By Tajudeen Sowole
Stuck to her museum-style
presentation of concepts, Victoria-Idongesit Udondian takes the floor and
walls, among 12 other artists currently showing till May, 24, 2016 at Fisher
Landau Center for Art, Long Island City, N.Y in a group exhibition.
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Instatllation by
Victoria-Idongesit Udondian currently showing in New York
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In a fictitious theme of Nigerian Pavilion, Udondian, a Lagos-based artist, funnels her
thought about boundaries that impede creativity, distilling a sub-theme Out Of The Box. Framed within an imaginary Nigerian Pavilion at 56th Venice
Biennale, the featured artists include Raven Smay, Ego Goodsire, Kirbeh
Get and Doundi Victoriana who practised within and outside Nigeria.
She describes the artists as those "who push the conceptual and
material boundaries of local and global
artistic standards."
The group show in which Udondian is
presented her Nigerian Pavilion concept is Columbia University 2016 MFA
Exhibition and features colleagues: Jenny Cho, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels,
Devra Fox, ektor garcia, Cy Gavin, Ilana Yacine Harris-Babou, Mike Hewson,
Brooke Holloway, Cary Hulbert, Bryan Jabs, Coby Kennedy, Tali Keren, Rola Khayyat,
Jonah King, Emily Kloppenburg, Pablo Montealegre, Filip Lav, Justin Dale
Olerud, Meredith Sands, Michael Stablein, Jr., Rachel Stern, Alex Strada,
Cameron Welch and Jiwoon Yoon.
Presenting Out of the Box for her MFA theses
at the Columbia show appears like Udondian is on a familiar journey. Ahead of
her applying for the MFA, she produced quite a number of works, at her
residencies in Europe and Africa, that focused on trajectory of African
fabrics/textiles, and presented in installations. For a period of four years,
Udondian engaged the African fabric theme across Africa and Europe, and
returned to Lagos where she hosted Open Studio. At the well-attended event she
shared her experience with art connoisseurs and other community of art
enthusiasts in Lagos.
For the Columbia MFA exhibiion, the theme is
different, but the presentation appears familiar. Udondian explains that the
'Box' in the context of the presentation, "represents multiple
forces and pressures that restrict the creativity of
many Nigerian artists today." She lists the forces
to include "identity, traditional canons, artistic conventions and the
shadow of Africanness."
Excerpt from Udondian Artist Statement:
"Through socially engaged work, Smay calls attention to the darker
side of transnationality for African artists marked by
their national identities as they attempt
to navigate the global art world.
Goodsire, on the other hand, explores the multilayered cultural,
political, ethnic and religious identities present within the
bounds of modern Nigeria itself.
“His conceptual and
serial photographic projects, which straddle the line between fine
art photography and photojournalism, question the unity and existence of
a national identity at all. Get, with his design-based conceptual
practice, imagines a different future or Africa through the rendering of
impossible architectural spaces, while Victoriana’s
art fashioned from globally sourced
second-hand clothing revels in materiality
and bodily presence.
"Outside the Box showcases artistic
practices that expand the range of materials, ideas and techniques
available to future generations of artists working in Nigeria—and
“Outside” it. This project is made possible through
individual supports and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos."
Among Udondian's pre-MFA projects was her
concept of second-hand clothing theme, in South Africa where she stumbled on a
lost tradition of native fabric.
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