A YOUNG MASTER MUSES AT THE VILLAGE SQUARE
Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi is a familiar name in the art circuit in Nigeria. An exhibition by the artist, tagged The Village Square will open at International Institute for Creative Development (IIDC), 4 Ogudu Close, off Lake Chad Crescent, Maitama, Abuja, on May 7, at 6pm. Comprising recent works by Ikwuemesi, the exhibition is conceived as a composite installation that alludes to the compactness of the present world shaped by the forces of the cyber revolution. Although the collection is set as a singular statement, each work retains its individuality. Thus, collectors still have the opportunity to take away what they cherish from the exhibition hall.
Mr Ndubuisi Ahanonu, the Director of the IIDC, says the exhibition is one of their biggest for 2015 and he is hopeful that it will attract many important visitors. Based on the Igbo uli technique, Ikwuemesi’s art explores the connection between our time and eras gone by and thus can be a datum for mediating memory and desire. Uli is the Igbo name for the indigo dye obtained from several species of plants and used to make intricate monochromatic drawings on the body. It was part of a lady’s toilettery in Igbo land before modern times. Uli designs were also painted on walls by Igbo women painters both as a pastime and in celebration of important issues in the Igbo calendar. For Ikwuemesi, it is a tool for re-enacting experience and re-negotiating reality in the name of art.
As Ikwuemesi explains in his artist’s statement, “In this exhibition, I am looking at the compactness of the wide world in this age of the cyber magic...There is so much motion. Globalisation takes its toll. The world changes. But we have not changed much. We are meaning-seeking animals trapped in a world where mean- ing has remained meaningless and ever elusive. The world, the expansive but small village square we now all share, continues to challenge us; we are ever surrounded by the same worries and forces that shaped the consciousness of those who have gone before us. The new world is a village, after all; it is the old village that has always been. We have been here before and will ever be. We go forward, no doubt. But we will return, now and again, like Sankofa, to seek new crumbs along foot-beaten, old tracks; to seek new meanings in old visions.”
In view of its recourse to uli, The Village Square exploits a pattern established by the Nsukka artists in the last 40 years. It re-engages the uli idiom in a refreshing way and also reflects Ikwuemesi’s interest in Ainu art and ethno-aesthetics. As Emeritus Professor Simon Ottenberg of the University of Washington has said, “Professor Ikwuemesi has for many years been both an artist and a student of uli. It is, therefore, most reasonable that he combines these two interests in this exhibit… he believes strongly that this wonderful design system should not perish, but should be transferred into the modern world, blending ancient design and modern art skills.”
Born in Enugu in July 1967, Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, is a painter, art critic, ethnoaesthetician and cultural entrepreneur. In 1987, he enrolled to study art at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, graduating in First Class in 1992. In 1991, he founded of the Pan-African Circle of Artists (PACA) and is the Emeritus President of The Art Republic (also known as Centre for Arts and Cultural Democracy), Enugu. A committed artist, he has held several solo and group exhibitions and published many articles on art in professional journals. In the course of his electrifying and chequered creative career, Ikwuemesi has attracted many grants in furtherance of the cause of art in Nigeria and Africa. For instance, in 2002, as the International Secretary of the Pan-African Circle of Artists, he convened/ organised the Pan African Conference on the Status and Work Condition of the Artist in Africa with participation from different parts of the world with a grant from Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, The Netherlands. In 2003/2004, again as the International Secretary of the Pan-African Circle of Artists, he organised/directed the 3rd Overcoming Maps of the Pan African Circle of Artists, leading over fifty African artists through six West African countries (Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana) by road for 21 days. For this project, he attracted a generous grant from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, the Netherlands. The project yielded a 147-page report edited by him in English, with French translations.
It was Ikwuemesi who, in 2006, took Nigerian art to Dakar Biennale for the first time in the project 20th Century Art: A Story from Nigeria with the support of the National Gallery of Art, Abuja and Total Petroleum. He was subsequently awarded a grant in 2007 by the National Gallery of Art, Abuja, to compile and edit a book of essays on issues in Nigerian art to commemorate the project. In 2007/2008, as International Secretary of the Pan-African Circle of Artists, he received a grant from the Commonwealth Foundation in London to facilitate the participation of some African artists in Overcoming Maps 5 organised by PACA in Zambia in January 2008. Again in 2008/2009, Ikwuemesi received a generous grant from the Prince Claus Fund to organise a mini Mmanwu Theatre in Enugu in March 2009, with a lively complementary symposium that has resulted in a book with contributions from international scholars.
In aid of his work in revitalising the Igbo uli tradition, Ikwuemesi received a grant in 2009 from the US ConsulateGeneral in Lagos to implement “A Return to History: Adapting Uli Ideograms to Contemporary Design Needs” (mainly to explore, through craft workshops, how best to encourage uli women painters in some Igbo villages and other artists and craft makers to rescue Igbo uli painting tradition from imminent extinction. This was followed up in 2009/2010 with the US Ambassador’s Self Help Grant in Nigeria to organise Uli Craft Workshops in continuation of the Return-to-History project. In 2009, his interest in ethno-aesthetics fetched him a Japan Foundation Fellowship to enable him research Ainu art in Hokkaido. He was later to receive the African Humanities Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies to complete a doctoral dissertation on “Styles, Techniques and Iconography in Igbo and Ainu Art in the Postcolonial Period” at the University of Nigeria.
In 2010, he was appointed Curator for the Nigerian Visual Arts World Tour (NIVATOUR), a project of the National Gallery of Art, Nigeria (July-August 2010). In 2011, Ikwuemesi received a grant from the One Minute Foundation in the Netherlands to organise the one minute video workshops for UNN, IMT, UNIZIK and ABU students and staff. A restless mind, Ikwuemesi initiated the Anambra Book and Creativity Festival in 2012 along with others and the maiden edition of the Festival was held in Awka, Anambra State in November of that year and the second edition in February/ March 2014.
Special guests expected at Ikwuemesi’s Village Square on May 7 will include His Majesty Nnaemeka Achebe the Obi of Onitsha, leading art collector Prince Engr Yemisi Shyllon, US Ambassador, His Excellency James F. Entwistle, Mr Hideki Sakamoto, First Secretary and Head of Information and Culture, Embassy of Japan, Abuja, and Dr Abdulahi Muku, Director General of the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition will run till May 27, 2015.
–– Mojekwu, poet and writer, writes from Lagos.