedu-Okeke into
the forefront of Africa’s cultural workers seeking to replace old, useless
paradigms with new visions of a continent that had long been maligned as
capable of shaping its own destiny, with its energetic young talent. Indeed,
Offoedu-Okeke’s talent, which became noticeable at an early age, has been
deployed to good effect to project both himself and his continent.
Anueyiagu has done contemporary African art great service
with this publication. It’s hoped that others art patrons and collectors will
emulate him in the march to reposition a much marginalized continent in world’s
historical discourse of knowledge production for which Africa is also
undeniably renowned with its talented human resource.
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