A-ARTs: Collapsing art, craft boundaries with woven contemporaneity

By Tajudeen Sowole

'Woven Together' (coral beads) by Kent Osaro Uwadiae.

THE more efforts to confine art and craft difference to the realm of critical appreciation, the further the wall between the two shrinks. For each window or genre of creative expressions, contemporaneity appears to be the scale on which both art and craft can be collapsed for broad appreciation, so explain works of Kent Osaro Uwadiae.

Uwadiae’s works come into one’s capture while searching for artists with alternative and non-conventional medium of creative contents. For whatever reasons, artists whose works are deviating from the regular medium, either in sculpture, painting or mixed media, are on the increase, expanding the contemporary narratives of art from Africa. Whether or not Uwadiae’s works of beads and cowries fall into craft or bridges the art divides is a matter of choice in both commercial and critical appreciation.

With traditional jewellery materials of coral beads and few cowries, Uwadiae creates relief pieces, in figural forms, extending adornment into the realm of storytelling. While the natural colour of the beads asserts potential restrictions, especially in figurative subjects, Uwadiae’s attempts to break away from that limitation forms a crucial part of placing his works on a spot within contemporary landscape.

Naturally, the bead, as a medium hardly makes creative sense without being flocked together with as many as possible pieces, either in jewellery or other forms, including figurative renditions. The collective strength of the beads comes naturally for one of Uwadiae’s works titled Woven Together, a theme that focuses on family bondings. In their natural form, every bead looks exactly like the other one, but the difference comes in the role that each one contributes to the collective goals. For Woven Together, a four-figure of two adults and children, the bonding seems to have been captured in the locking of hands from one family member to another.

While Uwadiae’s choice of locking the hands of the family together creates graphic explanation of what the theme is all about, the simplicity that the figures radiate comes with suspicion. Sometimes, artists or craftsmen need to assert the uniqueness of their signature, especially when handling figurative forms. Beyond just being illustrative, works of figurative or portrait forms should come with some extra values.

Searching for that special signature in the work leads one to the application of the beads in the regular and simple methods, with little or no adventurism. Is the seemingly low depth of aesthetics in laying the beads together represents the analogy of the challenges every one faces, depicting the imperfections in the family?

Basically, the work explores the metaphor of ‘together we are stronger’, suggesting that each member of the family is different until the bonding brings them together. Perhaps, the differences in each member of the family could be better narrated visually with beads of different colours or shades and lights to truly emphasise the core of the theme. Are there as many options of beads for creative applications?

Before becoming a material in creative expressions, the bead comes from natural marine product, but refined for its diverse cultural and creative applications. Aside the coral beads in the works of Uwadiae, there is also glass bead, made from non-natural sources. For excluding the glass beads in his works, perhaps, Uwadiae missed the opportunity to expand the diversity of his choice of medium. Education and information are extended wings of creative expressions, but Uwadiae’s inability to expand on the other families of beads, at least for knowledge purpose, requires attention.

Either as a piece of art or craft, Uwadiae’s Woven Together adds to the blurring line between the two genres, in contemporary terms.