Okechukwu Uwaezuoke

It is rather too obvious: she’d been away from the creative limelight for a long while. Her works – eclectic, impersonal and yet creatively assertive – jostle for the visitor ’ s attention as he follows this most unlikely artist through the ground- floor living- room, up a staircase to what could pass for her creative sanctuary upstairs.

So much has already happened in Nkechi Abii’s creative world since her return three years ago to the public’s eye. Her works, which are eloquent testimonials of her comeback, stare back at the viewer. Because they seem inspired by divergent creative impulses, the viewer is tempted to liken them to a cacophonous visual choir.

This would be a good reason to avoid an artist’s studio, he muses. There are oftentimes things about the artist’s whims the audience is better off not knowing about. Take the mixed- media and acrylic 3- D works depicting maidens from Nigeria’s major ethnic nationalities, for instance. They seem to be crying out loud, begging to find spaces on the walls of an establishment.

A bank indeed had expressed interest in them, Mrs. Abii intimates her visitor. Apparently, one or two of them have been bought but she wishes they are all gone. Indeed, she agrees, they do not belong to the walls of a private residence.

On another wall facing this one, another mixed- media 3- D work depicting vultures pecking away at a cake shaped like the map of Nigeria calls out from its position in the midst of others. The viewer immediately observes that the cake also has the green and white colours of Nigeria and that the vultures sport headdresses proclaiming the geo- political composition of the country.

“Scavengers…” The word seems to have suggested itself to the viewer. What else could he have called these human- vultures?

But the artist casts a surprised glance at him.

“But that’s the title of the work! How did you know?”

The visitor shrugs. He doesn’t have to know it is the title.

“Isn’t it obvious?” And that is one discomfiting fact about Abii’s works. Many of them have their intents written boldly on them. There is little or no attempt at subtlety.

There is, for instance, a painting depicting a woman in labour. The tell- tale colours let the cat out of the bag too easily for the viewer. But this is not so with another work, which she creatively titles “B’earth Pangs”. The latter is a 3- D mixedmedia effort depicting a woman in the final stages of her pregnancy.

Another 3- D work on an adjoining wall first invites the visitor for a closer contemplation. But the latter recoils in horror when the artist reveals its title: “The Aluu Four”! It shows the battered trunk of a youth above a discarded car tyre. The youth’s raised arm suggests that he is attempting to ward off unseen