Performance and Provocation: Interview with Multi-Media Artist Jelili Atiku

Jelili Atiku, Corpus Cal-lu-sum, 2010,  Ejigbo, Lagos Nigeria. image (c) the aritsit

 

 

Interview with Jelili Atiku

By Loren Hansi Momodu

 

LHM:  Your performance and installation works tend to deal directly with topics that are current to politics of your country. What is it that drives you as an artist to get involved in politics?

 

JA:      I am from a school of thought that adheres strictly to the ideals and principle of one of the roles of an artist in the society. And this is to heighten human sensitivity towards the sustenance of humanity and survival of our earth. This principle, which I believe is the purer function of artist of all ages; derives in all my endeavours particularly in creating my works.  POLITICS, let me use Rita Gilbert words in Living With Art, (1998, MacGraw Hill, New York, page 51) “everything in life comes down to” it.  “All the worthy emotion – love, honor, patriotism, charity - have their root a concern with politics, which means simply possessing the power to achieve one’s desired goal”. Therefore, POLITICS influences, or let me use the word, DICTATES the directions of all other human endeavours; be it social, economics, religion, or even individual and collective human rights. If this is so, POLITICS becomes an important core element in our survival as human family and the sustenance of our values.

 

In Nigeria pre and post colonial experiences, POLITICS has conspicuously played a central role. When Nigeria went to war against herself, it was POLITICS that gave the order. When the Army became the RULERS instead of SOLDIERS; it was POLITICS that watered the seeds of that ambition. The neglect of Niger Delta and many areas was crafted by POLITICS. So POLITICS becomes the Bull in Nigeria that must be taken by the horn.

 

LHM:  Why do you choose to create artwork that deals with human rights issues?

 

JA:      My experiences as a typical Nigerian led me to produce works that are deeply rooted in human rights issues. Let me be explicit, I had grown up as child with the strong pains of deprivation of father’s love and presence. I lost my father, Badiu Olorunfunmi who was an Army Officer. He fought in the side of Federal government during the civil war (Nigeria/Biafra war).  He died during the war; not in the war front but at home when he came to see my mother, Muiba who was newly married to him. I was a month old in her womb then. My mother always wept whenever she narrates the story of my father’s death, which she believes must have been caused by his involvement in the war.  Although my grandfather, Chief Adisa Atiku Olorunfunmi took care of me, but as the adage says, oju mewa o jo oju eni meaning ten eyes cannot function as one’s eyes.

 

I had indirectly and indirectly felt the impact of the war and military dictatorship rules in Nigeria. I grew up with constant fear of coups and killing of people. My mother has a special way of narrating the event of January 15, 1966 when the country experienced the first military coup and a group of majors sought to overthrow the Government. This action resulted into the death of several political leaders, including Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola and many others. Several other bloody coups and counter coups occurred; hence the Nigerian Military became entrenched in political aspirations, leading to resentment and human rights abuses. Let me recall a personal experience here.

 

Sometimes in 1993 during the June 12 Saga - when the most widely acclaimed as the freest and fairest Presidential election in Nigeria’s political history was annulled by General Ibrahim Babangida’s military rule; I was molested and beaten up by a military man. I had gone to a fuel station owned by my Uncle on the fateful day on the directive of my Grandfather, who was the Regent of Ejigbo, my hometown. My mission was to summon my uncle to Ejigbo Regency Council meeting. I had driven into the station without noticing the presence of six armed army officers.  The officers were said to have been assigned to installed “sanity” to “disorderliness” in the stations, which was caused by fuel scarcity – an off shoot of June 12 Palaver. I was just driving into the station when the six soldiers attacked me and dragged me out of the car. My offence! “I drove into the station without their (the soldiers’) permission”. Before I could utter a word in defence or explanation; they started beating with horse whips and booths. The beating lasted few minutes until my uncle came to rescue me.

 

Similarly, in November, 1998 during the winding days of my National Youth Service at Akwa-Ibom State, I had to aligned with the question as raised by Guerrilla Action Group that “shouldn’t the artist be concerned with the basic emotional, psychological, and moral crises that confront us all?” I was confronted with one of the repressive systems in our political life: administration of justice, prison and penal systems. I was to witness the horrific and inhuman effects of these systems when I joined the fellow Corp Members to visit Ikot Ekpene prison yard. On that day I felt the pains of injustice and its tragic tolls on those who the system wished to reform. Hence, I concluded, if I were to remain truthful to purer function of art; I must use my art works as a campaign against the repressive system in our society that constitute to human rights abuses.

 

LHM:  Do you see the possibility for your art to produce tangible changes in society?

 

JA:      Yes, but do remember that change in our world, manifests slowly and takes a long time.

 

LHM:  In what way does your aspiration for an alternative way of life affect your work?

 

JA:      Greatly! It has a tremendous effect on my art. I find it difficult to produce works on the value of its aesthetic or monetary. Since 1998, the forms of my works and themes have consciously address, project or advocate those issues that affect or promote an alternative way of life.

 

LHM:  In what way do the conceptual elements of your practice, such as your vision for an egalitarian society work alongside the practicalities of challenging laws being passed in parliament?

 

JA:       The compatibility of my vision for an egalitarian society and that of the Nigerian legislators seems to be unaligned. However, my works and I myself work on collaboration to provide visual education and increase the sensitivities of the legislators on those issues that affecting our individual and collective existence.  As you may be aware, in November (14^th precisely) 2010, I sent out an open letter to Members of National Assembly – addressing one of the insensibilities of most of their decisions to the realities in Nigeria. I titled the letter and the performance I enacted in this respect as NGA Bill…Kill Me the More.

 

LHM:  Can you tell me about the importance of the human body in your performances and installations?

 

JA:      The extraordinary diversity of performance art with its focus on the use of human body as a effective medium of visual expression(s) has shown that human body and its action influences human psychic. Therefore, I use my body as artistic medium to explore the new connectivity in our society with its diverse contemporary cultures. This of course, enabled me to play with “the blending of virtual and physical space, the traversing of time and space through the virtual, and the evolution of innovative methodologies”. This method, I am referring to the adoption of human body made also to cross “disciplines and challenging boundaries within the humanities, arts and the creative industries”. You may call this, a positive indulgence in the provision of perhaps significant platforms for interaction, activism, and creative development. Essentially, human body gives me the opportunity to express the corporeality of the human body itself. As we are all aware, the human body is the medium through which we live, communicate, express, and our world are revealing in many ways. The significant in-depth of the foregoing is the same as the significant of human body in my performance.

 

LHM:  How have you seen your nation change since you have been practicing as an artist? Has your view of your nation changed since you have been practicing as an artist?

 

JA:      Mmmh! I will be cautious here to avoid negative label; but the truth must be told and expressed in its true colours and characteristics. Indeed there is a change in the transformation of the country from military rule to democratic government. This change has not been reflected in our attitudes. The military mentality and culture of force – where subjugation, dehumanisation and degradation of human persons; corruption, disregard to human values, were order of the day - are still visible in our national life. Inasmuch as these are prevailing circumstances in Nigeria, my views about the country remain the same.  The country is great, but our problem is leadership.

 

LHM:  Often your audience is caught unawares, and is made up of passersby or the unsuspecting public, involved in everyday activities-like shopping. How much of your message do you feel you are able to communicate to these people? Would you say that your work is directed to the immediate audience or those in positions of power?

 

JA:      The people you mentioned are not only “audience”, they also serve as performance objects or elements in most of my performances (let cite Agbo Rago as an example here). I mean to say I used the people as part of the composition. Of course my works are mostly directed to the rulers and their agents. This doesn’t mean the “audience” is cut away from my target. 

 

LHM: What has been the reaction of these different audiences to your work?

 

JA: In the first place, I deliberately make my performance invoke the feeling of chock in my audience. This I believe would jolt them out of the comma nature, which my people are so to say. Summarily, reactions to my performance have been with mixed-feelings. Some people see me as mad person who makes no-sense; while other feel the importance of the statements being projected. I remember in 2006, when I enacted “The Victim of Political Assassination” infront of Kashim Ibrahim library of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria for three hours. Laying down lifelessly, my audience especially the women actually thought I was dead person; most of them wept.  In 2007 when I re-enacted the performance at the Lagos State Hose of Assembly, the Special Security Officer of the institution ordered that the performance should be discontinued. His reason was that I was making mockery of the legislative house by bring a dead person into the premises. The Clerk of the House insisted and also ordered the continuation of the performance. There are different reactions to different situations in my performances.

 

LHM: Do you find you have to spend time explaining your projects, either before or after the performances?

 

JA: Yes a lot. This is because our society is gradually becoming literary. An since I use metaphor in most of the my performance, the audience sometime find it difficult to comprehend. Let me say this, this attitude is a fallout from the effect of colonialism because in Africa the use of metaphor and all the rich human languages are popular. The advent of colonialist destroyed all this important part of us.

 

LHM: At times your work can challenge the state powers directly, have you ever felt that you have been in danger of being silenced? Or receiving some kind of backlash?

 

JA: Yes, I sometimes feel UNSAFE, but you know we are in the democratic era now, the atmosphere is conducive. I have never received backlashes.

 

LHM: In what way is language and use of slogans important to your work?

 

JA: It is simply the issue of identity, expressing reality in its true language. In my video, titled Governor General (03.20minutes), which I composed for Nigerian 50 years anniversary I

 

Governor General

 

Arise, O compatriots, 
God save our gracious Queen,

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light

Nigeria's call obey 
Long live our noble Queen,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

To serve our fatherland 
God save The Queen.

Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,

With love and strength and faith 
Send her victorious,

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

The labor of our heroes past 
Happy and glorious,

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Shall never be in vain 
Long to reign over us

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

To serve with heart and might 

God save The Queen

Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

 

One nation bound in freedom, 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Peace and unity. 

Using my local language and slogan is actually to project this mixed identity as shown above.

 

 

LHM: The Nigerian flag features throughout your work at different points, can you tell me about the symbolism of this?

 

JA: I am only situation the satiation and expressed being projects as peculiar to my country, Nigeria. Of course, it is issue of identity as i mentioned earlier.

 

LHM: You also use colour, red, green or black to cover the body- can you tell me a bit more about this?

 

JA: As you are aware, color means many different things to different people and cultures. Color represents feelings and symbolical. I have used red, green or black in different performance namely In the Red, Who Know Who Care?, Even If I Wear Your Cloth, and I Am Black, Black and Black to invoke the feeling of  energy, Excitement, love, desire, speed, strength, power, heat, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence, all things intense, ecology and passionate. My aim here is to create a kind of psychological dialogue with my audience. Colors have SPECIAL effects on our feelings. However, I intend to create a kind of intersection of performance with painting techniques.

 

LHM: Can you tell me about the impulse behind the work Agbo Rago, 2009

 

JA:      The impulse of the performance came from the story I read in a magazine. In 2004, I came about a story in a magazine published in 2004 by Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Holland. On page 5 of the magazine, the story of 70 Years-old woman raped in January, 2002 was shared in an article, titled I Have No Joy, No Peace of Mind: Medical, Psychosocial, and Socio-Economic Consequences of Sexual Violence in Eastern DRC. It says “It is the first time I am telling my story because of the shame and dishonour I am feeling inside of me. At the time of the incident, I was living in a bivouac in the bush, hiding from the war. One day, I had gone to the fields to collect some food to eat. As I was cultivating, I heard someone screaming loudly and the next minute armed men appeared in front of me. I tried to escape, but one of the men pulled me by the hand and knocked me over. He told me if I move, he would kill me. He took the clothes I was wearing and he started to hit me. Then he introduced his fingers inside me and he told me if he had a machete, he would cut me. I cried so much and I was so distressed to be forced to do such a thing at my old age. I went home at night, hiding in the dark my nudity. Because I am so old, I felt a lot of pain in the …, the abdomen and pelvis. But most of all I am angry and I cry whenever the whole incident flashes back to my mind”.

 

I felt so sad and depressed reading through this story. I wondered why our world and all of us therein are recessing and retrogressing in terms of human values. It was this background that informed the performance, which is a metaphorically a reflection of this ugly reality. I was also bothered about human Apathy towards the problem. Can you remember the statement by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which was made on Thursday, June 8, 1978 in an address, titled A World Split Apart delivered at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercise? He said:

 

…world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individual but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in the statements and even more so theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak government and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents, which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

 

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

To this end, in Agbo Rago, I used the method, known as “communication guerrilla” – a method that turns spectacle to ritual and often takes the form of street and guerrilla theatre to bring attention to the issues of disrespect to human values and oppression, human apathy, stupidity, banality, Pains, sufferings, endurance, callousness and atrocity;  political and religious subjugation, etc.

LHM: What was the background to ‘End Extreme Poverty Now: An Exhibition of Drawings, Photographs, Painting and Sculpture’? When you are staging exhibitions such as this is your aim to utilise your art as a tool to communicate a political message? Or do you see the aesthetic considerations of the work to be as important as the message?

 

JA:      To be frank, as I have stressed in the course of this interview; the intent in my art practices and forms is simply a humble collaboration with art for humanity sake. The exhibition, End Extreme Poverty Now was four-man show, which consists of Washington Uba, Johnson Oladesu, Prince Nathaniel Momoh and myself. We staged the exhibition at Lagos State House of Assembly on the 13^th December 2007 to commemorate the 2007 World Human Right Day and campaign for eradication of extreme poverty in Nigeria. I exhibited three works in the exhibition namely: Doubtless Hunger (drawing, 2007, charcoal and Pencil on paper, 70cm x 50cm), No Dough-Face Here (drawing, 2007, charcoal and Pencil on paper, 70cm x 50cm), and Poverty in Row (installation sculpture, 2007, papier-mâché, fabric, found objects such as shoes, wheel-chair; life size).

 

The background of the body of works in my poverty project was influenced during my electioneering campaign in 2007. In this year, I was elected as Alliance for Democracy (AD) flag bearer for Lagos State House of Assembly general election to represent Oshodi / Isolo Constituency. Campaigning in all the six communities (Isolo, Ilasamaja, Ijeshatedo, Okota/Ago, Ajao Estate, and Ejigbo) in the constituency; I came face-to-face with the effects of poverty in our nation. I saw how poverty enfeebles every average Nigerians. As Old Russian proverb says, “Poverty is not a sin, it is something worse”. Similarly, in words of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary- General who declared while addressing an emergency Summit on Global Food Crisis in Rome in June 2008 that “Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made. It breeds anger, social disintegration, ill health and economic decline”. These realities which dehumanize many Nigerians made me to joined forces in the world that seek for poverty eradication.

 

It becomes pertinent therefore; to prioritise MESSAGE(S) in these works rather than AESTHETIC CONSIDERATION.

 

 

LHM: Can you tell me about your inspiration for Free the Press, 2006 and also Who’s Afraid of FoI? 2008, and give a short description of each work.

 

JA:      Let me attempt to answer this question by citing the motto of Action Group (one of Nigerian political parties in the 1950s): LIFE MORE ABUNDANT..., FREEDOM FOR ALL. One of the basic principles of life is FREEDOM. You will agree with me that information helps in either guarantee or sustain one’s freedom. The agent that is indispensable in disseminating information is the Press.

 

In 2006 when I created Free the Press, World Association of Newspapers released a startling statistics that shown working as journalists is as dangerous as fighting in a war front. The report (as analysed in the catalogue of the work by Raphael James) shown that “a total of 58 journalists were killed across the globe in 2005. The Middle East and North Africa, had the highest number of murdered journalists, 25; followed by Asia, 17; 8 journalists were killed in America, while Africa recorded 4 deaths, same number with Europe and Central Asia. 788 journalists were arrested in 2005 across the world, while 125 were imprisoned as of December 1, 2005. Asia was the higher culprit in this regard, recording 46 imprisonments, while 33 journalists were jailed in Africa. USA sent 25 media persons to jail, 8 in Europe and Central Asia and 13 in Middle East and North Africa”. Additionally, in 7 July 2006 it was widely reported that there heavy protest in Colombo – where angry trooped to the streets, demanding an end to the killing of journalists in the country. This information and several problems being faced by press all over the world inspired me to create the work.

I held a view which i expressed in the catalogue of the exhibition that the “press is an indispensable mechanism, effective machinery for human rights surveillance and protection. Therefore, its restriction in the area of expression is tantamouse to fatal ‘historical error”.

 

Free the Press in composition consists of three artistic ideals namely, representation, conceptual and contextual. A female figure whose body is covered with newspapers stands on different newspaper; in a conical-like shape cage. The figure holds firmly a folded newspaper in its right hand while the left hand holds the cage metal-bar. It gazes the space in a submissive manner. 36 local lamps known as Atupa in Yoruba language surround the metal cage. A small tag-like object (placard) was attached to each of the lamps with articles of Universal Declaration of Human Rights written on them. There are five cane-chicken cages, which are stuffed with different type of old newspapers and magazines lined (install) in front of the

 

Who’s Afraid of FoI? 2008 was inspired by the refusal of Nigerian Senate to pass the Freedom of Information (FoI) Bill into law. The bill was brought to the Senate on December 1999; making it the longest surviving bill in the senate. The refusal of the bill as I have advocate is a “speedy drive of our country to continuo sly drowning in muddy water of corruption and fraud, abuse of power, mal-administration, wastage of public fund, extreme poverty and hunger; subjugation of the people and several other crimes against humanity.” It is pertinent to say here that this bill is desired by majority of Nigerians and believed to be “strategic importance in pursuing the participation of citizens in governance and enthroning the much desired culture of openness, transparency and accountability in the governance.”

 

Who’s Afraid of FoI? Is a performance, which I enacted in public space at United Information Centre, Lagos in 2008. It consists of my entire body heavily wrapped with Nigerian Newspapers and tied to wooden chair. I was veiled with transparent cloth with carrying a wooden signpost with an inscription “Who’s Afraid of FoI”. Behind the wrapped figure were Cloth lines where placards of newspapers clips were fastened.

 

LHM: Who are the people who have influenced your artistic practice?

 

JA:       People and influences in my artistic practices are many. However, the direction of this question necessitates of course a brief explanation on my art-philosophy. Therefore, I will attempt to give a background of my art, which is a reflection of my life-philosophy. My first and second years in Fine Arts Department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria (where I was trained for undergraduate courses in arts) was rather a search for the purer function of art and artist. In these years I was catapulted into a different level, which was quit unfamiliar to my post primary school art experiences. I could remember vividly, in sculpture class, Mr. Rechard Baye, our Lecturer declared poignantly that artistic expressions are personal innate feelings, ideas, opinions and understandings of issues that were reared in the artist’s environment.   I could not arrive at an understanding that would midwife an artistic principle, which I needed at that time as an art student, until the day I asked him a question on the aforementioned statement.

 

On that day Mr. Baye was assessing our class-sculptural works, he was offering his views when I asked confusedly: “Sir, since you said, artist is to express his/her innate feelings, how could you judge correctly another person’s self expression; when you were foreign to his/her feelings?”  Mr. Baye’s response intensified my quest for deeper meaning in the function of art and artist. He said, “Here we assess your level of consciousness.” “What does consciousness has do with this”, I questioned inwardly as if I was expecting an automated answer. Yes I did have an answer, such that was buried within my memories and resurrected to clarify a fact. Then, I remembered Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s statement:

 

Consciousness cannot be denied. A body without consciousness is a dead body. As soon as consciousness is removed from the body, the mouth will not speak, the eyes will not see, nor the ears hear…It is a fact that consciousness is absolutely necessary for animation of the body. What is this consciousness? Just as heat or smoke are symptoms of fire, so consciousness is the symptom of the soul. The energy of the soul, or self, is produced in the shape of consciousness. Indeed, consciousness proves that the soul is present.

 

I interpreted Prabhupada’s statement to mean that consciousness must inhibit art forms as a matter of necessity in order to make them living entities. Those art forms without consciousness are as dead as driftwood. That Consciousness breathes soul into the body of art forms. This realisation sprouts me with another desire to search for how to come about consciousness for my art works. As the search progressed, I discovered through Herbert Read et al that:

 

To be alive is to be aware, active, involved. Art increases our state of aliveness by expanding and deeping our state of awareness. Art discovers, heightens and refines life experiences Art serves to clarify our feelings. Until we express emotions we do not know what they are. The artist’s vision, both analytic and panoramic, makes perceptible at once the parts and the whole. Through art, man can discover the fundamental forms and processes of his universe and can give them new energy and function.³

 

From another perspective, Herbert Read et al exposed:

 

The life experience of man is a concert of involvement. Art intensifies man’s involvement with life; it gives evidence and symbol of human energy; it vivifies human experiences. Art deals with the emotional realm of man; it supplies stimulus for his capacity to feel and react; it expands his area of sentiment. The art experience sharpens and rewards the sense, and thus nit develops all human faculties. Art is among the human disciplines that allow for and depend upon the intense commitment of man to constructive action.

 

Essentially, as a student, two statements from the above struck and stuck with me that would congeal as foundation of my art principles and ideals. “Art increases our state of aliveness by expanding and deeping our state of awareness”, and “Art is among the human disciplines that allow for and depend upon the intense commitment of man to constructive action” are to me the golden principles.

 

However, I could not put them to use effectively at the time of their discovery because I was under tutelage of academic rules and regulations. But in 1995 at “specialisation level” I began gradually to involve into using art as commitment to enlarge man’s awareness that would influence an alternative better environment.

 

At this stage, I was simply a mould and my academic experiences become crucibles, melting different characters of artistic principles, ideologies and philosophies honed by my lecturers. These were converted into substance like molten metal that was poured into me, the mould; hence, I became an image that was once described as Guerilla Artist by Abdulrasaq Yusuf, my classmate and friend.

 

Let me make myself more explicit, my present disposition evolved from combination of my upbringing as an artist at the Zaria Art School, Ahmadu Bello University and experiences as citizen of a country where effects of colonial imperialism and local dictatorship continue to slow-down human and natural development.

 

There is no doubt that Zaria Art School was (and remains) the womb where most Nigerian avant-garde artists are born. In truth, there is no place in Nigeria where art-activism flourishes other than Zaria. The word, “Rebel” emerged into Nigerian art history through the school. Although in November 2006 during the school’s 50^th Anniversary Celebration Conference, it was unanimously agreed that such a word is incompetent to illustrate the recusant nature, creative impulse, ingenuity of purpose and contents, and forms of those personalities behind the emergence of the word. Hence, “revolutionary” was canvassed and accepted as the appropriate word. The “Zaria Rebel” sorry “Zaria Revolutionary” is a referent for art and activism in Nigeria.

 

The influx of knowledge, attitudes, ideas and ideals that passed through my learning - window was possible through different lecturers, who possessed refine and deep ideal art-culture. This did not only train and stimulated my sensibilities; it also opened up my consciousness to assimilate humanitarian attitudes in my art and in interaction with my environment. Perhaps, mentioning these personalities would help in bringing clarity into this exposition. They are Gani Odutokun (who was working on the preavailing political issues when I was in 100 and 200 levels), Tonie Okpe (now Professor), Richard Baye, Esther Oyinlo (of blessed memory), Mathew Ehizele, Tunde Babalola, Gabriel Bamidele, Jacob Jari (now Professor), Jerry Buhari (now Professor), Mu’azu Mohammed Sani, Kefas Danjuma, Philip Gushem, Dr. Daniel Babalola, Dr. Saliu ……….., Sulaimon………, Gutip……….(of blessed memory),  Professor Bentu Lucas (of blessed memory), and Professor Jimoh Akolo.

 

However, an outstanding influence from above mentioned people came from my closeness with Jacob Jari (my art-history lecturer then). Mr. Jari with his humane, subtle, meticulous manner and intellectual prowess in communicating issues and ideals both in visual forms and literary words tutored me in a personal arranged (out of school curriculum) drawing class- where I imbibed creative drawing ability. The class opened up my awareness, sharpened my skills and ignited a burning interest in drawing as independent art forms. Ultimately, Mr. Jari tutored me to a realisation in practice of drawing (borrowing words from Edward Hill):

 

Without considering the fact that artistic vision is of a higher order than common vision, we must realize that drawing can and does heighten visual sensitivity. The requirements of a drawing, that is, the putting together of a comprehensible patter of lines and so on, prod the draftsman to sharpen his observation beyond the ordinary level.

 

Indeed, my observation of the society was sharpened. My sensibility to the modern human problems I could see through the veil of extreme poverty and hunger, which majority of us, Nigeria citizens are subjected to. I could see that the other prevailing situations in my beloved country, arbitrary arrest and detention, violence and discrimination against women, sales of children for child-labor, economic stagnation and effects of economic reforms, minority issues (which have breed communal clashes and violence in many part of the country); child prostitution and pornography; health problems; food crisis; effects of toxic waste as it is in Niger Delta and military dictatorship are instrument of people subjugation. Hence, I became insouciance to those aspirations in pursuit aesthetic in art forms. Art must communicate those principles or ideas that are affecting collective existence of humanity: the advancement and development of every individual creature in our world.

 

This understanding aided me in proposing and creating the sculpture, titled Gunni-Gunni as my final year undergraduate project. Although, I had to abandon its execution due to economic problems of the country, but through it, I was able to recall with utmost repulsion the sarcastic moments we all as Nigerians went through under the military dictatorship.

 

In October 1997 I had a conversation that would appear like rounding-up dialogue with Mr. Jari. He said emphatically and advised me to always gauge the pulse of the society and act as a truthful instrument of change. Although, he warned that such purpose might be difficult in poverty-stricken nation like ours, artist must have to survive economically.

 

As we sat on the “Knot” sculpture in front of the department, the content of Mr. Jari’s words ramped themselves into my brain with the aid of the whispering hamattan that blew fresh cold into my body and hijacked the atmosphere. “How does an artist remain focus and truthful to the practices of art when he/she can hardly feed him/herself?” was the question that occupied my mind.  I responded, perhaps to show the degree at which I understood his teachings and sayings. I said:

 

I may not be in the corridors of power, but I am determined to see that change happen in my own time and I will effect it using my creative ingenuity. It is like each one of us putting up a candle in our small individual corners, and before long, the entire place would turn bright. I should be able to serve humanity with arts Art is all about service.⁶

 

Least I forget one visible event that also contributed in shaping my direction in art occurred while I was in 200 levels.  This event passed the knowness to me of the powerful instinct of art to influence human emotion, mind, nerve, and attitudes. It was March 1994, an academic season that would have ordinarily terminated in 1992, foot-dragged to 1994 due to closure of the school, resulting from students’ riot and (ASU) industrial actions. In this day, “…the Kashim Ibrahim library of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, perhaps the biggest library in black Africa, was shut down, on account of a painting by Mu‘azu Mohammed Sani. The painting portrays a cross and a minaret.  On the cross hangs a banner on which is written, ‘I love Prophet Muhammed’, while the minaret’s banner reads, ‘I love Jesus Christ’. Apparently irked by the notion that Muhammed could love Christ, a Muslim fanatic studying physics attended the exhibition at the library and attempted to destroy the painting.  The scuffle that ensure between those in fravour of and those against his action led to the library’s closure for three days, while negotiations on how to cool down tempers were carried out by interest groups including the Muslim ummah. What saved the exhibition and the library from any further calamities was the fact that the painter was himself a Muslim”.

ew weeks later, I came across a book, The New Art, edited by Gregory     Battcok. This book was to become my Philosophy Book of Art. This was so, because my art forms picked their nerves, filament and essence from its content. For instance, Allen Leepa said in this book that (let me read from the book:

 

Art is a metaphorical statement that is defined by those meanings and human equivalents which man feels most directly, truthfully and comprehensively represent him at any particular time. It is particularly necessary to approach art this way if we are to understand something of what is happening at the present time.

 

He went further to say:

 

To be alive, art must create. To do is to explore fearlessly and profoundly the meaning of existence. This exploration is not scientific or simply analytical. But why exploration? Art as we said, is a form of knowledge. Anything of importance to man is significant in the degree that it touches on his meanings. By expanding his understanding and experiences, he provides new insights, and life renews itself. Art offers this possibility to an extraordinary degree since it can employ more man’s faculties in an integrated and concentrated way than perhaps any other instrument of knowing that he employs, the fact that the knowledge offered by art is experienced at the same moment that it reveals its meaning gives it the distinction of being at one and the same time a living counterpart of to life and also an activator of it.⁹

 

In this same book, Battock presents the 1970 Manifestos of Guerrilla Action Group, which consists of Jon Hendricks, Poppy Johnson and Jean Toche. Battock’s introductory note to this manifesto guided my understanding the more. He writes:

 

The concept of “humanism” in arts and letters is constantly being redefined. It could be said that the search for a definition of humanism is akin to the search, within art, for an equally elusive concept - that of reality itself. The … manifesto, prepared by the Guerrilla Art Action Group of New York City, questions the commodity nature of art and reactivates the familiar concern that see art as an expressive endeavor that “…. Confronts the insanity and violence of our society, and gives relevance to life”.

 

The search for a new art that communicates by itself and without complex and scholarly apparatus borders on “social realism” and other reactionary styles. However, the proposals printed here are of a sufficiently broad nature, in that they seek to identify art with the larger, progressive and social and philosophical trends detected in advanced social development.

 

The Guerrilla Art Group has participated in numerous art activities in New York, including protests at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Centennial Celebration, and the more recent Flag show event at the Judson Church. Several members of the group were arrested and convicted of “desecration of the flag” during that event.

 

Please permit me to read (again) in detail the manifesto of The Guerrilla Art Group, dated January 10, 1970:

 

Art is being slaughtered. It is being victimized by its own triviality. Art ignores crises and fools itself with the pursuit of irrelevant aesthetics, while the political system oppresses people and destroys human life. That political system represents group interest instead of serving the needs of people, and therefore has become a lie to true democracy.

Art today glories in its own self-importance and its false set of value. It glorifies property instead of relating to people. It has become property. Art has become business, a stock market, a repressive and racist megacorporation that enriches its directors and stockholders and exploits its workers to a point of complicity in the crimes committed against human life.

 

Art is guilty of the worst sort of crime against human beings: silence. Art is satisfied with being an aesthetic/machinery, satisfied with being a continuum of itself and its so-called history, while in fact, it as become the supreme instrument through which our repressive society idealizes its image. Art is used today to distract people from the urgency of their crises. Art is used today to force people to accept more easily the repression of big business. Museums and cultural institutions are the sacred temples where the artists who collaborate in such manipulations and cultivate such idealization are sanctified.

 

Art is today the highest symbol of the dehumanized process of business, and art that shows the repression of our society is automatically suppressed. Artists have become the celebrated buffoons of society’s manipulators. Through dehumanization, art has become devitalized; in most of the arts practiced today the very substance of emotion is purposely lacking. Emotion, instead of being expressed, is being repressed!

 

What do you think art is all about? Is it some sort of mythical abstract commodity that is traded on the market and guarded by the police? How can it be that art needs police protection? Only “valuable” possessions, property and money are given police protection –is that what art must be? Is property more valuables than life and freedom? Shouldn’t art relate to life and freedom rather than property?

 

Shouldn’t the artist be concerned with the basic emotional, psychological, and moral crises that confront us all? How can an artist be relevant when his art deals only with the business of art? How can we be concerned solely with a big white stripe across a white canvas, or a gigantic sculpture of a dollar bill, or the aesthetic relation of a colored sheet of metal on the floor, or the concept of a railway track leading nowhere in the desert, while we are faced with the slaughters on Songmys and Fred Hamptons?

 

The basic concepts of art have been perverted by the notion of business. Art today negates human values of life and freedom. Art has become a meaningless game for the sole benefit of those engaged in the suppression of human life and values, the toy for a while elite, which in this country destroys the culture of Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Indians, an elite that forces onto them a foreign and irrelevant culture.

 

Is that what art is all about? An elitist game of repression and destruction? Or is it an educational process of awareness, a humanization process that confronts the insanity and violence if our society, and gives relevance to life?

 

What is business? What is the meaning of a society relying solely on the concept of business, what is known as free enterprise? The very notion of business implies manipulation for the purpose of profit. It relates to property and how to expand property. It does not relate to people. Through the realization of business, people become the victims of property and property owners. Poverty, exploitation, discrimination, racism, and war are direct consequences of the concept business. Is there any business today in America that does not contribute in some way to the war in Vietnam and racism in America? Is that what art should relate to? To business, with all its brutal, in human ramifications? Art and business should be at war with one another – not allies!

 

Let’s make no mistake. The artist is as guilty as the businessman. Through the production of an art commodity, the artist himself has become a businessman. In order to market his commodity and increase its value, he must create a mystique about himself and his work. The gallery is the mean through which the commodity is dispersed. The museum serves the purpose of sanctifying both the commodity and the artist. The collector is the stock speculator. The corporation patrons use the commodity as a sanctification and sanitization of their image. The art magazines are the trade journals, the financial reports of the art world. And the critic serves the function of the whip hand for all.

 

The whole concept of art as a commodity is so ingrained that art has become very much like the business of Madison Avenue advertising agencies. The artist has evolved from selling objects to collectors, to showing costly technological environments subsidized by big business as a way to better their image, to finally simply selling ideas to the highest bidder. The artist has become a public relations man, the secret agent of business to subvert culture.

 

The motivation of art as a commodity is so strongly ingrained that artists today accept, without blinking an eye, the financial support of corporations and government agencies involved in human destruction and manipulations. Yes, the artist is as guilty of murder as the businessman.

 

What is needed is a radical change away from the perversion of art by business. A revolution that will free art so that it can serve the needs of freedom and self-expression, and fight the violence and hate that the present art supports. You can participate in bringing about the change. Action can force the elitist to relinquish their death grip on art. It takes work, and it takes you. If your art and your political activities are inconsistent, if your work does not reflect your political commitment, then one of the two will be a lie. In order to bring about successful revolutionary changes, you have to be able to deal efficiently with your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions, and that is the very process of expression. Expression is fundamental to art. Revolution is a form of art.

 

If you, as an artist, accept the repression of society and work with the system, you might delay changes. Of course there is such a thing as subversion from within, and there are many more ways that revolutionary changes can take place, but it is essential that your work and your actions always reflect and confront the crises of the society we live in. As long as the artist caters to the elite, the elite will be able to control art and will not allow a free expression of art.

 

If art is to return to its true meaning of expression, it must reject monetary values; it must reject all business / aesthetic values; it must be free from the corruption by business. It must deal with the needs of people; it must direct itself toward the human values of life and freedom; it must be relevant and antitrivial; it must shake the minds of its viewers into a realization of the essence of crisis, it must direct and involve its viewers into actions; it must question; it must provoke.

 

Art must employ the body and must purge itself of the idea of producing objects. However, happenings that deal with the uselessness and intentional irrelevance of actions, and technological environmental artworks that are a mere aesthetic and playful indication of a problem, are an intellectualization and abstraction away from the emotional crises. Posters and representational propaganda art, which are merely an indication of a problem, do not deal directly on an emotional basis with the crisis, and remain a pure intellectualization of the problem. On a non-art reality basis, it means the difference between watching a riot on television in the safety of your living room, and being in the middle of a riot in the street. Television creates, in terms of emotional response, a safe distance between yourself and the reality of the action, a distance between yourself and the crisis.

 

You can dramatize an urgent crisis or an immediate reality/situation through an action piece, exploiting the ambiguity between art / actions and real life. Art must assault the senses; it must revolt the mind and talk to the soul.

 

In November, 1998 during the winding days in my National Youth Service at Akwa-Ibom State, I had to aligned with the question as raised by Guerrilla Action Group that “shouldn’t the artist be concerned with the basic emotional, psychological, and moral crises that confront us all?” I was confronted with one of the repressive systems in our political life: administration of justice, prison and penal systems. I was to witness the horrific and inhuman effects of these systems when I joined the fellow Corp Members to visit Ikot Ekpene prison yard. On that day I felt the pains of injustice and its tragic tolls on those who the system wished to reform. Hence, I concluded, if I were to remain truthful to purer function of art; I must use my art works as a campaign against the repressive system in our society.

 

However, in 1999, I realised also that to change the conditions of human rights in Nigeria, strong legislation must be involved. Therefore, I joined active political participation in 2000. In 2005 I had contact with Joseph Beuys works, especially his installation and actions. So, this narration would have informed you of all those who have influenced me one way or the others.