BETWEEN THE LINES OF AN ULI MASTER
A scholarly tribute to one of Nigeria’s most influential U. S.-based artists, Obiora Udechukwu, has bee ether by one of his former put acolytes, Chika Okeke-Agulu, cursory look at this latest who himself is a renowned art historian and critic. Okechukwu U
First, the masterly strokes assert themselves. Then, they quickly resolve themselves into some visual coherence. Aslightly stooping woman clutching a somewhat malnourished baby in her arms looms large in the midst of other similar sketches, most of which are thumbnail.
This untitled offering by Obiora Udechukwu proclaims itself a mixed media production and is dated 1965-66. Could it be his own version of The
Madonna and Child? Unlikely. Indeed, the lurking presences close to this central mother figure dispel this notion.
Flip over to the next page. Apen-and-ink sketch – less detailed in its representation – depicts a stark naked man with a grotesquely-patterned lower torso and limbs. Equally patterned, his genitalia juts out offensively like a crude weapon. This drawing’s title, “Man of Giant Testicles”, is self-explanatory. It was produced in 1966 and faces another page featuring a quartet of untitled sketches in different stages of detailing.
It gets more grotesque in the succeeding page. Another pen-and-ink drawing – more stylised than realistic in representation – virtually fills up the entire page. It is appropriately titled “Woman of Giant Breasts” and is dated 1967.
And so, it gets more and more engaging... as the pages turn. Myriads of drawings and sketches await the viewer’s delectation. They are over 500 drawings by Obiora Udechukwu, an artist who sometimes expresses himself as a poet. Together, the drawings form the prime focus of Chika Okeke-Agulu’s latest book on his former teacher.
Titled Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text, the book is an entrée into this iconic artist’s captivating wonderland of drawings and sketches. Indeed, it reflects the world through his artistic looking glass. Besides the tacit recognition of his place among the top echelons of the pecking order of contemporary and modern Nigerian artists, the book also institutionalises this leading light of the Nsukka School.
Talking about Nsukka, his early Nsukka years explain his appropriation of Igbo uli motifs as part of his visual vocabulary. Ditto his later inclusion of the nsibidi symbols. These, he would complement with ink wash techniques, reminiscent of Chinese ideograms, in his many paintings and prints.
Udechukwu’s prolificness is confirmed by countless solo exhibitions in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Germany, the U. K. and U. S. as well as by his many works which adorn the collections of National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos; National Council of Arts and Culture, Lagos; Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Lagos; Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, Germany; Museum für Völkerkunde Frankfurt/Main, Germany; Bradford City Museums and Galleries, Bradford, England; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC and Newark Museum.
Okeke-Agulu’s attempt to establish Udechukwu’s masterliness takes the reader through a permanent exhibition of the 71-year-old’s drawings, which are appropriately complemented by texts. The latter include a timeline compiled by an art curator and historian, Perrin Lathrop, and the artist’s biography put together by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s librarian, Janet Stanley. On the drawings, the author explains why they are segmented into three rubrics, which in turn make up the book’s three image sections. A better acquaintance with these drawings – and their raison d’être – lifts the veil on the artist’s world of seething emotions.
No doubt, Udechukwu’s one-year stint at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria’s Department of Fine Arts – prior to his forced relocation to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka – must have etched its indelible imprint in his consciousness. Besides his profound fascination for the austere Zaria landscape, there was also his initiation into the nitty-gritty of formal art education as well as the rigours of studio practice under European expatriate teachers. This became, in a manner of speaking, his coming-of-age period.
Of course, the political turbulence that eventually culminated into the 30-month long civil war also left its traces in his visual expressions. It is understandable therefore that, during the period he worked with the Biafran Propaganda Unit, his drawings would become the vent through which he let out his inner agitation. Sketches of grieving women, malnourished children with bloated stomachs, fleeing refugees and devastation bear witness to the horrors of those years.
Then, add to this experience, his participation in the artists’ and writers’ workshops led by the poet Gabriel Okara and the artist Uche Okeke. But his post-civil war period was flagged off by his return
to the university for the completion of his B. A. degree in fine arts in 1972. The fact that his thesis was on Igbo uli mural art speaks volumes of the workshop encounter with Uche Okeke. Appointed a Junior Fellow in the University of Nigeria’s Department of Fine the following year, he would eventually burnish his credentials with a Master of Fine Arts (M. F. A.) degree in 1977 from this university.
Still in the sleepy university town of Nsukka, he would become a founding member of the Aka Circle of Exhibiting Artists, to which belonged El Anatsui, Tayo Adenaike, Obiora Anidi and Nsikak Essien, among other south-eastern Nigerian-based artists. He would also serve on the editorial board of Okike: African Journal of New
Writing, founded by the novelist Chinua Achebe. His eventual appointment as professor of drawing and painting in 1986 marked his turning-point in this university, where many renowned artists like Tayo Adenaike, Olu Oguibe, Chika OkekeAgulu and Marcia Kure, among others, studied under him.
On relocating to the U.S. in 1997, he became Dana Professor of Fine Arts at St. Lawrence University. Not even this relocation to the U. S. has diminished his relevance in the local Nigerian visual arts scene. That explains why his drawings continue to haunt, tease and enchant the collective consciousness of the local cognoscenti.
Afirst-time encounter with these drawings, the author Okeke-Agulu recalls – in the book’s preface – occured during his freshman year at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. According to him, the well-illustrated catalogue of the artist’s major exhibition organised the previous year by the National Council of Arts and Culture (N. C. A. C.) became “a reference book of sorts”. “I was especially fascinated yet haunted by several of the drawings from the Nigerian civil war years (1967-1970) of children with emaciated limbs, distended stomachs and sunken eyes – victims of kwashiorkor, and intrigued by Udechukwu’s dramatic turn to lyrical stlylization after about 1970,” he writes. “But if the scores of drawings presented in Obiora Udechukwu: Selected Sketches,
1965 -1983 were just a selection, what else was there? I never got to ask him how many more of his drawings survived the war.”
But that encounter and a subsequent discussion with the artist only opened doors for the author’s eventual discovery of the treasure trove of other drawings. This was how this production of this book came about.