By
Tajudeen Sowole
The relationship in visual narrative
between Committee for Relevant Art’s Lagos
Books and Arts Festival (LABAF) and The Edge Studio, in the past three
editions or more of the yearly event took a deeper intellectual level at the
2012 edition.
Still
in the art exhibition format, the sub-event for this year entitled Interrupted Lives, according to the
curator Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo of The Edge Studio, examines the role of contemporary
artists in documenting recent events around the world appropriately, as well as
“the fluctuating paradigms of our existence.” The show explicitly explores the LABAF 2012 theme: Narratives of Conflict, the curator added.
At the ground floor of Kongi’s Harvest
Art Gallery, Freedom Park, Lagos Island, where Interrupted Lives was mounted, visitors were trickling in at the
spate of about 20 or more minutes per person, very much in contrast to the
other events of the LABAF that
enjoyed higher attendance. This, however, did not diminish acknowledging the
deeper relevance of the message buried in the works of the artists on display:
nearly every major changes within Nigeria’s troubled social-political sphere as
well as global crisis were interpreted by the artists whose works were
exhibited in Interrupted Lives.
Works on display included paintings by
naturalist Abiodun Olaku, cubist Duke Asidere, watercolourist and abstract
expressionist Sam Ovraiti, native motif impressionist Tola Wewe, installation
and performance artist Nwosu Igbo and documentary photographer Uche James
Iroha.
At the extreme end of the gallery,
Olaku’s theme of house on stilts, though appeared over stressed, but it blended
clearly with the Interrupted Lives
concept. Titled Bliss (Oko Baba Series),
it reminds one of the recently “disturbed” people of Makoko in Mainland Local
Government who were forcefully evicted by Lagos State Government from their
abode of time immemorial.
It should be recalled that while the
inhabitants felt their lives had been interrupted, government argued that the
action was in the best interest of the evictees, who were apparent victims of
unplanned urbanisation.
However, few months after Makoko
inhabitants lost their shelters, what looked like the truth surfaced somewhere
else when flood sacked people in another part of the country. Lives were lost,
thousands displaced and billions of naira worth of property destroyed along the
River Niger. The affected people of about five states, unfortunately, were not
given the opportunity of having their lives “disturbed” or “interrupted” as the
Makoko people in Lagos who were “rescued” from a possible natural disaster.
Nwosu-Igbo’s installation I Hated My Eulogy strikes one as a
caricature of the usual crime scene, designated by police, and hardly leads to
any justice. Central to her focus, so it seems, is the failure of the justice
system, perhaps truncated right from investigation stages as seen in the
so-much dramatised Police Line Do Not
Cross, usually seen at crime site.
For Nwosu-Igbo’s installation, images
from the recent jungle justice meted on the four students of University of
Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, who were accused of theft exudes creative and
conceptual composite, but also brings silence wailing and unseen tears. Not
necessarily tears for the Uniport-4, but for a country where the justice system
is in trash, encouraging street and mob trial of suspects.
As James Iroha’s linear captures,
Ovraiti, Wewe and Asidere’s works also made thought-provoking inputs to the
central theme, another performance artist Jelili Atiku’s Nigerian Fetish was being awaited at the time of the visit. It was
however “presented, later in documentary format via slides.”
In her curatorial notes, Nwosu-Igbo
stressed that the show “is an art discourse that looks at the very complicated
link between creative practice and political crusading.” She lamented that despite the pool of
resources for “artists to explore”, arising from the Boko Haram insurgency and
the Dana plane crash “it seems artists are not authentic in recording these and
other recent histories.”
The exhibition also included what she
described as ‘a lecture room.’ “It’s interactive about “issues of insecurity,
strife, and uncertainty of our times using the role of art as an appetizer.”
At LABAF
2011, it was Do Not
Resuscitate, also curated
by Nwosu-Igbo. The exhibition offered exhibited artists space to address the
socio-economic and political challenges facing Nigeria. It brought performance,
video and installation art in the same space with painting, and portrayed an
all-inclusive as well as democratic approach to conceptual art.
New faces: Bob-Nosa Uwagboe, Tolu Aliki
and filmmaker, photo artist Aderemi Adegbite joined Nwosu-Igbo and Atiku, as
each artist’s identity still manifested despite the mix. Performance poet, Iquo
Eke, also lent her vocal prowess to the exhibition.
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