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| Tonye Polly's Yawa Don Gas, 2019, 36" × 42" Mixed Media |
-Chuma Anumiri
Seeing comes before words,
the child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
John Berger
Contemporary art appreciation in the Niger Delta has plummeted in different dimensions beyond what had been known of the region in the last decades, leading to massive migration of artists from this region towards Lagos for greener pastures. Nonetheless, this region has experienced bourgeoning progress with the recent opening of galleries in the city of Port Harcourt.
The Moriri Gallery of Contemporary Art Centre opened on the 6th of November, 2020, in the heart of Port Harcourt, with a simple show of contemporary works of artists, particularly based in the city. The show which initially had been slated for the first quarter of the year, had been stalled due to the ravaging impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on the country and the world at large. Opening up for the viewing pleasure of both collectors and art lovers, the show exhibited works of internationally acclaimed artists as well as budding artist of Port Harcourt.
Entering the foyer of the gallery, the exhibits inundated the eyes inviting one to a massive traverse through the array of creative display. Two black pillar display boards stood alongside each other, providing an amble space for audience to properly consume the exhibits, with different sizes of works mounted on them. On the near left are easels on which works were mounted like Chuma Anumiri’s Set to Sail, a seascape painting detailing the riverine sphere of the Niger Delta oil zone and the effect of oil spillage on the water body. Boats are moored at the shore waiting for a takeoff with prospective passengers. This singular piece seemed to invite the gallery visitor to the entire show of collection of works at display.
Moses Baite graced the opening with sets of paintings from his recent collection of the Selfie series. These mini paintings of acrylic on canvas, delivered with vibrant warms colours and further contrasted with the cool colours of blue and purple, detail the selfie culture as prevalent on social media. Further on the other side of the pillar stand, The Therapy, a painting of a musician playing on a wind instrument, is Baite’s other work gracing the opening of the gallery. Baite sees through the painting, the undeniable need and immense power of music in providing psychological therapy.
Speaking of music, Tonye Pollyn’s Yawa don Gas showcases a brilliant mixed media painting of the late legendary Fela Anikulapo Kuti on a 36inches by 42inches canvass area. Pollyn draws allusion to the myriad messages which Fela’s music is replete with, as virtually all of those messages are still relevant today. Yawa don Gas in the Nigerian Pidgin English parlance means, “trouble has erupted” and, on that note, Pollyn introduces to the audience the underlying challenges faced by the common man in Nigeria ranging from Police brutality, bad governance and unavailability of basic amenities. A further investigation of this piece draws to mind the just concluded #EndSars protest which snowballed into violence in different patches of the country.
Chidinma Nwafor’s Emotions series submerges the audience into an empathic atmosphere where traumas of the ordinary individual and emphatically the female genders are thrown into varied shades of mental struggle as a result of societal pressure and other challenges emanating from the entire environmental system. Beyond misappropriation which the Nigerian government is presently rife with, unemployment alongside psychological factors bring the people to apparent depression. Silent Whispers and Who Really Cares illustrate these social maladies with Olile Anya (Hope) revealing the earnest expectations of sufferers.
Solace, a mixed media abstract painting of Daniel Godmade strikes the eyes quicker than the flash of lightening, with the profuse use of red, yellow and white to draw attention to that part of the mind, where one in spite of constant daily mishaps, still finds solace to rejuvenate and face the challenges. Godwin Arikpo’s diptych, No Burns; No Blisters, a large mixed media painting with splashes of colours on the female figures which appear each on each painting, accentuate further the struggle of the people of colour. The emancipation of women, gender inequality and stereotypes, coupled with the confusions emanating from these and various undertones of racism are all bound within Arikpo’s palette.
Beyond the entire gloom-ridden pictures of struggle encapsulating the state of affair both in the world and the country particularly, Samuel Nwankwo presents Expectations to the audience with a further tinge of anticipations into a better world. The abstract painting shows strong heavy palette strokes with a pitch-black background and different red hue strokes interlacing with yellow here and green there then progressing into an overall tonal gradation to the brighter white on the far left top. The scanty white region draws comparison between the concept of the artist and Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Another set of works which had successfully harnessed waste into wealth are the collections of the painter, Chinedu Ogakwu. In the Root series, the artist assembles bark and ropes on a textured canvas to draw viewers’ attention against western influence and the capability of an African to make the most of his times by going back to the roots; an ideology further buttressed in the philosophy enshrined in Sankofa, of the Andinkra body of symbols. Ogakwu’s Reminisce, maintains the same approach, employing scraps of waste, which in his words, are converted to treasures; a concept he believes emerges from thinking out of the box.
A brilliant composition of colours hanging on the wall with a female figure looking aside focused into space, is a painting of Innocent Chikezie titled Destiny. The acrylic on canvas painting presents the artist’s view in clinching opportunities by looking at various options; a testimony of the common Igbo maxim: “you do not appreciate the masquerade viewing from a single perspective”. Chikezie has drawn for himself a faithful followership resulting from his skills on managing his palette, a constant proof on his bold delivery of colourful strokes on canvas. This is evident on Shadows of the Evening a painting he had painted in the Covid-19 lockdown showing a set of women sitting together while they attend to themselves. Such gathering often produce gossip however in the face of the lockdown, the companionship such gathering fostered, is documented in this painting revealing just in a bit, the advantage of the lockdown.
Intervening more like a suiting relief in tension against foregoing narrative, Michael Kpodoh graced the wall of Moriri Art Centre with Choir. A painting of three women singing away, donning blue uniform attire, bearing on their bodies, clothes and the background the hybrid synthesis of symbols from various traditions including the Uli, Adinkra and Nsibidi; a semiotic composition that has come to be associated with the artist in particular. Sam Sweet Maduike’s Mbuzo Egwu, a metal sculpture of a female dancer, brings to light the common tradition amongst Igbo Women Association groups who, when in attendance of an event, (where their performance is required) often present a lone dancer as a prelude to main dance performance where every other member of the dance troupe comes to participate. Hanging on another pillar stand is Ebiwari Ekati’s Two Can Play; a mixed media painting of a two-figure heterosexual lovers, dancing in a room to a song obviously playing from the red music box on the table. The man holds the woman by the waist as the woman responds in the same gesture. They are so lost in the act that they do not notice a mouse at the background who may also be dancing to the song or seeking a piece of bread to nibble.
Outside the aforementioned artists, other artists presented their work to the gallery space for the opening. They include, Charity Ide, Emeka Ifediora, Snowwhite Silas, Agulu Woko, Lucky Dennis and Perrin Oglafa, who also doubles as the art director of the gallery,
Beyond The Exhibits In the White Cube
The collective body of works put together by these group of artists can be viewed in sundry points of perspective, drawing to mind the iconographic and formalist content of each work at display. An analytic investigation on these body of works seemingly illustrates a literary metaphor, where elements of story play out more or less, as the thread of storyline on these works become the plot. Into the gallery, the show unfolds with Anumiri's Set to Sail, where the audience is beckoned into the journey of reality borne in the creative processes of these selected artists; this aspect of the show alongside the blend of music and therapy would assume the rising action of the entire play.
The whole process inevitably exposes the language of vision where according to Gyorgy Kepes, “visual communication is universal and international: it knows no limits of tongue, vocabulary, or grammar, and it can be perceived by the illiterate as well as the literate”. Understanding the display in the gallery would require the total assimilation of the works displayed and connecting their dots. Over time in history, the artist from pre-historic epoch has documented the events relevant to his or her immediate environment; this reinforces the sacred personality of the creative entity. While Anumiri’s Set to Sail prepares the ground upon which Baite’s The Therapy serenades and soothes the audience; Pollyn’s Yawa Don Gas stimulates the audience who apparently has boarded the boat and has been enjoying fair weather and good music, into the consciousness that the entire country, (perhaps as a matter of fact, the entire world) poses some prevalent threats which consequently would not allow for complete smooth sail.
The zeitgeist captured in the entire body of works extends beyond emotional traumas as experienced in depression and unstable mental states as revealed in Nwafor’s Emotion Series. However, the state of affair in the world at large is documented and enshrined unconsciously in the composition of artworks. Godmade’s Solace, Arikpo’s No Burns; No Blisters, Nwafor’s Emotions Series, and Pollyn’s Yawa Don Gas hold the segment of the show which comparatively is regarded as the climax of the entire exhibits’ plot.
Beyond the ugly effects of the world-ravaging coronavirus pandemic, which continually has wrecked much havoc both on the minds of the people as well as the world’s economy, the set of works also draw to mind the struggle of people of colour and the woman.
In recent times, the world has been charged up with higher dimensions of awareness in the black culture, reinforcing works by historical icons, who had participated, in the emancipation of the black people. Most of these recent works have been featured in some Hollywood motion pictures such as: Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz’s Antebellum (2020), Kasi Lemmons’s Harriet (2019), Spike Lee’s Blackkklansman (2018), Melina Matsoukas’ Queen and Slim (2019) and others. This heightened consciousness, further became aggravated with the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath protest, a possible turn of event which the #EndSars protest in Nigeria, took virtually same format and, could be an outcome of the former’s ripple effect.
This is the work of the artist in Gyorgy Kepes’ views:
In each age of human history man was compelled to search for a temporary equilibrium in his conflicts with nature and in his relations with other men, and this created, through an organization of visual imagery, a symbolic order of his psychological and intellectual experiences. These forms of his creative imaginations directed and inspired him toward materializing the potential order inherent in each stage of history.
Further investigating these set of works, would unfold the Feminist and Marxist undertones imbued in these works, as beyond their iconographic context. The denouement of the show comes with the supposed comic relief which the other set of works present. Beyond Nwankwo’s Expectations which opens the viewer’s mind to seeing beyond the present, Chikezie’s Destiny and Shadow of the Evening tend to distract from the cloud of seriousness. Ogakwu’s Roots series draw reminiscence to the cultural consciousness of the native African, who has been overly influenced by western culture. And where all of these instigate a pensive mood in the viewer, Kpodoh’s Choir, Maduike’s Mbuzo Egwu, and Ekati’s Two Can Play will put the smile on the face, if not a grin.
After Thoughts
The constant flux in artistic endeavor, is the ever continuous experiment which drives the artist to breaking grounds and, discovering emerging methodologies in furthering artistic researches and creativity. The exhibits on the walls of Moriri art space, testify to the enormous effort each artist had employed to each work. Those are artworks which anytime, any day, now and as history unfolds, any art lover would love to view, over again. Apparently, they are collectors’ jewel with respect to finishing, presentation, artistic and intrinsic values and as well, the zeitgeist they possess.
Brian O’Doherty in Inside the White Cube details not just the functions of the gallery, the soul of the gallery, its composition and architectural significance, with regards to mimicking churches, as works contained within its space become sacred objects, which are not incessantly exposed to wandering eyes, but also how these walls of the gallery space should be treated and furthermore, be lit. Drawing from this evaluation, one or the other may quickly conclude that, the absence of expectations may detract from exhibits adorning the gallery space, but against all odds, the gallery was opened and the show was great.
Further Reading
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. Penguin Books Ltd., London.
O’Doherty, B. (1986). Inside the white cube: the ideology of the gallery space. University of California Press, Los Angeles.
Kepes G. (1995). Language of vision. Dover Publications, Inc., New York.
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