Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie | University of California, Santa Barbara (original) (raw)

Papers by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2014

Critical interventions, 2013

Routledge eBooks, Jun 21, 2023

Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, Sep 1, 2002

Critical interventions, 2007

This essay deals with the framing of a colonial subject, Ben Enwonwu, as a modern artist and his ... more This essay deals with the framing of a colonial subject, Ben Enwonwu, as a modern artist and his struggle to escape the limitations of his colonially assigned roles in order to define a culturally relevant mode of modernist representation through his art. The focus of art history is shifting to non-western contexts of practice and one of the fastest growing areas of this new discourse is the study of modern and contemporary African art. This shift is important because the canonical narrative of modern art in art history substitutes the ethnic practice of white Western (and mostly male) artists for a universal history of modernity in art. Against the normative context of European modernity, art history posits a context of primitivism represented by ‘tribal’ artifacts from Africa. Through this juxtaposition, art history denies the emergence of modern African art in the 20 century. Instead, it subordinates modern African art to Eurocentric narratives of modernity in art and thereby effaces analysis of modern African artists and their contexts of practice. The systematic negation of modern African art reiterates a long-standing distinction in art history’s construction of Africa as the antithesis of European culture. James Clifford defined this distinction as an art/culture complex in which the value of European ‘art’ is determined by its difference and distance from African ‘culture.’ The racial underpinning of this attitude is evident in colonial texts about Africans that contrast European law to African custom, European literature to African folktales and European medicine to African witchdoctor practices, and above all, European art to African culture, with the correlative comparison of European modernism to African primitivism. Nicholas Mirzroeff suggests, in this regard, that the perfect body in Western culture was sustained and made imaginable by the imperfect body of the racial Other. Art history constructs the modern artist as a white, Western European male whose perfection is sustained by the literal consumption (through appropriation) of the non-Western (most specifically African) Other. The representation of Enwonwu as a modern artist evaluated below appears to invert this process by inscribing the racialized African Other as a norm in a particular British narrative of modern art. This essay investigates the implications of this representation of an African as a modern artist, and reviews Enwonwu’s interventions in the inscription of narratives about his practice as a modern African artist.

African Arts, Dec 1, 2005

... Opposite page: 3. Boniface Okafor To the Unknown Chief, 1985 Oil on canvas board, approximate... more ... Opposite page: 3. Boniface Okafor To the Unknown Chief, 1985 Oil on canvas board, approximately 16" x 20" (40.5cm x 51cm) Private Collection Okafor's representation of the Ozo institution fo cuses on the social relationship between the title-holder (as a body undergoing ...

Duke University Press eBooks, Jan 16, 2009

Indiana University Press eBooks, Sep 26, 2016

Current history, May 1, 2019

African Arts, 1997

... The understanding behind my cri-tique was that a history of Nigerian art writ-ten from ... IN... more ... The understanding behind my cri-tique was that a history of Nigerian art writ-ten from ... IN SOUTHERN AFRICA Archaeology of South African Stone and Iron Ages, San rock art Natal Museum ... Thus the absurdity of a thinly disguised presentation of this contested narrative in Chika ...

African Arts, Apr 1, 2002

African Arts, Jun 1, 2016

108 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 40 • May 2017 108 • Nka DOI 10.1215/10757163-3886... more 108 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 40 • May 2017 108 • Nka DOI 10.1215/10757163-3886120 © 2017 by Nka Publications What is art? Why ought we to bring the “African” into African art discourse, description, scope, and evaluation? If we take seriously the analogy with the point-and-shoot camera with which Rowland Abíódún begins this book, we can deduce that he wishes to argue that our understanding of the subject matter of African art is impacted by what tools, theories, and concepts we deploy in the task and how sophisticated they are.1 To the extent that our instrument is the equivalent of a point-and-shoot camera, calibrated to flatten the object and failing to register its many hues in as close as possible to their original realization, we are unlikely to end up with an adequate, much less correct, characterization of the object of our investigation. The alien-derived tools with which Yorùbá art has been interpreted, described even, have meant, for instance, that “African art was not even considered art with a capital ‘A’ until relatively recent times mainly because art was ‘for art’s sake.’”2 Abíódún is not advocating the incommensurability of different traditions of art, but he wants to argue that total indifference to the ways of making, valuing, and understanding art in the context of the larger cultures within which such art is produced in Africa is likely to lead to the kinds of minimally inadequate, maximally incorrect appraisals of African art that is widespread in the discourse over time. “This study is offered as a contribution to, and revision of, the conceptual tools that we need in order to meet the challenges of studying Africa’s still largely misunderstood artistic traditions.”3 The aim, then, is to insert into the discourse of African art tools that are fashioned from within the cultures that gave birth to the artistic traditions themselves. This does not mean that foreign tools may not be applied. Nor does it mean that foreign scholars have no place in the interpretation of African art. Even African scholars, who do not evince the requisite familiarization with or sophistication in the language in which the original discourse is articulated, are wont to exhibit similar stumbles as those of their foreign counterparts. The problem is not with the personnel of the interpreters; it is with the conceptual tools they bring to their task. The reason for such outcomes is not far to seek. No doubt much art emanates from the genius of single and singular individuals. But even in those situations it requires much more than the genius of the individual artist. Our characterization of art and our evaluation of same must give a nod to the enabling community within which the art piece is named and evaluated. Art may be autonomous, but it is not freefloating. Yorùbá art, in particular, is made up of products that are indigenous to a particular area, marked by specific discourses in their original home. Additionally, some of the objects go back to antiquity and the discourses that attach to them, the context of their emergence, and the functions that they were made to perform. The criteria of appreciation and criticism by which they have been assessed and judged are, without exception, imbricated in a particular linguistic and cultural tradition and its associated practices. Any assessment of these objects in all their complexity that does not have the requisite grounding and fluency in the factors just listed is likely to be inadequate, if not false, but definitely problematic. A note of caution is warranted here. There are other attempts at incorporating Yorùbá elements into the discourse of Yorùbá art. Too often, though, they are marked by what I would call equivalencism, under which we think all that is required is to look for equivalent Yorùbá terms for concepts derived from other traditions respecting the object of analysis. The danger with this manner of proceeding is that it takes the point-and-shoot camera as unproblematic and begins to force its object into the constricting conceptual framework it has not bothered to interrogate. There is no deep analysis of Yorùbá phenomena as such. On this view, one would take the conceptual framework of art in say, Italy, mistake it for the universal concept of art, and then look for the equivalent in Yorùbá. Abíódún’s book steers clear of equivalencism by forcing us to confront Yorùbá life and its intellectual processes as an independent, integrated whole, marked by the requisite complexity that usually attaches to civilizations that are advanced enough to not only make art, but to have criteria of definition and evaluation that often are identified with aesthetics and similar theoretical forms. When Abíódún deigned to look inward and tease out a theory of art from Yorùbá, what he found is the core of this book. According to him, the key to making sense of and judging Yorùbá art is to conceive of it as oríkì.4 Ordinarily, oríkì is associated…

This chapter reviews the impact of colonialism on African art and identities, especially in the e... more This chapter reviews the impact of colonialism on African art and identities, especially in the emergent modernity of African artists such as Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993), Ben Enwonwu (1917–1994), Gazbia Sirry (1925–), Afewerk Tekle (1932–2012), Irma Stern (South Africa 1894–1966), and Iba Ndiaye (1928–2008). The unfolding of colonial rule differed in various regions of Africa and impacted the development of new visual languages for modern African art in these contexts. The artists selected represent these regional differences in their approach to artistic practice and questions of modernist identity. I use their careers to investigate discourses of modern art in the colonial era, and to search out points of convergence in how these discourses unfolded in their national spaces and transnational engagements.

In recent years, African artists have exponentially increased their access to the global context ... more In recent years, African artists have exponentially increased their access to the global context through online and social media. At the same time, a proliferation of legal and extralegal restrictive immigration policies, especially in the West, inscribes the locality of African subjects by subjecting them to restrictive codes of movement. Geo-spatial technologies have become directly proportional to increased limitations on mobility in the current global order, which impedes the ability of contemporary African artists to fully engage globalization. However, many art programs and institutions have arisen in Africa to counter this process. These new institutions of contemporary art are diverse, committed to trans-African collaboration and actively encourage the movement of African artists and ideas about art across borders. The activities of contemporary art organizations (such as Center for Contemporary Art Lagos) and radical initiatives (such as Crossing Borders) are expanding co...