Uli: art and archive

'Odelegu', Nibo, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Uli painting on the walls of ‘Odelegu’, Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Composite of NWT 3125a (MAA P.31342) and NWT 3127 (MAA P.31344).

Uli is a celebrated traditional Igbo artform. It has been the subject of many studies, and has inspired subsequent generations of Nigerian artists, particularly those associated with the famous ‘Nsukka School‘. The word uli refers to a number of plants in Igboland, the berries of which are processed to produce a dark dye that was traditionally used to draw tattoo-like designs on the skin. Many of the design motifs of this body art were also used in murals often painted onto the mud/clay walls of shrines. These murals were usually created with a limited palette of locally available earth pigments – white (nzu), yellow (edo), red (ufie) and black (oji). Both body and mural designs are also known as uli, and both were ephemeral – that painted on the body might last a week or two before fading, while wall paintings would typically be renewed annually after the rainy season or in the days before a festival. Traditionally, uli was an artform practiced by women. The mural painting especially was a communal art.

In terms of composition, uli is characterised by linear forms, stylised motifs drawn from nature, elongated figures, outline shapes filled with dots or cross-hatching, and the use of ‘negative space’. There is generally a great economy of form; the skilled uli artist is able to evoke the world around them in their work by ‘depicting only the essential lines that make up any given object’ (Adams 2002: 246).

Left: ‘Body painting’, Fugar, present-day Edo State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1909 (NWT 1072, RAI 400.19719); Right: ‘Two women making uli’, Achalla, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911 (NWT 3751, MAA P.31898).

To the best of our knowledge, Northcote Thomas was the first to document uli photographically during his anthropological surveys in Southern Nigeria. Despite this, scholars of uli have neglected this important photographic archive and have tended to focus on the later documentation of colonial administrator-anthropologists such as M. D. W. Jeffreys and G. I. Jones in the 1930s and 1940s. Thomas’s documentation of uli dates to his 1910-11 tour in what was then known as Awka District, corresponding approximately to present-day Anambra State.

Only now, in the context of the [Re:]Entanglements project, have the photographs from Thomas’s surveys been comprehensively researched. There are over 100 images relating to uli in the archive, but, as with many topics that Thomas investigated, his findings were not written up or published. Only one photograph of an uli mural was, for example, published in Thomas’s Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria in 1913, accompanying his brief description of the shrine complexes of local deities (alusi) in Igbo traditional religion. He mentions in passing that ‘worship’ would take place ‘in an area of ground, frequently of considerable size, specially set apart for the purpose’ and that these sacred spaces would often be ‘surrounded by a wall decorated with curious paintings’ (Thomas 1913: 28).

From such a limited account of these ‘curious paintings’, one might conclude that Thomas had no interest in art or aesthetics as subjects of anthropological inquiry. It must be remembered, however, that Thomas had been cautioned by the colonial authorities that he should focus on matters of a ‘practical nature’, relevant to colonial administration, and not get distracted by topics of primarily academic interest. The fact that Thomas took so many photographs of uli wall designs suggests that he had more than a passing interest in local artforms (several pages of the official photograph albums from his tours were devoted to this theme). Unfortunately few of Thomas’s fieldnotes survive from his Igbo surveys. What has survived, however, is an intriguing collection of annotated drawings of uli motifs, suggesting that Thomas did make enquiries about them. While he does not appear to have written up this aspect of his research, Thomas did publish an article following his 1909-10 tour in the anthropological journal Man concerned with ‘Decorative Art Among the Edo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria‘ (Thomas 1910). This was largely focused on mural designs.

Between November 1910 and December 1911, Thomas and his local assistants conducted field research in approximately 18 different towns in Awka District. He made photographs of what we would readily identify as uli wall paintings in the towns of Agulu, Agukwu Nri, Nibo, Nise and Amansea. There are also photographs of other, less characteristic wall paintings and designs – some including typical uli motifs – either incised or moulded in relief in the fabric of the walls. Notable examples of the latter were made in Awka, Agulu, Agukwu Nri, Enugu Ukwu, Nimo and Amansea. While uli is generally regarded as a traditional Igbo art, this is really a stylistic determination. Thomas documented the same methods for creating both body and mural art during his Edo tour. In the context of body marking, for example, the equivalent of uli is known as asu in Edo. (Like uli, this is also the name of the plant from which the dye is produced.) What is especially evident in Thomas’s documentation of such practices in his Awka District tour, however, is the need to understand uli designs within a wider Igbo aesthetic manifested in a wide range of media, including other body arts such as scarification and hairdressing, as well as wood-carving, metalwork, and textiles.

Uli designs in hair dressing and facial scarification. Left: unnamed young woman photographed by Northcote Thomas in Igbariam, 1911; Right: Photograph of mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri in 1911.
Uli motifs are part of a wider aesthetic repertoire, including hair and facial scarification design. In these photographs one can compare feminine hair and scarification designs on a young woman from Igbariam and the same as represented on a ‘maiden spirit’ mask collected by Thomas in Agukwu Nri. Left: ‘Girl with (?)ohgba hair’, photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in Igbariam, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911 (NWT 3853, RAI 400.19946); Right: ‘Isi Agboefi’ maiden spirit mask, photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in Nimo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911 (NWT 2970, RAI 400.16379).
Uli motifs in hair designs. Photographs taken by Northcote Thomas in Awka and Nibo, 1911.
Uli-like motifs in hair design. Left: ‘Nwamadu’, photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in Awka, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1910 (NWT 1834a, RAI 400.17577); Right: ‘Mboye’ , photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911. Note the smudge of nzu chalk on his left eyelid. (NWT 3172, MAA P.31389.)

Thomas may also have been the first to attempt to compile a glossary of uli motifs, with their Igbo names and interpretations. Among his unpublished fieldnotes are many loose-leaf pages of drawings, apparently drawn by different informants, with annotations in Thomas’s hand. Subsequent researchers have compiled more systematic glossaries of uli motifs, notably Elizabeth Willis’s 1987 ‘Lexicon of Igbo Uli Motifs‘ published in the Nsukka Journal of the Humanities. As Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi notes, however, Willis’s ‘compendium is neither an uli bible nor a complete dictionary of uli. Motifs can vary from region to region and artists are always free to invent new ones. Uli is not a codified sign language; rather it is an ideogram in its own right, one which tends to capture through its abstract and minimalist tendencies the worldview and philosophy of the Igbo’ (Ikwuemesi 2019: 175). Nevertheless, it is interesting to understand that what may appear as abstract designs are often in fact representational forms.

Uli drawings and annotations collected by Northcote Thomas, 1910-11.
Drawings of uli motifs, with Northcote Thomas’s annotations. Few of Thomas’s fieldnotes survive from his anthropological surveys. There is, however, a collection of these drawings on sheets of notepaper, evidently made by different people during his 1910-11 tour of what was then known as Awka District, Southern Nigeria. Cambridge University Library. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Setting these drawn motifs alongside corresponding photographs in the archive enables one to compare representational form across different media. One can, for instance, compare the representation of mbubu scarification marks, an adornment made on young women’s abdomens prior to marriage, in a drawing of an uli figure with the actual scarification marks. It is interesting to note how the belt-like strip of alternating crosses and circles, which wrap around the woman’s waist, extend out from the drawing of the body as a horizontal band.

Left: drawing representing a girl with mbubu scarification marks collected by Northcote Thomas. Right: detail of photograph by Northcote Thomas of mbubu scarification marks, Awka, 1910-11.
Left: Drawn representation of uli motif of a girl with mbubu scarification marks collected by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Right: Detail from photograph of young woman with mbubu scarification marks, taken by Northcote W. Thomas in Awka, 1911 (NWT 2124, RAI 400.16078).

As part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, we have re-engaged with the anthropological archive in different ways. We have, for example, taken the photographs back to the communities at the locations in which they were originally taken. As well as ‘repatriating’ this cultural heritage to the communities, this has allowed us to learn more about the sites photographed and, occasionally, the murals themselves. Recognizing that these photographs also represent an important visual archive of traditional aesthetic forms, we have also shared them with contemporary artists and invited their creative responses. There is a long tradition of creative re-engagement with traditional Igbo arts at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and a number of participating artists chose to respond to this newly accessible repository of historical uli murals. The results of the collaboration with Nsukka-based artists were displayed at the [Re:]Entangled Traditions exhibition at the University of Nigeria in February 2020, and a selection of the works were also included in the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (June 2021 to April 2022).

Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Playing with Time and Memory
Playing with Time and Memory. A series of four acrylic on canvas paintings, each 101x101cm, by Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, 2020. The paintings were produced as part of the [Re:]Entangled Traditions collaboration with artists at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Artists were invited to respond or engage with the photographic archives of Northcote Thomas’s anthropological surveys. Ikwuemesi’s series incorporates many uli motifs recorded in Thomas’s photographs.

When documenting uli wall paintings, Thomas sometimes took just one or two photographs of a particular wall or building. In other case, he took multiple photographs, even using different types of camera. He documented four locations in particular detail: the Ogwugwu shrine at Agulu, the Iyiazi shrine in Agukwu Nri, the Ngene (probably Ngendo) shrine in Nibo, and the Mpuniyi shrine in Nise. During fieldwork for the [Re:]Entanglements project, we visited these locations, left copies of the photographs with community members, and collected accounts of each of the sites.

Agulu: Ogwugwu shrine and ‘Ochiche’s house’

During his anthropological survey of Awka District, Thomas made a number of visits to the town of Agulu. In February 1911, he documented what he called the ‘Ogugu ceremony’ and ‘Ogugu house’. Today, ‘Ogugu’ is spelled ‘Ogwugwu’. Ogwugwu is a female deity or alusi. An annual festival was held for Ogwugwu, and it is likely that the walls of the Ogwugwu shrine were painted in preparation for this. As can be seen from Thomas’s photographs, the paintings appear fresh and unweathered.

When we visited Agulu, we were told that Ogwugwu was a very popular deity of the region and that Ogwugwu shrines were to be found in every settlement. One would make sacrifices at the shrine, appealing to the alusi to grant one children and wealth. In Agulu, the two major deities were Haaba and Ududonka. Ogwugwu is regarded as the child of Ududonka. There is still a shrine in Agulu known as Ududonka Ogwugwu, and it was felt that this is the place that Thomas photographed.

'Ogugu House', Agulu, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Uli painting on the walls of the Ogwugwu shrine, Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by one of Northcote Thomas’s assistants in 1911. Detail from panoramic photograph (MAA P.39450).

It appears that Thomas photographed two different structures decorated with uli wall paintings. The above detail is taken from one of a series of photographs documenting the Ogwugwu ‘ceremony’. The series shows a group of men dancing in front of a structure – possibly a thatch-topped wall enclosing the sacred precinct – to the accompaniment of ufie drums. The wall is divided into a series of painted panels, each with a distinct repeating design. The second structure, which Thomas labels Ogwugwu ‘house’ seems to be one of two shrine buildings within the enclosure (he also photographed a ‘small house’, but this is not painted with uli designs).

'Ogugu House', Agulu, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Photographs of uli paintings on the walls of the Ogwugwu shrine, Agulu, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Clockwise from top left: NWT 2149 (RAI 400.16099), NWT 2159 (RAI 400.16133), NWT 2161 (RAI 400.16111), NWT 2160 (RAI 400.16110).

The uli designs on the shrine building are quite different from those on what we are interpreting as the enclosure wall. They include a number of more representational forms, including a python (eke), a venerated totemic animal in Agulu, and a human figure (perhaps wearing a masquerade headdress or carrying a pot on the head). The composition includes other familiar uli motifs, including lozenge shapes with alternating light and dark colours. One of the photographed walls of the Ogwugwu ‘house’ is different again, with repeating patterns that resemble those of small body stamps used to print uli motifs on the body.

On a subsequent visit to Agulu, Thomas photographed a building he labelled ‘Ochiche’s house’. Rather than being painted, the designs on the walls are created in relief in clay. In addition to the relief designs of a python, lizards, an ogene gong and a fan (all familiar uli motifs), there is also a series of three-dimensional carved clay figures extending out from the wall. The latter appears to include two male figures, a mother and child, and a female alusi figure (the form of which closely resembles the carved wooden alusi figure collected by Thomas in Awgbu). A further figure can be made out on the side wall on the right of the photograph. Although Thomas refers to the building as ‘Ochiche’s house’, this is likely to be a shrine rather than a residence. (Thomas also referred to the Ogwugwu shrine as the Ogwugwu ‘house’.) Thomas also photographed other locations such as the ‘Obu of Ochiche’ and the ‘Sacrificing place of Ochiche’, suggesting the shrine was located in the compound of a prominent individual named Ochiche. During our fieldwork in Agulu, however, this name was not recognised.

Ochiche's House, Agulu, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Sculptures and relief designs in the walls of ‘Ochiche’s house’, Agulu, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Composite of NWT 2245 (RAI 400.15845) and NWT 2246 (RAI 400.15846).

As part of the [Re:]Entangled Traditions collaboration with Nsukka-based artists, the uli motifs from both the Ogwugwu shrine and ‘Ochiche’s house’ provided inspiration for the textile artist RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah, whose late aunt was herself an uli artist. Ubah combines various motifs from Agulu in her applique work entitled Igbo Kwenu. Over 3 metres in length, this remarkable uli tapestry was one of the works selected for display in the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition in Cambridge.

RitaDoris Ubah, Igbo Kwenu
Igbo Kwenu. Appliqué by RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah, 2019, 305x144cm. Inspired by Thomas’s photographs of uli designs in Agulu.

Agukwu Nri: Iyiazi shrine

Thomas spent a considerable amount of time in Agukwu Nri during his 1910-11 anthropological survey. In May 1911, he photographed the remarkable uli designs on what he described as the ‘market house’. During our fieldwork in Agukwu Nri, this was identified as the Iyiazi shrine, which was located in the Afo market place in Amaeze, in the Agbadana section of Agukwu Nri. Iyiazi is the main alusi of Amaeze. Traditionally the women of Amaeze would decorate the shrine in the lead up to the annual Ife Iyiazi festival.

Alusi Iyiazi shrine, Agukwu Nri, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Alusi Iyiazi shrine, Agukwu Nri, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Exterior and interior views of the decorated walls of the Iyiazi shrine in the Afo market, Amaeze, Agbadana, Agukwu Nri, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. NWT 2577 (RAI 400.15426), NWT 2578 (RAI 400.15427), NWT 2579 (RAI 400.15428), NWT 2580 (RAI 400.15429), NWT 2581 (RAI 400.1543), NWT 2582 (RAI 400.15431), NWT 2583 (RAI 400.15432), NWT 2584 (RAI 400.15433).

The uli paintings of the Iyiazi shrine in Agukwu Nri are perhaps the most documented in Igboland. Most of this documentation has, however, taken place in the last 50 years and records various attempts to revive the uli art tradition. To the best of our knowledge, Thomas’s photographs taken in 1911 are the only record of the paintings from a time when the Iyiazi cult and its festival were still active. According to Elizabeth Willis, the first time that the shrine was painted after the Biafran War was in 1972 in connection with the opening of the Odinani Museum. The Odinani Museum was established by the Ibadan-based anthropologist Michael Angulu Onwuejeogwu adjacent to the Afo market and therefore close to the shrine. A student at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, H. T. Agbogu, photographed the designs that the Amaeze women painted in 1972 and again in 1973 for his BA dissertation (Agbogu 1974).

Unfortunately the shrine again fell into disrepair. Then, in 1984, the Nsukka-based artists Obiora Udechukwu and Chike Aniakor, along with the American art historian Herbert Cole, led a project to restore the shrine walls and commission the women artists of Amaeze to repaint it. Udechukwu photographed the dilapidated state of the shrine prior to the renovation and reported with regret that: ‘It captures graphically not just the decline of physical structures but the decline of a whole system of beliefs, practices, social and economic relations, art, and culture in general’ (cited in Willis 1998: 165). Some 50 women were enlisted to paint new murals as part of the project. The process and finished paintings were documented thoroughly and have been published in various books and articles on uli (e.g. Cole and Aniakor 1984).

Woman decorating Alusi Iyiazi shrine Nri, University of California San Diego
Women decorating Iyiazi shrine, Agukwu Nri, 1984. Photographs by Chike Aniakor.

The cycle of decline and revival has occurred again and again. In 2003-4, Udechukwu returned to Nri, this time with his younger Nsukka colleague Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, to lead another restoration and repainting project. In his essay about the project in Uli and the Politics of Culture (Ikwuemesi 2005), Krydz Ikwuemesi notes that it was very difficult reassembling the women artists who had worked with Udechukwu twenty years earlier. Many were now very elderly or had died, others declined the invitation to participate, explaining that they had converted to Christianity. Udechukwu and Ikwuemesi eventually found 12 women, most of whom were from other towns but had married into Nri families, to work on the project. Ikwuemesi explains that they brought their own uli traditions to the work.

We made several trips to Agukwu Nri as part of the [Re:]Entanglements project. The Iyiazi shrine was undergoing a further transformation at this time. The walls at the original shrine site were no longer standing, though the sacred trees of the shrine still stood in the old market place (now flanked by modern buildings). The Odinani Museum itself had long fallen into disrepair and was in the process of being restored by the local philanthropist Chief Charles Tabansi. As part of the restoration, the location of the shrine was moved to a site immediately adjacent to the museum and new concrete walls were erected around it. For the reopening of the Museum on 28 December 2018, the walls of the new Iyiazi shrine were painted with uli motifs by a group of art students from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, under the direction of Tony Otikpa, a retired art lecturer resident in Nri.

Uli decorations on the new concrete Iyiazi shrine walls, Agukwu Nri, during the opening of the refurbished Odinani Museum, 28 December 2018. Photograph by George Agbo.

Nibo: Ngene shrine

The most detailed photographic documentation of an uli-painted structure made by Northcote Thomas was of the ‘Ngene house’ in Nibo. Thomas visited Nibo in June 1911. Ngene is a male alusi (spirit/deity). In nearby Enugu Ukwu, Ngene’s female consort is Ogwugwu, whose shrine Thomas photographed in Agulu. There are many Ngene shrines in Nibo, including Ngene Okweafa, Ngene Ezeonyia, Ngene Ukwu and Ngene Igweagu. During fieldwork in Nibo, the shrine that Thomas photographed in 1911 was identified as that called Ngene Ngendo. This is the shrine of the Ngene whose mother is the deity Udo, whose own shrine is close by and was also photographed by Thomas. The name ‘Ngendo’ is a compound of ‘Ngene’ and ‘Udo’.

Ngene shrine enclosure wall, Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. NWT 3068 (RAI 400.16439).

During our fieldwork, [Re:]Entanglements project researcher George Agbo discussed Thomas’s photographs with two elders, Nwoye Okoya Ogbuefi and Evelyn Echeta. Evelyn Echeta had herself participated in the painting of the Ngendo shrine wall in 1953-4. They explained that the wall decoration would be done by younger women and girls in the days leading up to the ikpo ngene, the festival of the Ngene alusi. Those participating were from families who were adherents of Ngene.

The painting of the wall was a festive occasion in itself. The young women would bring food with them. We were told that of the approximately 40 participants, only about five would actually create the uli artworks. The majority of the women would support them by fetching water, preparing the colours and so on. The decorative motifs were a matter of personal choice of the artists. The designs were inspired by plants, animals and personal objects as well as including abstract forms.

Uli mural, Ngene shrine, Nibo, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Uli designs on Ngene shrine enclosure wall, Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. The mound in the foreground to the left of the composite image is described as akwali omumu, also an alusi to whom sacrifices would be made for fertility/children. Note another uli-decorated structure can be seen through the gateway. Composite image of NWT 3038 (RAI 400.16426), NWT 3060 (RAI 400.16428), NWT 3060a (RAI 400.16429), NWT 3062 (RAI 400.16430). (Click on image to enlarge.)

The designs were painted using a stick that had been crushed at one end to create an improvised fibre brush. The coloured paints were made from pigments sourced from the local environment: nchala, a yellow clay deposit sourced from a local stream; nzu, crushed white kaolin chalk; ufie, a dark red pigment from ground camwood; and anunu, a type of leaf that is mixed with unyi (charcoal). Each of these would be mixed with water to create the yellow, white, red and black colours used in the paintings.

Uli mural, Ngene shrine, Nibo, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Uli designs on Ngene shrine enclosure wall, Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Composite image of NWT 3064a (RAI 400.16433) and NWT 3066 (RAI 400.16434).

The mud wall itself was used to separate the sacred space of the shrine (the ebede alusi) from the wider arena, which the public are permitted to access. The wall is topped with a thatch (aju) to protect it from being weathered away by the rain. It is difficult to ascertain the layout of the walls from Thomas’s photographs – in one image there is a gate way, through which one can see a second wall, which is also painted with uli motifs. It is not clear if this is a separate structure or the back wall of the walled enclosure.

Thomas photographed many sections of the wall. Some of the sections are contiguous and it has been possible to ‘stitch’ them together in Photoshop to get a better sense of the overall design. The design includes many ‘classic’ uli motifs, including odu (elephant tusk), eke (python) and nnyo (mirror).

As part of our fieldwork, George Agbo and Glory Chika-Kanu attended the Iwa Ji Ngendo (Ngene New Yam Festival) in Nibo in September 2019. We were invited to set up a ‘pop-up’ exhibition of Thomas’s photographs taken in Nibo, including those of the Ngene shrine walls, which attracted much interest. During the festival the area around the Ngendo shrine was filled with people bringing offerings for Ngene and seeking the intercession of the Ngene priests to pray for them to the deity. Although the beautifully-painted walls that Thomas photographed in 1911 are now little more than eroded banks of earth, they still mark the boundary between sacred and profane space.

Ngene shrine during Iwa Ji Ngendo (Ngene New Yam Festival) in Nibo, September 2019. In the foreground, the weathered remains of the enclosure wall can be seen. This still delineates the boundary between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ space. Footwear must be removed in the sacred space of the shrine enclosure. Photograph by George Agbo.

Thomas also photographed another uli-covered building in Nibo, which he labelled ‘Odelegu’ (see photograph at the top of this article). This includes beautiful representations of human forms. For the [Re:]Entangled Traditions exhibition, artist Chinyere Odinukwe reworked these Odelegu murals, using them as a backdrop for her portrait of a woman named Nwambeke who Thomas also photographed in Nibo in 1911. Although Odinukwe grew up in the Abuja, she recalls seeing such uli designs on visits to Nibo, her maternal home town, as a child. Her painting draws attention to the links between uli and traditional hair design in Igbo culture.

Chinyere Odinukwe, Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi
Chinyere Odinukwe, Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi - Northcote Thomas references
The uli murals as well as uli-like hair designs photographed by Northcote Thomas in Nibo inspired Chinyere Odinukwe’s painting Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi, produced for the [Re:]Entangled Traditions collaboration at Nsukka. Bottom right and centre: Thomas’s ‘physical type‘ portrait of a woman named Nwambeke, photographed in Nibo in 1911. NWT 3212; (MAA P.31421) and NWT 3213 (RAI 400.19734). Bottom right: detail of Thomas’s photograph of the uli designs on a section of the Ngene shrine wall. NWT 3066a (RAI 400.16435). See also photograph at top of article.

Nise: Mpuniyi shrine

Northcote Thomas visited the town of Nise in August 1911. Here he photographed the decorated walls of the Mpuniyi shrine in a section of the town called Ara. One of the interesting aspects of the uli decoration technique at this shrine is the combination of painting and relief work. As with the other sites discussed in this article, Thomas did not publish any details of the shrine in his reports and no fieldnotes survive. During fieldwork in Nise, however, we met Felix Nweke Echele, who is the son of the last chief priest of Mpuniyi, and together with the stories of other elders, we were able to learn much about the shrine. When we were first shown the area we were told: ‘This is Mpuniyi, but the shrine is no more’. While the shrine is gone, the area remains an important sacralised space.

Mpuniyi Ara shrine, Nise, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Detail from a panoramic photograph. (MAA P.39414).

The Mpuniyi shrine took its name from the wider area in which it is situated, all of which is regarded as sacred. Behind the shrine the land falls away into a deep gulley along which runs the Olulu Mpuniyi stream. Water issues from the rocky sides of the gulley from a number of springs. The water from the stream is regarded as having healing power. Traditionally water was collected from the stream by a man especially designated for the task and brought to the shrine, where it was used for washing, cooking and other ritual purposes. While fetching the water to the shrine, this man had to be naked and had to hold a palm leaf (omu nkwu) between his lips. He was not permitted to talk with anyone, and could not put the water container down on the bare earth.

Mpuniyi Ara shrine, Nise, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
Uli designs on the Mpuniyi Ara shrine, Nise, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Clockwise from top left: NWT 3311a (RAI 400.19800), NWT 3311 (RAI 400.19799), NWT 3313a (RAI 400.19802), NWT 3313 (RAI 400.19801).

Felix’s father, Echele Edolu, died in 1966 when Felix was just 6 years old. The man who was to succeed as chief priest did not take up the position, however, due to his Christian faith and an alternative priest was not found. As a result the shrine went into decline and the building eventually collapsed. In the 1980s, a village hall and school were built in the vicinity, and in 2005 a large Catholic church dedicated to St Peter and St Paul was established on the site. By this time, the majority of the people of Ara were Christians. In the gulley an ‘adoration ground’ was established with various concrete statues inspired by biblical scenes. In 2012, the adoration ground and the Mpuniyi stream itself were blessed by the Catholic Bishop of the Awka Diocese in order to Christianise it. Just as people came from far and wide to seek the blessings of the Mpuniyi deity, crowds now come to the adoration ground to pray and take the holy water. It is a very interesting example of the sacred power of an indigenous deity and its shrine being appropriated by the Christian religion, and hence the Christianisation of the Igbo sacred landscape.

St Peter and St Paul Catholic Church, Nise. George Agbo, 2019.
St Peter and St Paul Catholic Church, Mpuniyi, Nise, 2019. The church is built on the site of the Mpuniyi Ara shrine – an example of the Christianisation of the Igbo sacred landscape. Photograph by George Agbo.

Amansea: decorated house

The majority of the uli decorated walls that Thomas photographed were associated with shrines devoted to particular deities. He did also document uli designs on the walls of the compounds of presumably wealthy families. A good example is the entrance gate to a compound of a family in Amansea. Unfortunately, Thomas did not record the name of the family.

Uli murals, Amansea, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.
‘Decorated house’, Amansea, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas in 1911. Clockwise from left: NWT 3470 (RAI 400.20024), NWT 3472 (RAI 400.20025), NWT 3472 (RAI 400.20026). Note the uwho shrine in the foreground of the photograph bottom right.

The designs are made on the walls flanking two doorways, which would have had elaborately carved doors. The clay of the walls is incised with patterns and the paintings, of animal and human forms outlined in white or yellow dots, is created around these. In the foreground of the wider shot of the compound, a carved uwho (ancestral shrine) can be seen.

Uli, the Igbo heritage crisis and the colonial archive

In a recent article in the journal Utafiti, Krydz Ikwuemesi discusses the uli art tradition and its revival in relation to what he terms the Igbo ‘heritage crisis’. Ikwuemesi argues that one of the greatest misfortunes of modernisation in Igboland is the ‘dissonance that shapes the perception of tradition and heritage’ (2019: 187). This denigration of traditional Igbo culture is a legacy of colonialism and Christian missionary activity, but has also accelerated in the postcolonial era with the expansion of Pentecostalism and adoption of ‘Western’ values. This has led to an ‘intensive process of deculturation‘ in which ‘Igbo autochthonous ideas, including uli, are grossly devalued’ (2019: 188). ‘The triumph of Pentecostalism reflects the death of Igbo religion’, writes Ikwuemesi. And ‘the death of a people’s religion is invariably the death of their culture’ (ibid.).

While the social and political crises affecting so many Nigerians cannot be reduced only to the sphere of ‘culture’, the cultures of colonialism and Christianity have had a far-reaching impact. The question that Ikwuemesi raises is what role culture – including ‘cultural education’ – might play in shaping a better future, a future that is not based on ‘self-effacement’ and devaluation, but is rather grounded in indigenous values. What is needed, Ikwuemesi suggests is a ‘cultural rearmament’, in which art – including the art of uli – must be ‘chief among the arsenal’ (2019: 198).

Reflecting on the remarkable archive of traditional art represented in Northcote Thomas’s photographs of uli, one is struck by one of the cruel paradoxes of colonialism: that the same mindset that led to the destruction of the cultural worlds of the colonised also expended great effort in trying to preserve what it was destroying. The difference, of course, is that colonialism produced the anthropological archive, in which soon to be extinguished beliefs and practices were merely documented in photographs, drawings, sound recordings and artefact collections, whereas what was destroyed was a dynamic, living tradition. One of the questions that the [Re:]Entanglements project has been posing is whether, in the wake of colonialism, that anthropological archive has a role to play in what Ikwuemesi calls a ‘cultural rearmament’.

Many thanks to Dr George Agbo and Prof Krydz Ikwuemesi for their advice and assistance with this article.

References

  • Adams, S. M. (2002) ‘Hand to Hand: Uli Body and Wall Painting and Artistic Identity in Southeastern Nigeria’. PhD dissertation, Yale University.
  • Agbogu, H. T. (1974) ‘The Art of Nri: A Heritage of the Philosophy’, BA thesis, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
  • Cole, H. M. and C. C. Aniakor (1984) Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California.
  • Ikwuemesi, C. K. (2005) ‘Primitives or Classicists? The Women Uli Painters of Nri’, in C. K. Ikwuemesi and E. Agbaiyi (eds), The Rediscovery of Tradition: Uli and the Politics of Culture, pp.1-34. Lagos: Pendulum Centre for Culture and Development.
  • Ikwuemesi, C. K. (2019) ‘Problems and Prospects of Uli Art Idiom and the Igbo Heritage Crisis’, Utafiti 14.2, pp.171-201.
  • Thomas, N. W. (1910) ‘Decorative Art Among the Edo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria: I. Decoration of Buildings’, Man 10, pp.65-66.
  • Thomas, N. W. (1913) Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Part I: Law and Custom. London: Harrison.
  • Willis, E. A. (1987) ‘A Lexicon of Igbo Uli Motifs’, Nsukka Journal of the Humanities 1, pp.91-121.

Lines, faces, fragments

Ozioma Onuzulike at his studio at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, discussing the work he produced for the [Re:]Entanglements project. Exhibition installation film made by Christopher Thomas Allen and Paul Basu.

As part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, we have collaborated with artists to explore and interrogate the colonial anthropological archive. One of the artists’ works that is being featuring in the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge is an assemblage of clay face fragments made by the Nsukka-based ceramicist Ozioma Onuzulike.

Onto these fragments, Onuzulike scores the lines of igbu ichi. These scarification marks can be seen on the faces of many Igbo men photographed by Government Anthropologist Northcote Thomas during his 1910-11 survey in what is today Anambra State, Nigeria. A sign of nobility, it is said that no one bearing the marks could be enslaved.

Ichi marks on pottery, Igboukwu pendant, Northcote Thomas photograph and Ozioma Onuzulike face fragment
‘Lyrical lines’. Clockwise from top left: Ìtè ndí Ichiè, double pot for titled people/ancestors, for drinking palm wine, collected by Northcote Thomas in Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911 (NWT 500; MAA Z 13800); ichi-like scarification marks on the 9th-10th century bronze pendant found in Igbo-Ukwu in 1938 (British Museum Af1956,15.1); detail of photograph of a young man named Iyiazi with ichi scarification marks, taken by Northcote Thomas in Nri, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911 (NWT 2930; RAI 400.15110); close-up of Ozioma Onuzulike inscribing ichi marks into one of his clay face fragments.

Onuzulike contrasts the ‘lyrical lines’ of igbu ichi with the lacerated clay body fragments he makes. Like shards of broken pots, they speak of a continuing history of damage: ‘When I began to make the fragments’, he explains, ‘I began to think of Africa as a fragmented people, right from when the continent was cut up at the Berlin Conference of 1884-5′. In the following statement, Onuzulike discusses his work for the [Re:]Entanglements project.

Of mutilated, fragmented bodies and scarified faces

by Ozioma Onuzulike

Much of my work is political. I often rely on the conceptual qualities and metaphorical attributes of my medium, which is primarily clay, as well as my work processes, including acts of crushing, pounding, cutting, wedging, slamming, pinching, kneading, scorching and firing, to address socio-political and economic issues germane to my immediate environment. I am often inspired by the social histories of the African continent and how such histories impact on the current realities around me, especially in the context of the human condition in my home country, Nigeria, in which I live and work.

Ozioma Onuzulike face fragments
Human remains: Ozioma Onuzulike’s scarified ceramic face fragments and body parts.

Key aspects of Africa’s history that have influenced the thoughts surrounding my recent work are the obnoxious trade in African men and women of productive age as slaves; colonialism; and the after effects of these encounters. While millions of young African men and women were in the past forcefully taken away to work in the plantations, factories and homes of their Euro-American masters, today circumstances at home force them to legally and illegally migrate to work in Europe and America. The African continent has become a hostile environment in which to thrive, a vast land exploited and impoverished by imperial powers and their African collaborators. The search for ‘greener pastures’ has led many African immigrants to their death, especially in the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea, turning these zones into burial grounds for Africa’s youth.

Ozioma Onuzulike, Seed Yams of Our Land and Northcote Thomas photograph of yams in stack
Left: Installation shot from Ozioma Onuzulike’s Seed Yams of Our Land exhibition at the Centre of Contemporary Arts, Lagos, 2018; Right: Photograph taken by Northcote Thomas of stacked yam tubers in Awka, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911 (NWT 2061; RAI 16022).

In my previous work for the Seed Yams of Our Land exhibition held at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos in 2018, I sought to reference the young people of Africa as the continent’s yam seedlings. The yam is a sacred and prestigious crop in Igboland – my place of origin and nurture. In the past, the yam crop was the main socio-economic stay for men and their families. The yam seedlings, therefore, were held sacrosanct as the future hope of every family for economic and socio-political sustenance. When planted in a harsh, barren or impoverished environment, the yams become stunted, ravaged, devastated or totally destroyed. When they lie individually, I see in the form of the yam tubers what look like motionless human bodies encased in body bags. When sorted and tied together, like in a typical African yam barn, they remind me not only of how African slaves were in the past crammed into slave ships like mere commodities, but also how they are today tightly packed in trucks and boats, hazarding the desert and the sea, driven by the hope of going to ‘grow’ better in a more conducive environment. Many have been lost, or broken, in transit.

The fate of many illegal African immigrants across the Sahara and Mediterranean inspired me to make a series of human fragments – human remains – heaped together as in preparation for a mass burial or displayed individually as if archaeological specimens turned into museum spectacles. The fragmented bodies remind me of a shattered earthen pot that cannot be successfully melded to its original form without showing evidence of its encounter with the agents or agencies of disintegration. In a similar way, colonialism shattered Africa and its peoples in ways that make it impossible for them to be the same again.

Pottery collected by Northcote Thomas broken in transit from Nigeria
Northcote Thomas collected many earthenware pots during his anthropological surveys in Southern Nigeria. Many were irreparably damaged in transit from West Africa to Britain. A selection from the many hundreds of shards are on display in the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.

In the work I produced for the [Re:]Entanglements project, I added scarified human heads in terracotta to the earlier body of work made of fragments of human body parts. The series represents the culmination of my studio engagement with the earthen pots, decorated with the incision technique into what looks like ichi scarification marks, collected from Igbo areas of Nigeria by Northcote Thomas in the early 1900s. Many of these pots shattered or disintegrated while in transit to their new home in Europe. And they can never be the same again, never recover their original integrity, even if glued together.

Ozioma Onuzulike in his studio looking at Northcote Thomas photographs of ichi marks
Ozioma Onuzulike at work in his studio at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Consulting Northcote Thomas’s photographic portraits of men with ichi marks taken during his 1910-11 survey of Igbo-speaking communities in what was then Awka District, Southern Nigeria.
Ozioma Onuzulike in his studio making face fragments
Ozioma Onuzulike at work in his studio at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Forming the human face fragments in clay.
Ozioma Onuzulike in his studio inscribing ichi marks on face fragments
Ozioma Onuzulike at work in his studio at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Cutting the ichi marks.

Like incised earthenware pots passed through fire, a scarified human face takes on a new and irreversible identity after the healing process. Similar to the Umudioka people who cut the ichi marks, using my fabricated studio tools, I slowly but deftly cut through the defenceless flesh of the African faces modelled in clay, transforming them into faces with new forms and identities. The wounds have healed, after passing through the ordeal of my kiln fire, but the scars remain indelible. This studio process is only a performative gesture mirroring the permanent transformations of Africa and African affairs by the colonial and neo-colonial encounter.


Lines, Faces, Fragments installation, [Re:]Entanglements Exhibition, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
Lines, faces, fragments. Installation of Ozioma Onuzulike’s scarified face fragments and film in the [Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times exhibition, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. (Photograph: MAA/Josh Murfitt)
Lines, Faces, Fragments installation, [Re:]Entanglements Exhibition, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
Installation of Ozioma Onuzulike’s scarified face fragments in the [Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times exhibition, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. (Photograph: Paul Basu)

A questionnaire on dolls

A selection of dolls collected by Northcote Thomas in Agbede, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909. (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.)

According to the Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood, dolls are known in all cultures across the world and are one of the oldest and most widespread forms of toys. Given their ubiquity, dolls made the perfect subject for comparative study across different cultural groups. Despite this, anthropological studies of dolls are rare. The colonial anthropologist Northcote Thomas collected many examples of dolls during his 1909-10 anthropological survey of the Edo-speaking people of Nigeria. Thomas’s interest in dolls pre-dated his appointment as Government Anthropologist in West Africa.

In 1906, Thomas published a questionnaire on dolls in the anthropological journal Man. The use of questionnaires distributed to colonial administrators, missionaries and other travellers was a common anthropological practice of the late 19th and early 20th century. At this time, anthropologists relied on material collected by others to inform their research. Prior to his appointment as Government Anthropologist, Thomas had not personally undertaken fieldwork.

Page proofs of Northcote Thomas’s ‘Questionnaire on Dolls’, published in the journal Man in 1906. (Cambridge University Library.) (Click image to enlarge.)

The questionnaire shows that Thomas was interested in what defined a doll as a doll, as distinct from other representations of human figures. ‘A doll’, he writes, ‘is, properly speaking, a child’s plaything … But there are points of contact between them and (a) magical figurines, (b) idols, (c) votive offerings, and (d) costume figures’. It is clear from the questions that, even as ‘a child’s plaything’, dolls have quite remarkable properties. Many of the questions seek to interrogate in what ways dolls may be perceived to be alive, and treated as such. For instance, there are questions about feeding dolls, whether they suffer from illnesses, whether they have feelings and emotions. Do they sleep? Do they die? If so, are burial ceremonies performed?

Although Thomas was particularly interested in the use of dolls among ‘non-European peoples’, many of his queries draw upon an earlier questionnaire formulated by the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall, which was distributed to school children in the USA and Scotland. The findings of this and a subsequent study by A. Caswell Ellis were presented in an article entitled ‘A Study of Dolls’ published in 1896 in The Pedagogical Seminary. This is still regarded as a foundational work in ‘doll studies’. Thomas’s innovation was in extending this area of research into a cross-cultural, ethnographic context.

Unlike Hall and Ellis, however, it seems that Thomas did not complete his study or publish material gathered from the questionnaire. He did, however, present a preliminary paper on the subject of dolls at a meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute on May 14th, 1907.

Top right: Note recording Northcote Thomas’s lecture on dolls presented to the Royal Anthropological Institute, May 14, 1907. Left: Letter from W. O. Oldman to Thomas following the lecture. Bottom right: Photograph of a Korean straw doll and Asante ‘twin doll’ enclosed with Oldman’s letter. (Cambridge University Library.) (Click image to enlarge.)

A brief write-up in the Proceedings of the Institute notes that the discussants included anthropologists Emil Torday, Thomas E. Smurthwaite and Ernest A. Parkyn. The well-known dealer in ‘ethnographic specimens’, William O. Oldman, was evidently also present. A letter survives in which Oldman compliments Thomas on his ‘exhaustive and instructive lecture’, and draws Thomas’s attention to ‘a type of doll I do not think you mentioned’: straw dolls of Korea. Oldman encloses a photograph of such a straw doll in his collection as well as a ‘twin doll’ from Gold Coast (Ghana). Perhaps Oldman hoped Thomas would be interested in buying them! (Thomas states in the questionnaire that he would be ‘glad to receive specimens, which should be carefully labelled with the name of the tribe, etc.’)

Top: Lantern slides with line drawings of African dolls, probably used to illustrate Northcote Thomas’s lecture at the RAI in 1907 (Cambridge University Library). Bottom: Thomas’s source for several of the line drawings was an illustrated article by Karl Weule entitled ‘Aus dem afrikanischen Kinderleben’, published in 1899 (http://rossarchive.library.yale.edu).

In addition to the questionnaire, Thomas had been conducting library and museum based research on dolls. Notebooks and record cards survive in the Cambridge University Library, which include sketches and notes on different examples in European collections. A number of lantern slides also survive with line drawings of dolls from the African continent. These are probably the very slides used to illustrate Thomas’s talk at the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1907. The original source for many of the line drawings is an article entitled ‘Aus dem afrikanischen Kinderleben’ (‘From the African child’s life’) by Karl Weule, assistant director at the Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, published in Westermann’s Jahrbuch der Illustrierte Deutschen Monatschefte in 1899.

While Thomas did not publish a substantive article on dolls, he was clearly still interested in the topic at the time of his 1909-10 survey in Southern Nigeria. During this tour he collected approximately 40 dolls, mainly in the northern Edo towns of Uzebba, Otuo, Sabongida, Agbede, Irrua and Fugar. Those collected in Agbede, in particular, share many formal characteristics, and some appear to have been produced by the same maker.

Dolls collected by Northcote Thomas in the northern Edo towns of Uzebba, Otuo, Sabongida, Agbede, Irrua and Fugar in 1909. (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.) (Click on image to enlarge.)

Thomas also took a number of photographs of children holding dolls. In one instance, a girl appears to be holding one of the dolls collected by Thomas. This is somewhat puzzling since Thomas records the doll in question as being acquired in Fugar, while the photograph was taken in Ikpe, on the outskirts of Auchi, which Thomas visited after Fugar. It is possible that Thomas set up the photograph, getting the girl to pose with a doll he had previously collected. Alternatively, he may have recorded the provenance of the doll incorrectly, acquiring it in Ikpe. This raises the broader question about how Thomas acquired the dolls. Did he obtain them directly from makers? Or was he purchasing them from households? If the latter, did he persuade parents to sell him their child’s doll? It seems especially cruel to think that he may have forced children to part with their beloved toys.

Left: Doll collected by Northcote Thomas in Fugar, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909 (NWT 2704A; MAA Z 12722A); Right: ‘Child and doll’, photographed by Northcote Thomas or one of his assistants in Ikpe, near Auchi, present-day Edo State, Nigeria (NWT 1122; RAI 400.18184). The girl holds the doll to her breast, perhaps mimicking her mother. The doll appears to be that pictured on the left, which Thomas records as being acquired in Fugar. It is not clear whether the provenance of the doll has been incorrectly recorded or whether Thomas set up the photograph, getting the child to pose with the doll he had previously collected. Note the child’s bead waist band, which a number of the dolls collected are also dressed with.

Despite assembling this remarkable collection of Nigerian dolls, Thomas did not include any discussion of them in his Anthropological Report on the Edo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria. This is not surprising since the reports were primarily intended to provide information of use to colonial administrators, and the study of dolls would have been regarded as a matter of purely academic interest. But neither have we been able to locate any unpublished fieldnotes relating to the dolls. It appears, therefore, that Thomas did not use the opportunity of his fieldwork to gather the kinds of information that he requested in his 1906 questionnaire. As with much of the material assembled during Thomas’s anthropological surveys, we have only fragmentary knowledge.

Left: Detail of beadwork adorning doll collected by Northcote Thomas in Agbede, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909 (NWT 2302; MAA Z 11738); Right: Young girl holding a similar doll to that pictured left, including bead headdress/hair decoration. Photographed by Northcote Thomas or one of his assistants in Agbede, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909 (NWT 965; RAI 400.17321).

We can, however, learn much by examining the collections and photographs themselves. The form of many of the dolls is highly abstract – some are barely more than sticks. Others, even though they may not have representations of arms or legs, have facial or body scarification marks similar to those worn by local people. Most striking is the correlation between the body ornamentation of the dolls and children photographed by Thomas, including hair beads, necklaces, waist bands and anklets. Some of the dolls are more representational in style, with arms, legs and more realistically carved facial features.

Detail images of a doll collected by Northcote Thomas in the Esan town of Irrua, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909. As well as the representations of scarification marks, note the beaded hair decoration, waist band, arm band and anklet. These body adornments can be seen in many photographs of children taken during the anthropological survey. Thomas gives the name ‘omorha’ for the waist band. (NWT 2501; MAA Z 12737)

In most cases Thomas uses the English word ‘doll’ to label these figures. Occasionally a local language word is used. Two of the dolls collected in Fugar are, for example, labelled ‘omo’, which means child in the Edo language. One of the dolls collected in Agbede is labelled ‘utomo’, while another collected in Uzebba is labelled ‘omowowo’ (both of these include the word fragment ‘omo’). One example collected in Irrua is labelled ‘agagaigboie’.

A series of photographs of an adolescent girl named Mogiake posing with a doll taken by Northcote Thomas or one of his assistants in Agbede, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909. (NWT 950a, 950, 950b; RAI 400.17301, 17300, 19718)

In the absence of more detailed contextual information, it is not always clear what distinguishes the figures Thomas labelled as dolls from other kinds of figures collected by Thomas. Some, particularly more representational and less abstract figures, are visually more of less indistinguishable from those Thomas labels as ‘ele’ or ‘olose’ figurines, or figures associated with shrines. Fascinating though this wonderful assemblage of Nigerian dolls is, we can only regret that Thomas did not also collect the kinds of information he sought to elicit from others in his 1906 ‘Questionnaire on Dolls’. How interesting it would have been to have answers to those questions: Were they fed? Did they suffer from illnesses? Do they die? Are they reincarnated? What names did they carry? Did they feel emotions? Who made them? Do they have magical properties? We shall perhaps never know.


Display of dolls collected by Northcote Thomas included in the [Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, June 2021-April 2022.

Spotlight on: Shakalearn Mansaray

Shakalearn Mansaray’s completed wooden panel evoking Thomas’s photographic series of pot-making in Sierra Leone.

As part of the [Re:]Entanglements project we have been using art and creativity as methods of re-engaging with the anthropological archives assembled by Northcote Thomas in West Africa in the early twentieth century. This has involved developing many wonderfully rewarding collaborations with Nigerian and Sierra Leonean artists. Much of the resulting work has been displayed at exhibitions in Benin City, Lagos and Nsukka.

One of the artists we have been working with in Sierra Leone is Sheku Shakalearn Mansaray. Shakalearn grew up in a village in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone, but came to Freetown in 1990. He comes from a family of artists and developed his skills as a carver partly through an apprenticeship and partly through formal training at Milton Margai College of Education and Technology. He is coordinator of an NGO called Peacelinks, which uses art and performance to promote peacebuilding and social mobilization especially among young people.

[Re:]Entanglements project workshop with Sierra Leonean artists at the Sierra Leone National Museum, Freetown. Shakalearn Mansaray, left, discusses his responses to Northcote Thomas’s anthropological photographs with other participants including (left to right) Morrison Jusu, Julius Parker and Christopher Parkinson.

Shakalearn chose to engage with a series of photographs Northcote Thomas made in 1914 documenting pot-making in the town of Kamalo in present-day Sanda Loko chiefdom in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. Thomas created a number of these photographic series during his Nigerian and Sierra Leonean tours. Each image in a sequence recorded a different stage in a process: the stages in a manufacturing process, for example, or a ritual. From a sequence of 15 photographs showing stages in the production of earthenware pots in Kamalo, Shakalearn selected eight to reproduce in his carved panel.

During his anthropological survey work in Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone, Northcote Thomas made several series of photographs documenting production processes, including pot-making. Shakalearn Mansaray’s carved panel was inspired by this series of photographs, taken by Thomas in 1914, showing the pottery production technique in Kamalo, present-day Sanda Loko Chiefdom, Sierra Leone.

Rather than carving on newly cut timber, Shakalearn salvaged planks from an old Creole ‘board house‘ that was being demolished in Freetown. These beautiful wooden houses, built during the 19th century, were once common in Freetown. Unfortunately, many have fallen into disrepair and they have gradually been knocked down to be replaced with modern concrete structures. When Northcote Thomas visited Freetown during his 1914-15 tour of Sierra Leone, these houses would have predominated.

After rescuing the old timbers and cutting them to size, Shakalearn created a composite drawing of the eight different photographs on paper. He then chalked this onto the wooden panel and began to chisel out the work in relief. Normally Shakalearn’s carved works are given a much more fine finish. On this work, however, Shakalearn wanted to retain the aged patina of the salvaged boards. One inspiration was the work of the African-American artist Whitfield Lovell.

Shakalearn Mansaray working on the wooden panel. Left: The wood for the panel was salvaged from one of Freetown’s old ‘board houses’ that was being demolished to make way for a new building. Centre: Drawing out the design for the carving from Northcote Thomas’s photographic series. Right: Chalked design on the panel, starting to carve.
Detail of Shakalearn Mansaray’s carved panel depicting stages in traditional Sierra Leonean pot-making as documented by Northcote Thomas in 1914.
The African-American artist Whitfield Lovell was one source of inspiration for Shakalearn Mansaray’s work on salvaged wooden boards.

Clay pots were an everyday item used for storage and cooking, and were once made throughout Sierra Leone. Today, these sustainably-sourced and locally-manufactured pots have been displaced by imported plastic and metal utensils. There are, however, a few traditional potters still practicing in Sierra Leone. Most notable is the pot-making community at Mabettor near Lunsar in present-day Buya Romende chiefdom in the north of Sierra Leone.

In 2019, as part of our fieldwork for the [Re:]Entanglements project, we spent some time with the potters at Mabettor. We showed the community Northcote Thomas’s photographs of Sierra Leonean potters from 105 years before and left copies with them. A number of the potters, including Marie Sesay, Khadiatu Conteh, Adamsay Conteh, Isatu Koroma and Ya Abie Koroma demonstrated their pot-making techniques, which were exactly the same as those documented by Thomas in Kamalo. These day, however, their wares are mainly sold to visitors from overseas or Freetown who want them to decorate their homes.

Fieldwork with pot-makers in Mabettor, Buya Romende chiefdom, Sierra Leone, 2019. [Re:]Entanglements project research associate, James Vincent, showing community members Thomas’s photographs of pot-making taken 105 years previously. (Photograph: Paul Basu)
Pot-making in Mabettor, Buya Romende chiefdom, Sierra Leone. The same techniques documented by Northcote Thomas in Sierra Leone in 1914 are still used today as demonstrated here by potters Marie Sesay and Khadiatu Conteh. Traditionally-made clay pots have, however, been replaced by imported plasticware throughout Sierra Leone, and the majority of pots made in Mabettor today are purchased by tourists or for decorative purposes. (Photographs: Paul Basu)

We love the way Shakalearn uses traditional carving techniques to inscribe the archival documentation of another traditional craft form into wood salvaged from a building that would have stood at the time of Thomas’s anthropological surveys. Thank you Shakalearn!

A more detailed discussion of Northcote Thomas’s documentation of traditional pot-making and contemporary pot-making in Mabettor will be the subject of a future article.

Mourning Clothes

Nnaemezie Asogwa Mourning Clothes - Textile Design

Inspired by Northcote Thomas’s archival images, the Nigerian photographer Nnaemezie Asogwa has created a powerful photo series entitled Mourning Clothes that commemorates the anti-colonial Ekumeku movement. Ekumeku was an underground resistance movement, which sought to thwart British incursions into Anioma (Western Igboland) between 1883 and 1914. As documented by the historian Don Ohadike in his book The Ekumeku Movement, there was a succession of waves of Ekumeku activity over this thirty-year period. Ekumeku operated covertly, employing local knowledge of the forest environment to launch ambushes on its targets. Colonial forces retaliated disproportionately, destroying towns and communities thought to be associated with the movement.

Anioma was the focus of Northcote Thomas’s third anthropological survey, which took place between July 1912 and August 1913. Thomas’s itinerary included many towns in the Asaba hinterland that directly experienced the impact of the Ekumeku Movement, including Ogwashi-Ukwu, Onicha-Olona, Ubulu-Ukwu, Ukwunzu, Igbuzo, Idumuje-Ugboko, Ezi and Issele-Azagba. Despite the recentness of these events – Ogwashi-Ukwu, for instance, was the main locus of hostilities in the 1909-10 wave of Ekumeku – there is seemingly little overt trace of conflict in Thomas’s photographs. Indeed, one of the reasons why Asogwa thought it important to work on Ekumeku was the apparent absence of a visual record of the war, as well as its absence from national narratives and educational curricula in Nigeria today.

In this article, Nnaemezie Asogwa tells us more about the ideas behind the project, his use of Northcote Thomas’s photographs, and his reflections on the memory of colonial violence that continues to ‘live under the skin’.

Nnaemezie Asogwa Mourning Clothes - Mourning as Remembrance
‘MOURNING AS REMEMBRANCE’. Asogwa puts on the mourning cloth and places himself in the frame. ‘I had to ask myself a lot of questions. It was like blowing on something covered with dust and everything just flies up. The narrative of Ekumeku has accumulated a lot of dust because nobody is talking about it’. Photograph by Nnaemezie Asogwa.

Among the violences of colonialism was the destruction of traditional ways of transmitting knowledge of the past. In my recent practice as a photographer, I have been interested in exploring how the photographic image can open up other ways of thinking about the past. My work seeks to draw attention to what has been forgotten, what is being systematically erased, and what needs to be remembered.

The Ekumeku war was an anti-colonial struggle that took place in South-eastern Nigeria, where I come from. Yet Ekumeku was never mentioned during my formal education in Nigeria. It is absent in our school history books and our cultural institutions. In my research on the conflict so far, I have been unable to find any photographs documenting it.

Nnaemezie Asogwa Mourning Clothes - Family Reunion
‘FAMILY REUNION’. ‘I wondered what it would be like if I could freeze that moment in Anioma during the Ekumeku war and walk in there. What kind of conversation could I have with them? Who would I be to them?’ Photomontage including Northcote Thomas photographs by Nnaemezie Asogwa.

Mourning Clothes calls to mind not only those unnumbered and unnamed people who were killed while resisting the colonial invasion of their land, but also the loss of the memory of that war. When someone dies in my community, the family goes to the market and buys cloth – it might be plain white, or a printed Ankara cloth; wealthy families might even have a cloth designed for them. This is often distributed to members of the family, who will wear mourning garments made from the cloth for an agreed period, usually a year. The wearing of the clothes binds the bereaved together with each other, with the memory of their shared loss, and with the family home, no matter how far away that may be.

My idea, then, was to design a mourning cloth that would carry the memory of the Ekumeku war, and to photograph people wearing the cloth in different locations over a year. I developed the project while studying for an MA in Photography in the UK and I wanted to presence this forgotten war in the English landscape. There is another tradition in Igboland: if someone is killed, the body of the victim will be taken to the gates of the compound of the person who has perpetrated the crime. Through photography, I wanted to lay the body of this memory – the memory of Ekumeku – here in Britain, at the gates of those responsible for the colonisation of Nigeria.

‘MOURNING AS REMEMBRANCE’. Presencing the memory of Ekumeku in Britain: landscapes and architectures built on the profits of imperial exploitation. ‘In my place, there is a tradition. If someone is killed, you take the body of the victim to the gates of the perpetrator’s compound’. Photomontages including Northcote Thomas photographs by Nnaemezie Asogwa.

My original plan met with some challenges. Firstly, my intention had been to incorporate archive photographs documenting the Ekumeku conflict in the design of the cloth. As already mentioned, my search for such photographs drew a blank. Secondly, my work on the project in 2020 coincided with the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent lockdown, which made it difficult for me to access certain technical facilities and also to work with models in different locations. While these circumstances imposed restrictions, I believe they also provided opportunities.

The lack of historical images documenting Ekumeku led to my working with Northcote Thomas’s photographs. I was engaged as a photographer at the opening of the [Re:]Entanglements project exhibition at the National Museum in Lagos in 2019. The exhibition featured Kelani Abass’s artistic engagements with photograph albums from Thomas’s anthropological surveys kept at the museum. This was my first introduction to Thomas’s photographs. Later, when I started work on Mourning Clothes, I contacted the [Re:]Entanglements team and was really excited when they sent me a link to the project Flickr site, where Thomas’s photographs are organised according to location. It was then I discovered that he spent a year working in the Anioma / Western Igbo area and there were hundreds of photographs taken in locations where the Ekumeku struggle took place.

I wondered how it was possible for a colonial anthropologist to roam around taking photographs in an area that had witnessed such strong anti-colonial resistance. It caused me to reflect upon the politics of dominance that came with colonialism. Although the photographs did not show the Ekumeku war explicitly, I believe there is an indexical relationship between them and the conflict. Ekumeku was organised in secret, and I have no doubt that some of those photographed were involved; others would certainly have lost family members to the struggle. Like the Ekumeku movement itself, the conflict, though not visible on the surface, is there in the ‘underneath’ of Thomas’s photographs. This added further poignancy to the images, and these became the photographs that I incorporated into the textile design for Mourning Clothes.

Nnaemezie Asogwa Mourning Clothes - Textile Design
Nnaemezie Asogwa’s textile design for Mourning Clothes, incorporating photographs taken by Northcote Thomas during his anthropological survey of Asaba District in 1912-13.

Due to the pandemic restrictions I was unable to print the cloth with Thomas’s photographs, so I had to improvise with another fabric. I see Mourning Clothes as a work-in-progress. I still intend to have the mourning cloth design printed and to make more photographs, building on the initial series. Another consequence of the pandemic restrictions was my inability to work with the range of models and locations that I had initially planned. Instead, I explored photomontage techniques to a greater degree. Here I was particularly inspired by the work of the Congolese artist Sammy Baloji.

Nnaemezie Asogwa Mourning Clothes - Erasures and Traces
‘ERASURES AND TRACES’. Palimpsests. ‘This history has been allowed to die. It is not completely dead, but it has been thrown away and trampled upon, discarded. But can you really erase that history? You can try to remove it, but no matter how obscured, you can still find traces of it. It lives in the minds of people who may be far removed from that time or that part of the world.’ Photomontages including Northcote Thomas photographs by Nnaemezie Asogwa.

In Mourning Clothes I have tried to create a monument to those who were killed in the anti-colonial struggle. Many would have died without receiving proper rites. In my community, if someone dies without a befitting funeral, they cannot rest in peace. In Igbo, they are known as ozu akwagihi akwa (a corpse whose funeral rites have not been completed). Their souls wander restlessly, haunting unoccupied places, trees, hilltops and other places. There is no limit to how far they can travel in time and space.

Memories of Ekumeku are like ozu akwagihi akwa. Even if they are not recognised as such, their trace lives on in unexpected places: in stories, in dispositions, in the minds of people far removed from the landscapes where the events happened. Repressed memories manifest in unpredictable ways. One might wonder, for example, whether some of the anger we saw in the recent Black Lives Matter riots, in the response to the killing of George Floyd, was not in some way a resurfacing of the memory of the violence that was used to suppress Ekumeku and other similar anti-colonial movements? These things are not entirely erased, but continue to live under the skin until they are divined in some sense.

‘MONUMENT’. ‘We have an obligation to the dead. I didn’t want to end this project without erecting a monument in honour of those who died in the anti-colonial struggle, those who were not mourned and who cannot rest in peace’. Photomontage including Northcote Thomas photographs by Nnaemezie Asogwa.

Images: Nnaemezie Asogwa
Text: Nnaemezie Asogwa and Paul Basu

Conservation notes: Maiden Spirit mask

Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria. Prior to conservation.
Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria, in 1911. (NWT 390; MAA Z 13689)

[Re:]Entanglements project conservator, Carmen Vida, provides insights into some of the conservation techniques used to clean and consolidate a remarkable Igbo maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in 1911, and how close examination can tell us more about the mask’s biography both before and after it entered the museum.

One of the most visually striking objects that has come to the UCL Conservation Lab in preparation for the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is an Igbo maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu-Nri, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911.

The maiden spirit (agbogho mmuo) is one of the most celebrated Igbo masquerade types. Although danced by men, the masquerades – manifestations of ancestral spirits – represent ideals of youthful femininity. The carved, wooden masks typically have fine facial features, with thin, straight noses, small mouths and light complexions, often decorated with uli designs or tattoos. They often have elaborate hair-styles, adorned with crests, coiled plaits and combs. They wear tight-fitting, vibrantly coloured and patterned appliqué costumes, which again evoke uli and other body painting designs. They dance mainly for entertainment, including at the annual Ude Agbogho or ‘Fame of the Maidens’ festival. Thomas collected two examples of the masks in Agukwu-Nri.

Left and centre: Agbogho mmuo (maiden spirit masquerade) as painted by Ben Enwonwu. Right: Photograph of Agbogho mmuo costume by G. I. Jones.
Left and centre: Evocations of the colour and movement of agbogho mmuo in the art of Ben Enwonwu; Right: Maiden spirit masquerade costume photographed by G. I. Jones in Awka, Nigeria in the 1930s.

The mask we have been working with is a particularly fine example. It has a yellow and white face with black tattoos or scarification marks over the eyebrows, down the forehead and on either side of the eyes. Great detail has been paid to the carving of the hairstyle and of a tall, elaborate headdress that comprises a crest, four combs extending upwards and two stands surmounted by birds in between. The crest is made up of a large diamond-shaped section that is flanked by two horns that support two curved sections with upturned bells above. The painted decoration on the mask used red, black, yellow and white pigments. At some point, probably in the mid-20th century, the mask has been secured with copper wires onto a wooden mount.

Northcote Thomas photographs of maiden spirit masquerade (agbogho mmuo), Awka, Nigeria, 1910.
Maiden spirit masquerade figures photographed by Northcote Thomas in Awka in 1910-11, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. (Clockwise from top left: NWT 1965 (RAI 400.17808); NWT 1967 (RAI 400.17810); NWT 1977 (RAI 400.17819); NWT 2279 (RAI 400.15914))

Thomas made a number of photographs of agbogho mmuo dancing at Awka in December 1910 and March 1911, and also photographed the masks he collected in Agukwu-Nri later in 1911. There are no photographs, however, of the masks he collected being performed and we do not know for sure whether they had been used in dances before Thomas acquired them or if he obtained them directly from the artist(s) who made them.

Although Thomas did acquire complete masquerade costumes during his 1909-10 Edo tour, it does not appear that he did so on his 1910-11 Igbo tour. (There is a complete agbogho mmuo costume on display at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, but provenance is unknown.) That there were additional costume elements attached to the mask we are focusing on here is, however, evident from some fibres that remain attached to the rows of holes that run around the edges of the mask, especially in the area of the jaw and chin.

Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria. Noting remains of costume attached.
Fibres attached to the holes around the edges of the mask provide evidence that it was attached to additional costume elements prior to being collected. Note also the museum label attached to the inside of the mask, recording the location in which it was collected and the Igbo name of the mask recorded by Thomas: Isi abogefi.

Unusually, Thomas made quite detailed notes about the mask. He records the name of the type of mask as Isi abogefiIsi meaning ‘head’, while abogefi may be a dialect variation or erroneous rendering of agbogho, meaning ‘girl of marriageable age’. He notes that the carved bird on one side of the head represents a black pigeon (ndò), and that on the other side a parrot. The central crest he records as isi nkpo umu nwayi, a representation of a headdress women wear for dancing. Thomas records the sources of the four pigments: the black (oji) and yellow (èdò) pigments are derived from trees, red (ufie) is from camwood, and white (nzu) from chalk/white clay. He goes on to explain that the mmuo comes out to dance at the feast of Anuoye during the dry season. Anuoye is a goddess of protection in Nri. He writes that the mmuo will only dance for half a day, once a year. He goes on to detail the sacrifices made to her, and how these are later cooked and redistributed by the young men who perform the masquerade.

Conserving Isi abogefi

In preparation for the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition, the mask required conservation because there were issues with its stability and appearance that needed to be addressed. The initial condition assessment of the mask started telling us part of the history of this object. But it was by contrasting the object’s present condition with that recorded in earlier photographs that the tale of the object’s journey could start being pieced together.

Left: Photograph of maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri at the time of acquisition in 1911; Right: Photograph of the mask published in G. I. Jones' Art of Southeast Nigeria.
Left: Photograph of the Isi abogefi maiden spirit mask taken by Northcote Thomas at the time of acquisition in Agukwu Nri (probably against Thomas’s canvas tent). Note the coiled raffia bundle next to the mask, which was possibly placed as a cushion between the mask and the wearer’s head. The mask is propped up on a box file, no doubt used by Thomas for keeping his fieldnotes in order! (NWT 2934b; RAI N.76430). Right: Photograph of the same mask published in G. I. Jones’ The Art of Eastern Nigeria in 1984.

Comparison with the earliest photograph, that taken by Thomas himself in 1911, allowed us to establish that the mask had already been repaired before it had been collected (see our earlier blog post about this) and that Thomas seems to have acquired it without the costume element of which we found traces. Put together, these two facts lend more weight to the likelihood that the mask had seen previous use rather than being especially made for Thomas. Indeed, in the 1911 photograph one can also see a coiled raffia bundle, which was probably placed on top of the wearer’s head as a cushionbefore putting the mask on.

A later photograph of the mask taken for the anthropologist G. I. Jones, for his book The Art of Eastern Nigeria, published in 1984, shows the mask free of some of the damage now visible. Specifically, the losses to the lip, and the breaks and subsequent repairs now visible on the jaw and on the four combs are not apparent in the photograph for Jones’ book. This gives us an approximate point in time after which this particular damage and the subsequent repairs must have happened: post 1984.

Repairs are particularly clear on the back of the front left comb and on the front and back right combs too, because the adhesive used has aged and darkened. The nature of the breaks and the similarity in the appearance of the adhesive used in the repairs suggests at least one episode of catastrophic damage – a fall, perhaps? – rather than gradual deterioration. Having worked on this object I have also experiential knowledge of its instability as the top heavy crest makes it prone to tipping forward.

Left and centre: Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria, noting damage to mask.
Left: Details of damage on the front of the mask that were not apparent in the c.1984 photograph in G. I. Jones’ book. Right: Detail of the back of the left front comb where the break and aged adhesive can be clearly seen.

All of the above has consequences for any future conservation of this mask: as the post-1984 repairs are relatively recent and carried out in the context of the museum, it may be acceptable to remove the darkened adhesive and redo the repairs should this become necessary. We would not consider doing this with the more historical repairs, which may instead be conserved themselves as a vital part of the object’s biography. Similarly, being able to date the more recent repairs to after 1984 may help identifying the adhesive used and the best approach to its removal. The option of redoing the recent repairs was not considered at this stage because the information only became clearer as we worked on the mask, but also because at present the repairs, although disfiguring, are stable and removing them now may cause unnecessary damage.

The hands-on conservation of the object started with cleaning. As with other objects collected by Northcote Thomas that we have treated as part of [Re:]Entanglements, there was much surface dirt, with dust and dirt accumulated in the crevices, recesses, and carved details of the mask. Some of this dirt was relatively easy to remove using standard museum vacuum techniques. However, on organic porous materials such as wood, if dust is left for a long time it can end up becoming engrained into the pores and harder to remove, giving the object a grey and dull look. This was definitely the case with the maiden spirit mask. So, first the loose dirt and dust were removed with a museum vacuum and soft brushes. This did not prove sufficient to remove the dull grey film of engrained dirt, and after testing the steadfastness of the various pigments, the mask was carefully swabbed with a solvent to help lift the dirt off its surface. This was quite successful and some of the original sheen of the surface was returned to the object.

The treatment then focused on the structural issues that were placing the mask at risk. There were cracks at the base of both the horns that attach the crest to the head. The crack to the front horn, in particular, seemed to go most of the way through and moved when handled. Both cracks were consolidated and secured by injecting a protein-based adhesive into the cracks with a syringe and holding them under tension in the correct position until the adhesive cured.

Video showing conservation cleaning and consolidation processes on the maiden spirit mask.

The stand which holds the bird on the right was very loose and unstable, and the historical repair there, which we discussed in an earlier blog post, no longer secured it. The iron metal sheet of the earlier repair also had a rusted surface and small losses to the bottom edge, as well as a nail missing, and even though the corrosion was not active, it was unsightly and was therefore cleaned off slightly. Flexible fills using Japanese tissue paper and a conservation grade adhesive were made under the metal sheet to pack the joint and secure the stand, and then tinted to match the colour of the mask in that area so that they would be largely invisible.

The surviving lip fragment was re-adhered and the old wooden mount has been temporarily raised with a layer of Plastazote foam, so as to lift the jaw off the ground and relieve the pressure exerted by the weight of the object on the jaw, which has resulted in cracks in the wood. A new mount will be made for the exhibition display to replace the existing one, which will definitively solve this problem.

Damage to the upturned bells on the top of the crest was also examined: two of the bells – the third and the fifth from the front – display losses. These do not present any risk to the stability of the object and therefore nothing was done other than cleaning. But a close examination of them tells of at least two episodes of damage. On the third bell some of the break edges are darkened and dirty, but there is also a cleaner and therefore relatively more recent break edge.  Reference to the photographs showed that some of the damage to the third bell, corresponding to the darkened break edge, was there at the time Thomas photographed the object in 1911 and therefore predates acquisition. Further losses have evidently happened between the time Thomas photographed the mask and the date it was photographed for Jones’ book. The fifth bell also has a small loss to the rim, with a dark break edge suggesting an old break possibly contemporary with the earlier loss on the third bell, though the photographs do not show this area and so nothing can be said with certainty.

Left and centre: Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria, noting damage to mask.
Details of the damage to the inverted bell decoration along the top of the mask’s crest. Highlighted in red are the darkened break edges, suggesting historical damage that is also evident in Thomas’ 1911 photograph; highlighted in yellow are more recent, lighter break edges.

Throughout the conservation process, the mask gradually revealed more and more of its history, allowing us to speculate more confidently on how Thomas may have acquired it, guiding our conservation decisions, and helping us trace and even roughly date some of the damage episodes it has suffered after entering the collection. But it does not end here. As a result of this conservation treatment there is one more tale the object has started to tell us, and that could open another venue of information into this object’s past.

Left and centre: Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria, after conservation. Right: strikingly similar mask in collection of Art Institute, Chicago.
Left and centre: The maiden spirit mask after the conservation treatment has been completed. Right: A maiden spirit mask now in the collection of the Art Institute Chicago, which bears a striking resemblance to that collected by Thomas despite its ‘encrusted patina’.

During the research carried out on Igbo maiden spirit masks as background for the conservation treatment, a very similar mask was located in the Art Institute in Chicago (Accession No. 1994.315). The mask in Chicago is described in Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor’s book Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos as being covered in an ‘encrusted patina’ and its polychrome surface may have been lost, but it is nevertheless recognisably similar and uses the same motifs as the mask collected by Thomas, suggesting that it was made by the same artist(s). It also appears to have the remains of the costume element. This discovery may open the door to further research into the provenance and origins of the mask collected by Thomas and the role it may have played in Igbo societies before it entered the collection, and is a clear example of the affordances conservation work offers within and outside its own remit.


As noted above, Thomas collected two maiden spirit masks in Agukwu Nri in 1911. The second one was recently included in a virtual ‘Museum Remix: Unheard‘ trail across the University of Cambridge’s museums. Senior Curator, Mark Elliot discusses some of the untold/unheard stories associated with the mask in this video.

Maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri, Nigeria.
The second maiden spirit mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu Nri in 1911. (NWT 391; MAA Z 13690)

Further reading

  • H. Cole and C. Aniakor (1984) Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California.
  • B. Hufbauer and B. Reed (2003) ‘Adamma: A Contemporary Igbo Maiden Spirit’, African Arts 36(3): 56-65 + 94-95.
  • G. I. Jones (1984) The Art of Eastern Nigeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • N. W. Thomas (1913) Anthropological Report on the Ibo-Speaking peoples of Nigeria, Part I. London: Harrison & Co.

Esan carving traditions, Ubiaja

Detail of carved door panel, Ubiaja. Northcote Thomas, 1909.
Detail of carved wooden door panel, photographed by Northcote Thomas in Ubiaja, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, 1909.(NWT 1027; RAI 400.17422).

Northcote Thomas visited the Esan (or Ishan) towns of Agbede, Irrua and Ubiaja in August 1909. At the royal palace in Ubiaja, Thomas photographed some remarkable carved doors and house-posts. 71 years later, in 1980, the art historian Carol Ann Lorenz conducted research in Esanland as part of her PhD project Ishan Sculpture: Nigerian Art at a Crossroads of Culture (Columbia University, 1995). In this article, we revisit Lorenz’s unpublished notes about the Ubiaja carvings in the light of our own research as part of the [Re:]Entanglements project.

Carved houseposts, Obirrra's house, Ubiaja. Northcote Thomas, ,1909.
Detail of Northcote Thomas’s photograph of sculpted house-posts at ‘Obiria’s house’, Ubiaja palace, 1909 (NWT 1007; RAI 400.17390).

In 1980, Lorenz was able to document the remains of what she termed ‘figurated house-posts’ – or orẹ in the Esan language – in a number of towns, including 75 in Uromi, a short distance from Ubiaja. These sculptural posts supported the verandas of palaces and noble residences, providing a visual statement of the owner’s status and authority. At the time of Lorenz’s fieldwork, such posts were no longer made and those that survived were in a very poor state – some no more than mere stumps. Although the examples in Ubiaja were no longer in evidence, Lorenz noted the importance of Thomas’s photographs insofar as they provided a rare documentation of an assemblage of complete posts in situ.

Ubiaja palace complex

Lorenz was unable to find any oral traditions about the carvings in Ubiaja. She did, however, learn from the ruling Onojie (king) of Ubiaja, HRH Abumhenre Ebhojie II, that a fire had destroyed the palace in 1902. Evidently unaware that Thomas visited Ubiaja seven years later, in 1909, Lorenz made the incorrect assumption that he had photographed the palace sculptures prior to their destruction in the conflagration. It appears, rather, that the house-posts that Thomas photographed were part of a new palace, built after 1902, or of buildings that had not been affected by the fire. Indeed, we know from Thomas’s photograph register that he photographed at least two different buildings within the palace complex.

The palace, Ubiaja, Edo State, Nigeria
The Onojie’s new palace, Ubiaja, 2020. Photograph by Paul Basu.

When we visited Ubiaja as part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, a brand new palace had recently been constructed for the reigning Onojie, HRH Curtis Idedia Eidenojie. Adjacent to this impressive new concrete structure are various generations of earlier earthen-walled palace buildings, many in a ruinous state. It was not possible to say with certainty if any of these were the remains of the palace that Thomas photographed in 1909.

Ruins of old palace, Ubiaja, Edo State, Nigeria.
The ruins of earthen-walled buildings that formed a courtyard in the palace complex. Each new Onojie has built a new palace, and different generations of palace buildings sit alongside one another. It was not possible to ascertain if any of the ruins corresponded to the buildings Thomas photographed in 1909. The roof of the new palace can be seen rising above the ruins. Photograph by Paul Basu.

Thomas visited Ubiaja during the rule of Elabor, who reigned between 1876 and 1921. By 1909, however, Elabor was elderly and suffering from ill-health. In these circumstances, a power struggle existed between a senior member of the royal household, Prince Obiyan, and Elabor’s eldest son, Prince Ugbesia, over who should act as the Onojie’s regent. Thomas photographed Elabor alongside a man he labelled ‘Obiria’. During our fieldwork in Ubiaja, the name Obiria was not recognised and it was felt that this was an incorrect transcription of Ugbesia. Some of the doorposts photographed by Thomas and discussed by Lorenz are, according to Thomas’s photo register, from ‘Obiria’s house’.

King and Obirrra, Ubiaja. Northcote Thomas, 1909.
Left: ‘King and Obiria’. The figure on the left, ‘Obiria’, is thought to be the king’s son, Ugbesia. The figure on the right is the Onojie (king), Elabor. Photograph by Northcote Thomas, Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 999, RAI 400.17389). Right: ‘King and Obiria’. Elabor and Obiria (probably Ugbesia) sitting in front of sculpted house-posts at the palace. Photograph by Northcote Thomas, Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 1000, RAI 400.17391).

House-posts

Lorenz provided descriptions of each of the house-posts photographed by Thomas. Regarding the house-posts in the photograph above right (NWT 1000), the sculpture on the left depicts two kneeling figures, one above the other with a platform between them. Lorenz reported that this configuration was unique in her survey of Esan sculptures, although it was common in Yorubaland. The sculpture on the right depicts a figure carrying a fowl or bird on a head tray, possibly representing an intended sacrifice.

Carved houseposts, Ubiaja. Northcote Thomas, 1909
Left: ‘Figurine in court’. Sculpted house-post at palace, photographed by Northcote Thomas, Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 1002; RAI 400.17393). Right: ‘Figurine’. Decorated plank and sculpted house-post at ‘Obiria’s house’, photographed by Northcote Thomas, Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 1003; RAI 400.17394).

The house-post in the photograph above left (NWT 1002) is described as ‘depicting a female figure touching her breast with one hand and her full belly with the other. Her abdomen is decorated with incised patterns’. Lorenz described the house-posts in the photograph above right (NWT 1003) as ‘depicting a painted snake image on a plank post, and a three-dimensional trumpet blower’. While Lorenz identified all these sculptures as belonging simply to ‘the palace in Ubiaja’, those in the photograph above right (NWT 1003) can be identified in the photograph below, which Thomas’s labelled ‘Obiria’s house’. Although not the main palace, it is likely that this was located in the palace complex.

‘Obiria’s house’. Photograph of a high status house with sculpted posts supporting the veranda. During our fieldwork in Ubiaja, the name ‘Obiria’ was not recognized and it was thought that this was an erroneous transcription of the name ‘Ugbesia’, the son of the king, Elahor. Photograph by Northcote Thomas, Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 1007; RAI 400.17390).

Lorenz described the sculptures in the photograph of what we now know to be ‘Obiria’s house’ (NWT 1007) as depicting (from left to right): ‘a naked male figure, a swordsman carrying a severed head, a warrior with a shield and spear, a man with a pith helmet, a trumpet player, and a seated king’. There is a strong formal consistency in the four central carvings (the swordsman, warrior, man in pith helmet and trumpet player), suggesting they were made together and were the work of a single artist or workshop. They also appear to be relatively recently carved, due to the lack of weathering or insect damage.

Although Lorenz did not comment on it, the post on extreme left of this photograph – that depicting ‘a naked male figure’ – is perhaps more interesting than it at first appears. Firstly, it has no head. Instead of a head, the post continues merely as a flat ‘plank’ to the roof joists. Could its head possibly be that held by the swordsman sculpted from the adjacent pillar? Secondly, the figure appears to be shackled around its neck and left leg to a pillar beside it. Pure speculation, but perhaps this figure represents the body of a vanquished enemy? Stripped, shackled and finally beheaded?

Although we cannot be absolutely sure that Obiria is the king’s son, Ugbesia, it is interesting to note that Ugbesia was known to be despotic and tyrannical. The Esan historian, Christopher Okojie, writes that with the decline in Elabor’s powers, ‘the light of the Ruling House of Ubiaja went out’ and was ‘replaced with darkness in which hatred, confusion, suspicion and bipartisan warfare’ reigned. As noted above, at the time of Thomas’s visit, there was conflict between Ugbesia and his competitor for the regentship, Prince Obinyan. This quarrel evidently split Eguare (the palace quarter) into two warring factions, which had a profound effect on the wider Ubiaja community. In 1914 Ugbesia was formally recognized as regent, but the following years were also spent embroiled in conflict until, in 1919, he died in ‘mysterious circumstances’, predeceasing his incapacitated father by two years.

King's wives bathing, Ubiaja. Northcote Thomas, 1909.
‘King’s wives bathing’. Courtyard at the palace in Ubiaja with carved house-posts. It is likely that this is the quarters of the king’s wives. Each wife would have a room accessed through the doors between the house-posts. When we were shown the ruins of later palace building, this same arrangement of wives’ rooms around a courtyard was pointed out. Photograph by Northcote Thomas, Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 994a; RAI 400.17385).

In her notes on the above photograph of a palace courtyard (NWT 994a), Lorenz describes the house-post figures as depicting, from left to right, ‘a seated king, an ekpokin box bearer, an ujie group, two swordbearers, and a female figure nursing a child’. An ekpokin is a box used to carry gifts or tributes to the king. Ujie is music/dance genre in Esanland associated with royalty. According to Lorenz, these were common motifs in Esan sculpture.

Door panels

In addition to house-posts, Thomas photographed other sculptural forms in Ubiaja, including a number of carved doors and an agbala stool. The door carvings are quite distinct from the styles either of Benin or Igboland, of which Thomas photographed many examples. Lorenz argues that they are strongly influenced by Nupe door carving styles from the north, with discrete relief figures arranged in vertical rows. The Nupe had invaded the region to the north of Esanland earlier in the 19th century, and their influence extended to the Esan towns such as Irrua, Agbede and Ubiaja that Thomas visited. Unlike Nupe doors, however, the Esan examples include many representations of human figures, as well as the more typical representations of animals and inanimate objects.

Relief door carvings, photographed by Northcote Thomas at the palace in Ubiaja, 1909 (NWT 1025; RAI 400.17419 and NWT 1027; RAI 400.17422).

Lorenz interprets the figure at the top right of the photograph above left (NWT 1025) as being a male noble (okpia) holding a segmented ukhurhe staff. He is positioned above a female figure (okhuo), below whose feet a horizontal female figure lies. Lorenz observes that this door appears to have been repaired. The centre panel featuring a human figure, profile of a monkey and a lizard, has, she suggests, been carved in a different style to the two panels that flank it. She also observed that this and the left-hand panel were placed upside down when the door was reassembled. The larger male figure at bottom left should be at the top, holding the royal symbols of ada and eben aloft.

Thomas’s photograph above right (NWT 1027) features scenes of violence, which Lorenz argues is a common theme in Esan carving. At the bottom right is an equestrian figure (ohenakasi), depicted in profile, wielding a double-edged sword (agbada). The male figure at top left, interpreted by Lorenz as a warrior, carries a grid-like shield, known as asa in Benin. The shield was made of sticks or palm ribs, which, as Lorenz argues, ‘would not offer much physical defence’. They were, however, ‘fortified with protective medicine (ukhumun), which enabled it to repel or catch enemy weapons’. This door also features a leopard (bottom left, recognizable from its tail which arches over its back), a crocodile eating another animal (top right), and a ceremonial eben sword – all three emblems are associated with royalty.

Agbala stool

Lorenz devoted a whole chapter of her thesis to a discussion of a type of courtly furniture, the agbala or stool of office. Like other items of regalia, such stools illustrate both similarities and differences between Esan and Benin City, where the equivalent type of stool is known as agba. Lorenz argues that Esan elites ‘appear to have required a locally carved stool of office which was similar enough to the Benin agba to retain its association with prestige and authority, but divergent enough to be a distinctively Esan product’.

These stools were used exclusively by the Onojie or other hereditary chiefs on ceremonial and ritual occasions. Lorenz notes that it was particularly forbidden for the owner’s senior son and heir to sit upon them. The stools were kept in the ancestral shrine room and often served as a focus of offering to the ancestors. Thomas photographed one of these agbala stools in Ubiaja, and noted that they were equivalent to ukhurhe rattle-staffs, used to commemorate and honour the paternal ancestors.

Stool used for worship of father, Ubiaja and end of stool, Irua. Northcote Thomas.
Left: Agbala stool photographed by Northcote Thomas in Ubiaja in 1909 (NWT 1039; RAI 400.17436). Right: Side panel of agbala stool collected by Northcote Thomas in Irrua in 1909 (NWT 1-2564; MAA Z 12815).

Lorenz was able to locate nearly 30 examples of Esan agbala stools and identified three distinct styles. The example photographed by Thomas in Ubiaja is typical of what she terms the ‘ridged figural’ style, which feature highly-geometricized caryatid figures, carved in relief on the stretchers, often – as in this case – with arms upraised. The side panels also feature relief carvings, with a semi-circle cut away at the base to form two legs. Unfortunately, the design on the seat of the stool is not clear in the photograph.

Thomas did not photograph examples of wood carving in the other Esan towns he visited. He did, however, collect the side panel of another agbala stool in Irrua (see above right). This is an example of what Lorenz defines as an ‘openwork’ style, associated with the town of Uromi. Indeed, by comparing this panel with other complete stools, she argues that it was likely made in Uromi, even though it was collected in Irrua.

Esanland at a crossroads of culture

Through her analysis of Esan sculpture, including the examples documented by Northcote Thomas in Ubiaja in 1909, Lorenz’s main thesis was that Esan culture was essentially hybrid in nature. It was the mixture of Benin, Nupe, Yoruba and Igbo traditions that gave Esan art its unique character, as evidenced in these remarkable sculptural house-posts, carved doors and stools of office. Alas, these arts are no longer practised, and, due to the ephemeral nature of the materials, susceptible to decay and insect damage, and to collectors (Northcote Thomas included), very little of this sculpture has survived. We found not even a memory of it at the palace in Ubiaja.

Perhaps a new generation of contemporary Esan artists will one day discover Thomas’s photographs of these amazing sculptures and revive – or reinterpret – the tradition?

Further reading

  • Lorenz, C. A. 1995. Ishan Sculpture: Nigerian Art at a Crossroads of Culture, Unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University.
  • Okojie, C. G. 1960. Ishan Native Laws and Customs (Yaba: Okwesa)
  • Ukpan, J. A. 2010. History and Culture of Ubiaja (Benin City: Obhio)

Collection notes: Ngene alusi figure

Ngene alusi figure, Awgbu, University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
Ngene alusi figure, collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911. Now in the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. (NWT 378; MAA Z 14234)

One of the most impressive objects collected by Northcote Thomas during his 1910-11 anthropological survey of present-day Anambra State, Nigeria is this Ngene alusi figure. Thomas appears to have acquired this 1.25m high sculpture in Awgbu, about 11km south of Awka.

Thomas wrote a great deal about alusi (or alose) in his Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria. According to Thomas this referred to a wide range of deities or spirits, which were subordinate to Chukwu, the supreme being of Igbo religion. Some, he explained, had personal names such as ‘Ngene’ or ‘Ofufe’, whose shrines were often located in large enclosures, sometimes surrounded by highly decorated walls. These shrines were the locus of weekly and annual rituals, sites for oath-taking and sacrifice. These deities are given material form in different ways, including through sculptures such as this Ngene figure.

In Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos, Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor note that in the area around Awka ‘sculptures of gods and their supporters are typically arranged against a shrine wall often hung with cult apparatus’ (1984: 89). The carvings, they explain, are rarely by the same artist – over time the figures rot, are eaten by termites or otherwise deteriorate and are replaced as necessary. They are repainted and re-dressed during annual festivals, when the community’s allegiance to the deities is renewed through feasting and sacrifices.

Inspecting Ngene alusi figure, University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
Left: Detail of Ngene alusi figure showing ichi scarification marks on forehead and white, yellow and red-brown paint pigmentation. Right: [Re:]Entanglements project researchers, George Agbo and Paul Basu, examining the Ngene figure at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores. (Photograph by Katrina Dring)

When we first located the Ngene figure in the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores, we were struck at how fresh the carving and its paint was. Unlike such figures we have seen in situ, it did not appear to have accrued the signs that it had been installed in a shrine or used in rituals. We know that Thomas commissioned carvers to make other objects he collected, such as a large number of ukhurhe rattle staffs in Benin City, and we wondered if this was the case with Ngene.

Photographing Ngene in the field

Three interesting photographs of Ngene exist from the time that it was collected. During his 1910-11 tour, Thomas began the practice of lining up objects he had collected in front of a cloth backdrop and photographing them prior to shipping them to Cambridge. Numbers are set up alongside each object, and Ngene stands in a row of objects numbered 374 to 388, including two masks, a dance paddle, an iron staff for ozo title holders, two drums, an ogene gong, a rattle, a yam grater, dish, basket, cup and a mat used for carrying the dead. In total, Thomas collected 19 objects in Awgbu. One of Thomas’s assistants can be seen on the left holding the backdrop straight.

Northcote Thomas collections, Awgbu, Nigeria, 1911
A photograph by Northcote Thomas or one of his assistants documenting collections made in Awgbu prior to being shipped to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. Note one of Thomas’s assistants holding up the backcloth on the left. The numbers, 374-388, correspond with those in Thomas’ collection catalogue. (NWT 2968; MAA P.31227)

There are two even more intriguing photographs of Ngene in an album held at the National Museum in Lagos. The photographs were made using Thomas’s Kodak Panoram camera, which had a swivel lens and created a ‘panoramic’ exposure measuring 7″ x 2¼” on 105 format film rolls. In contrast to the formality of the documentation photo of the objects lined up with their catalogue numbers, these offer a glimpse of humour, even frivolity, behind the scenes.

Panoramic photographs taken by Northcote Thomas or one of his assistants, captioned ‘Chief dancing’ in Thomas’ photo register. The Ngene figure and other objects in the formal documentation photograph can be seen in the scene. Note the children sitting on Thomas’s camp chairs, watching the scene, and one of Thomas’ assistants on the left hand of the lower image. (NWT 3995 & 3996)

In Thomas’ photo register, the images are captioned ‘Chief dancing’, and we can see two robed men in bowler hats dancing in front of an audience of young man and children, some lounging on Thomas’ camp chairs. To the left of the photographs is Ngene. It appears that a number of caps have been placed on its head, but they may be placed on top of the iron staff in front. Looking carefully, one can see other objects from collection documentation photograph in the frame, and indeed it appears musicians are playing the drums and rattle that also feature in the object line up. Again, one of Thomas’ assistants can be seen, smiling at the joyful spectacle, to the left of one of the photographs.

Notes on Ngene’s form

The Ngene figure acquired by Thomas in Awgbu shares many formal similarities to other alusi sculptures from the region, although it is also quite distinctive (it is less naturalistic than many examples). Like many alusi, it has ichi scarification marks on its forehead and a carved pattern on its chest and torso. It has a prominent umbilical hernia, a small penis, large nipples and carved bracelets and anklets. It is made from a single piece of wood and painted with white, yellow and red-brown pigments.

Formal comparison of Igbo alusi figures
Formal comparison of Ngene figure from Awgbu (left) with other alusi sculptures. The three figures on the right were collected, controversially, by Jacques Kerchache from the area around Awka in the late 1960s during the Nigerian Civil War. They featured in an exhibition Igbo: Monumental Sculptures from Nigeria in 2010.

The hands and feet of alusi fugures are often not naturalistic. As Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor note, ‘One conventionalized feature of these carvings, the palms-up hand position, has meanings which contribute to our understanding of the deities and their cults. Informants report that this shows the open-handedness or generosity of the deities, as well as their willingness to receive sacrifices and other presents. The gesture also means “I have nothing to hide”, suggesting honesty and a “good face” (1984: 92).

As part of the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition, we will be recreating the line up of objects, including the Ngene alusi figure, as per Thomas’ documentation photograph above. These objects are being prepared for display at the conservation labs at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. The remainder of this article is written by Bill Mastandrea, a postgraduate conservation student who has been working on the figure.

[Re:]Connecting across time: Human hands and the conservator’s eye

by Bill Mastandrea

As mentioned in previous blog posts, conservation can help to provide a voice to objects which may otherwise have little to no context. Where objects are left voiceless, we run the risk of losing the valuable, humanizing information which surrounds them. It is these intangible facets of object biography that have personally interested me and propelled me to pursue conservation as a career. While the physical materiality of an object is integral, it is arguably its invisible stories which bring us closer both to it and to the people associated with it. Objects are not simply empty remnants of the past, but are living things, full of traces of what they have witnessed, endured, and experienced. While objects reveal different things to different people, the tools of conservation allow us to see particular narratives that others might miss, helping connect people of the present to those in the past.

As a post-graduate student in Conservation at UCL, the Museum Affordances / [Re:]Entanglements project has afforded me the great opportunity to investigate and conserve this Ngene alusi figure prior to it being exhibited. Here I want to report particularly on discoveries made during the initial stages of the conservation process, including condition checking and visual examination under visible and ultraviolet (UV) light. My observations point to a particular episode in the figure’s life history, which will inform my treatment proposal and future work on the object.

Details of Ngene alusi figure, collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911. (NWT 378; MAA Z 14234)

Condition checking of the figure began routinely, with investigation under visible light. The figure is carved from a single piece of wood and painted with white, yellow, and red-brown pigments and stands 1.24 metres tall. Intricate carving on the face, chest, upper arms, and stomach are interpreted as representative of scarification marks; and the carved rings around the ankles and wrists, bangles. Prominent areas of physical damage are noted on the head of the figure, where a non-terminal crack has formed, likely from fluctuations of temperature and humidity, and the right foot, which has been broken in two. Small flight-holes in the object are evidence of prior insect infestation, made by boring insects after reaching maturity.

Left: Photograph of Ngene figure taken probably in the 1930s held by the British Museum, showing the right foot apparently in tact. Right: The figure photographed by George Agbo at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores in 2018, showing the broken foot.

Comparison with historic photographs shows that damage to the foot occurred after it had been accessioned into the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology collection. The foot appears to be in tact in a photograph of the figure probably dating to the 1930s held at the British Museum. The crack in the head is already evident in that photograph and, indeed, on close inspection, it can be seen in the field photograph of the figure lined up with other objects. The crack appears, however, to have worsened over time. It is presently unclear when the insect damage took place. Remnant material on the break edge of the foot suggests that someone in the past has attempted to adhere the foot back together.

In order to investigate the historic repair to the foot, the figure was observed under UV light. Some materials, including those used in the creation of objects or in their repair/conservation, have characteristic fluorescence, which can help in preliminary material identification. The use of UV is a valuable tool for a conservator trying to ascertain whether a repair was carried out with an historically-used conservation material, or through a more traditional repair practice carried out by the ‘source community’ itself. When I inspected the repair on the Ngene figure’s foot, the material was crusty and flaky in nature, and barely visible against the colour of the wood under ordinary light. Under UV, however, the material flouresced a pale yellow-white colour.

Ultraviolet light Ngene alusi figure, damage to foot
Top: Detail of the figures broken right foot, showing sides A and B of the break in visible light. Bottom: Sides A and B of the break under ultraviolet light. Note the crusty, pale yellow-white material under UV.

This routine investigation into adhesive material on the figure’s foot under UV light led, however, to the discovery of something unexpected. Hidden in plain sight, but made more obvious by UV light, were a series of hand prints on the back of the left leg and on the back of the head. In visible light, they appear only as a clear, glossy film, while under UV, these hand prints fluoresce strongly, similar in colour to that of the adhesive material used on the foot of the object. What information is there for the conservator to glean from these prints?

Ultraviolet light Ngene alusi figure
Left: Back of the head of the figure in visible light (A), showing no clear hand print, and under UV light (B), where finger prints are visible. Right: Back of the right leg of the figure in visible light (A), showing an unknown clear, glossy material, and under UV (B), where the finger prints are more visible.

After discussion with the project conservator, Carmen Vida, and with Kirstie French, the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s conservator, it was decided that non-destructive material identification of the adhesive material used to make the hand prints will be conducted. In order to identify adhesive materials, conservators use a number of methods, including solubility tests, microchemical tests and what is called Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). By identifying the material trace on the broken foot, it will be possibly to establish when and where the repair was likely to have taken place. And, by comparing this with the material of the hand prints, we will be able to ascertain if these were left at the same time as the repair or relate to another episode in the figure’s biography.

While we wait for the tests to be completed, we can only speculate as to who the hand prints belong to: Perhaps the object’s creator, or a member of the community? Perhaps N. W. Thomas himself, or one of his assistants? Perhaps a long-since retired conservator at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology? Other questions arise. Do the prints on the head and leg belong to the same person? Were they created at the same time? Their orientation may tell us more about how they came to be left. Was the figure being carried or set up straight?

Further investigation will hopefully provide at least some of the answers to these questions. For now, the hand prints remain an opportunity for personal contemplation. Tactility is an essential aspect of human experience, and one that is experienced by nearly everyone as we navigate through our world. So much of our past has come into being through the hands, as well as minds, of artisans, craftspeople and other specialists. At the very least, these hand prints add to the biography of the Ngene figure, instilling in it yet another story of lived experience with which we can connect.

Reference

  • Cole, H. M. and C. C. Aniakor. 1984. Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos. Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles.

Ukhurhẹ – ancestors, archives, interventions

Ukhure carvings commissioned by Northcote Thomas in University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
A selection of ukhurhẹ ancestral staffs collected by Northcote Thomas in the care of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology. Photograph by George Agbo.

The painstaking archival and collections-based research made possible through the Museum Affordances / [Re:]Entanglements project enables us to make novel connections between objects, images, texts and sounds, and opens up new avenues of understanding. Working with the material legacies of Northcote Thomas‘s anthropological surveys in West Africa provides insight into cultural practices of the past, challenges assumptions about colonial collecting, and presents possibilities for creativity and collaboration in the present.

When we first examined a remarkable assemblage of 39 carved wooden ukhurhẹ staffs in the Northcote Thomas Collection at the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology in 2018, we were immediately struck by the freshness of their appearance. As far as we know, they have never been on public display and they had the appearance of coming straight from the carver’s workshop – despite being at least 110 years old.

Brian Heyer provides a succinct summary of such ‘rattle-staffs’ in Kathy Curnow’s book Iyare! Splendor & Tension in Benin’s Palace Theatre. He writes,

When an Ẹdo man dies it is his eldest son’s duty to commission an ukhurhẹ in his honor. He then places it on the family altar as the only essential ritual object there. An ukhurhẹ consists of a wooden staff divided into segments designed to resemble the ukhurhẹ-oho, a bamboo-like plant that grows wild near Benin City. Each segment represents a single lifespan, and linked they are a visual symbol of ancestry and continuity. Their mass numbers on altars stress the importance of the group over the individual.

The top segment of the ukhurhẹ is hollowed by slits, a wooden piece remaining within. This acts as a rattle when the staff is stamped on the ground, a sound said to call the ancestors.

Ukhurhẹ topped by heads are standard for commoners and chiefs. Royal family members’ examples end in hands or hands holding mudfish. Only the Oba’s ukhurhẹ can be made from brass or ivory, though even most of the royal staffs are usually wooden, made by the members of the Igbesanmwan royal carving guild.

Northcote Thomas encountered these ukhurhẹ staffs during his 1909-10 anthropological survey of the Edo people of Southern Nigeria. They were – and, indeed, still are – an important part of the ancestral altars located in chiefly families’ palaces and compounds. Thomas photographed a number of such altars in Benin City itself and in the wider region. In Uzebba, for instance, Thomas noted that ukhurhẹ (which he spelled uxure or uchure) were known as ikuta, but fulfilled a similar memorial function – presencing the ancestors.

Northcote Thomas photographs of ukhure on ancestral altars, Benin City, 1909
Left: Ikuta at ancestral shrine in Uzebba, 1909 (NWT 546, RAI 400.15687); Right: Ukhurhẹ propped against the back wall of Chief Ezomo’s ancestral altar, Benin City, 1909 (NWT 160, RAI 400.17962). Photographs by Northcote Thomas, courtesy Royal Anthropological Institute.

In his Anthropological Report on the Edo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, published in 1910, Thomas explains that these staves – also widely known as rattle-staffs – represent particular male ancestors. They are placed on the family altar after the death of the family head, once he has transitioned into the status of an ancestor. The ukhurhẹ is a manifestation of the ancestor’s spirit, and the family make sacrifices to the ukhurhẹ to honour and seek the intercession of their departed kin. Over the generations the staffs accumulate, alongside other altar objects such as ivory tusks, memorial heads, bells and stone celts.

Excerpt from Northcote Thomas, Anthropological Report on the Edo-speaking Peoples of Southern Nigeria, 1910
Excerpt from Northcote Thomas’s Anthropological Report on the Edo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria (London, 1910), describing the uchure (ukhurhẹ).

In unpublished notes, Thomas describes the practices surround the ukhure in greater detail. He describes, for example, Chief Ero‘s yearly sacrifice to his ancestors in which the blood of sacrificed cows, goats and fowl was smeared on the staffs. He describes how the ukhurhẹ propped against the wall at the ‘shrine of the father’ in Chief Ezomo‘s compound were stained dark brown due to these ‘repeated outpourings of blood’. He also reports that Ero could only give the names of two of the ancestors represented by the staffs, suggesting that the massed staffs come to represent the ancestors in a more collective sense.

In addition to the rattle-staffs found on ancestral altars, Thomas also documents the use of larger, more elaborately carved ukhurhẹ of community cults associated with various divinities. In October 1909, Thomas spent several days observing the festival of the Ovia cult in the town of Iyowa, a few miles north of Benin City. He documented the ceremonies, songs and dances in great detail. (This will be the subject of a future article). The ukhurhẹ of Ovia plays a central part in the festival as a manifestation of the deity itself. The figure on the top of the ukhurhẹ has the same form as the Ovia masquerade, which carries it.

Northcote Thomas's photographs of Ovia Festival, Iyowa, 1909
Left: Ovia masquerade holding the ukhurhẹ (NWT 1276, MAA P.29433); Middle: boys holding Ovia ukhurhẹ staffs for Thomas to photographs, note that the carved figure at the top of each staff has the form of the Ovia masquerade (NWT 1253, RAI 400.18358); Right: Cowries are offered to Ovia on the second day of the festival (NWT 1267, RAI 400.18370). Photographs by Northcote Thomas, courtesy Royal Anthropological Institute and University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology.
Northcote Thomas's typescript notes on the Ovia Festival, Iyowa, 1909
Pages from Northcote Thomas’s unpublished typescript notes about the Ovia Festival, including description of the use of ukhurhẹ. Click image to enlarge.

Forty-four years after Northcote Thomas documented the Ovia Festival at Iyowa, another anthropologist – R. E. Bradbury – made a study of the same festival at Ehor, another village on the northern outskirts of Benin City. Bradbury writes that the ukhurhẹ ‘are the real symbols of Ovia’; ‘they are about four and a half feet high, carved with representations of the Ovia masquerades. They, more than anything else, are identified with Ovia herself who is sometimes said to enter them when she is called upon by the priests’.

Representations of Ovia on ukhure
Left: Detail of two of the Ovia ukhurhẹ photographed by Northcote Thomas in Iyowa (NWT 1253, RAI 400.18358); Right: Detail of Ovia ukhurhẹ collected by Northcote Thomas in Benin City in 1909 (NWT 296, MAA Z 20328). The carved figure has the same form as the Ovia masquerade, with its network headdress surmounted with parrot feather plumes, and crossed sticks beaten during the Ovia dances.

In The Art of Benin, art historian Paula Girschick Ben-Amos explains that the ukhurhẹ of these ‘hero deities’ are ‘different from the more commonly seen ancestral staffs, as they are much thicker and have the figure of a priest or other objects specific to the cult as a finial’. ‘The rattle staff,’ she writes, ‘is both a means of communication with the spirit world, achieved when the staff is struck upon the ground, and a staff of authority, to be wielded only by properly designated persons’.

It is interesting to note that Thomas did not collect any ukhurhẹ that had actually been used in rituals either on ancestral altars or in cult ceremonies. And this brings us back to our initial impressions of the assemblage of ukhurhẹ we encountered in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores in 2018.

Ukhure carvings commissioned by Northcote Thomas in University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
A selection of ukhure ancestral staffs collected by Northcote Thomas in the care of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology. Photograph by Paul Basu.

Prior to our examination of the staves we had found an intriguing exchange of letters between Northcote Thomas and Charles Hercules Read, who, in 1909, was Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum. The letters show that Thomas was under the impression that Read had agreed to acquire the collections he had been gathering during his survey, reimbursing his initial outlay in purchasing them. It is clear, however, that Read was not interested in the kinds of ‘ethnographical specimens’ that Thomas was collecting. Writing from Benin City in July 1909, Thomas explained, for example, that ‘I have ordered all the “jujus” of Benin City to be carved, probable cost £25’. Read replied in August that ‘I am by no means sure that I want these modern things made to order as it were, unless they serve some definite and immediate purpose’.

Correspondence between Northcote Thomas and C. H. Read of the British Museum, 1909
Correspondence between Northcote Thomas and C. H. Read of the British Museum, 14 July 1909 and 20 August 1909. British Museum original correspondence. Click image to enlarge.

Given the freshness of the carvings, we suspected that the carved ‘jujus’ Thomas refers to in this letter were the ukhurhẹ staffs, each surmounted with a figure representing a different deity or ebo. Confirmation of this came, by chance, a couple of years later, when we found a further reference to the carvings in correspondence between Thomas and the German anthropologist Bernhard Struck, curator at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden. Thomas and Struck maintained a professional correspondence over many years and, in a 1924 letter sent from his home near Oswestry, Thomas provides detailed corrections and comments on an scholarly article Struck was evidently working on. In a digression, Thomas notes that ‘There are 30-40 ebo; I have commissioned [herstellen lassen] the uxure from Eholo nigbesawa. They are in Cambridge’.

Correspondence between Northcote Thomas and Bernhard Struck
Excerpts from a letter from Northcote Thomas to Bernhard Struck, 6 August 1924. Thomas was a fluent German speaker/writer. In the letter Thomas comments on the manuscript of an article Struck is writing; this seems to correspond with Struck’s essay ‘Chronologie der Benin-Altertümer’ [Chronology of Benin Antiquities], but this was published in the journal Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1923.

Elsewhere in the same letter, Thomas explains that ‘Eholo nigbesawa’ means Eholo the woodworker [Holzarbeiter]. In fact, however, Eholo is the title given to the head of the wood and ivory carvers’ guild, the Igbesanmwan – and the name/title should be Eholo N’Igbesamwan. It seems, therefore, that Thomas commissioned the ukhurhẹ from Eholo N’Igbesamwan and they were either carved by him personally or by other members of the guild. According to the Historical UK inflation rate calculator, the estimated cost of £25 corresponds to approximately £2850 today, so this would have been a significant and lucrative commission.

The story of how the ukhurhẹ were obtained is important, not least since it challenges stereotypical assumptions that colonial-era collectors such as Thomas either looted objects from sacred sites or else exploited local craftspeople by paying paltry sums for their work.

Whereas Read saw little value or purpose in these ‘modern things made to order’, it appears that, for Thomas, this was an opportunity to assemble what he perceived as a complete set of representations of Edo deities in a traditional form. While many of these deities are associated with identifiable symbols or regalia, such as that of Ovia, Thomas may have been projecting his own assumptions about the distinct visual representation of each ebo when he commissioned them to be carved in this way. Perhaps the carvers even encouraged him in this belief! In the labels attached to each ukhurhẹ and in the corresponding catalogue of collections, each is given its name.

Excerpt from catalogue of objects collected by Northcote Thomas in Southern Nigeria, 1909-10
Above: Pages from the collections catalogue from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 tour, listing the names of the various ebo represented on the ukhurhẹ staffs; Below: Carved figures on the tops of the ukhurhẹ commissioned by Thomas, corresponding to the list above. Click images to enlarge.

Carvers still produce ukhurhẹ in Benin City today, and many families still maintain traditional ancestral altars in their compounds.

Ukhure for sale in carvers' shops in Benin City
Ukhurhẹ for sale in carvers’ shops in Benin City today. Left, the shop of William Edosomwan, Igun Street; Right, Emma O. Carving Depot, Igbesanmwan Street. Photographs by Paul Basu.
Ukhure on ancestral altar at Ezomo's Palace, Benin City
Chief Ezomo, James Okponmwense, shows us the ancestral shrine at his Palace. None of the ukhurhẹ are of particular antiquity. He explained that most of the shrine objects were sold or stolen in the 1980s. Photograph by Paul Basu.

As part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, we commissioned an ukhurhẹ to be made as a memorial to Northcote Thomas himself. We worked with traditional carver Felix Ekhator, who has a workshop on Sokponba Road, Benin City, just opposite the famous Igun Street. Felix’s first calling was as a professional wrestler, but in the late 1970s he followed in his father’s footsteps and focused on woodworking as a career. He made our ukhurhẹ in the traditional way from the wood of a kola tree, which is hard and durable. At its top Felix carved the figure of Northcote Thomas, copying his posture and clothing from a photograph taken on his 1909-10 tour.

Felix Ekhator carving new commission of ukhure featuring Northcote Thomas, Benin City
Above and below: Felix Ekhator working on the Northcote Thomas ukhurhẹ in his workshop off Sokponba Road, Benin City. Photographs by George Agbo.
Felix Ekhator carving new commission of ukhure featuring Northcote Thomas, Benin City
Felix Ekhator and the finished ukhure featuring Northcote Thomas, Benin City
Felix Ekhator with the finished Northcote Thomas ukhurhẹ. Photograph by Paul Basu.

The finished ukhurhẹ is on display alongside a selection of those commissioned by Thomas 110 years previously in Benin City at the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology (June 2021 to April 2022). The exhibition uses contemporary artworks, such as Felix Ekhator’s ukhurhẹ, as interventions to disrupt conventional expectations of what an ‘ethnographic’ or ‘historical’ display should be, and provoke further questions. Should, for example, we honour Northcote Thomas, the colonial-era anthropologist, as an ancestor? Should we introduce his presence, his agency, alongside the cultural artefacts that he caused to be produced?


Ukhurhe installation at the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition
Photographs of the ukhurhẹ installation at the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. Felix Ekhator’s contemporary ukhure disrupts our reading of the historical ‘specimens’ commissioned by Thomas.
Ukhurhe installation at the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition

We gratefully acknowledge a small grant from the Crowther-Beynon Fund that enabled us to commission the new ukhurhẹ from Felix Ekhator.

Art, appropriation, activism

Rosa Johan Uddoh, South London Gallery
Photographs of Benin objects from the Northcote Thomas collection. Artist Rosa-Johan Uddoh preparing for a workshop with the Art Assassins at the South London Gallery.

[Re:]Entanglements is collaborating with the Art Assassins, the young people’s forum of the South London Gallery in Peckham. As part of the project, the Art Assassins are working with a number of London-based artists and researchers with connections to West Africa. The idea is for each artist or researcher to use their creative practice to help the Art Assassins explore the collections and archives assembled by the colonial anthropologist, Northcote Thomas, in Nigeria and Sierra Leone in the early 20th century, and consider their relevance for young people in South London today. The Art Assassins’ work will culminate in an exhibition at the South London Gallery which they will curate themselves.

The second artist to collaborate with the group is Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Rosa is an interdisciplinary artist inspired by black feminist practice and writing. Using performance, ceramics and sound, she explores a seeming infatuation with places, objects and celebrities in British popular culture, and the effects of these on self-formation. Rosa originally studied architecture at university, and she continues to draw upon this background, rooting stories in specific spaces and materials. 

Rosa Johan Uddoh, The Serve, 2007
Blurring reality and fiction, Rosa-Johan Uddoh’s performance art, The Serve, 2017-19. Photograph by Sam Nightingale.

For her project with the Art Assassins, Rosa is working with the group to create a performance piece inspired by the material culture collections made by Thomas, now in the care of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Linking back to her own practice, Rosa is challenging the group to consider what these objects can tell us about colonial legacies in contemporary British society. Confronted with the huge number of items within the collection, the Art Assassins and Rosa have chosen to focus on materials Thomas collected from Benin City, in present day Edo State, Nigeria. Benin and Britain both possessed empires – a fact that has provided a starting point for the Art Assassins’ performance.

Art Assassins workshop with Rosa Johan Uddoh, South London Gallery
Rosa and the Art Assassins working on their collages at the South London Gallery.

In her first workshop with the Art Assassins, Rosa asked the group to explore the possible dialogues between the Benin City objects and contemporary British culture. Presenting the group with a stack of free newspapers, Rosa asked the Art Assassins to produce collaborative collages that juxtaposed the objects with images of celebrities, current affairs headlines and advertisements. When sharing back their finished collages, the group discussed whether notions of empire were still prevalent in the UK today and how pop culture can address serious subjects.

Rosa Johan Uddoh, Benin collage
Examples of the Art Assassin’s collaborative collages – appropriating the archive, juxtaposing historical collections from Benin with newspaper images, headlines and adverts.
Art Assassins, Benin collages

In the next workshop the Art Assassins started to plan more specifically which objects they would focus on for their performance. By looking into the biographies of objects in more detail, via the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Cambridge’s online catalogue, the group found out about their origins. Rosa then asked the group to ‘cast’ these objects into a TV show format of their choice. By combining the object biographies with a TV show structure the group then formed possible narratives for the performance. These played out the complex relationship between anthropology and its subjects and objects.

Art Assassins workshop with Rosa Johan Uddoh, South London Gallery
Rosa and the Art Assassins discussing TV show narratives inspired by the object biographies of material culture collections assembled by Northcote Thomas in Benin City.

In recent workshops the Art Assassins have been working on ideas for the costume in their performance. As research the group have been looking at how archival objects and images have been appropriated in design for activism and protest. The group explored examples such as Black Lives Matter in the USA, Sisters Uncut in the UK and the Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eight Amendment in Ireland. These have all used strategies of appropriation, scaling and performance to convey a message.

Black Lives Matter, Eric Garner eyes
Examples of the appropriation of images and objects in activism. Above, Black Lives Matter protesters march behind a large banner featuring a photograph of the eyes of Eric Garner, New York City, 2014 (Photograph JR-ART.net); Below, Rachel Fallon’s ‘Aprons of Power‘, part of the Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eight Amendment, Limerick, 2018. (Photographs by Darren Ryan and Alison Laredo.)

Over the next months the Art Assassins will continue to work with Rosa to develop the narrative, costumes and staging for their performance. They will also participate in museum conservation training at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology to learn more about uncovering the stories that objects in the Thomas collection can tell.

The Art Assassins are making a film about their explorations of the Northcote Thomas archive. At each of their meetings, they take it in turn to make video diaries recording their experiences. Here Mia and Phaedra reflect on the workshops run by Rosa.

Sacred stone axes on Benin altars

Detail of ancestral shrine at Chief Ezomo’s palace, Benin City, showing stone axe head. Photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1909. NWT 160, RAI 400.17962.

During his anthropological survey of the Edo-speaking people of Nigeria in 1909-10, Northcote Thomas spent several months working in Benin City itself. His photographs of the City’s prominent chiefs, its architecture, shrines and markets provide an important record of the capital of the Benin Empire just 12 years after its fall at the hands of the British Punitive Expedition. Although accounts of the sacking of Benin City in 1897 suggest that little was left of Benin’s centuries-old civilization, it is clear from Thomas’s photographs that much escaped destruction and not everything was looted.

Ozomo shrine, Benin City, 1909
Ancestral shrine at Chief Ezomo’s palace, Benin City. Photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1909. NWT 160, RAI 400.17962.

Thomas documented a number of Benin shrines in considerable detail. His photographs of the ancestral altar at Chief Ezomo‘s palace, for example, shows many of the classic Benin shrine objects such as rattle staffs (ukhurhẹ), memorial heads (uhunmwun) and altar bells (eroro). Of these ritual objects, Thomas seems to have been particularly intrigued by the presence of polished stone axes or celts in these assemblages.

Polished stone axe, Ozomo shrine, Benin City, 1909
Close up of stone axe head from the ancestral shrine at Chief Ezomo’s palace, Benin City. Photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1909. Note that the axe head has been propped up against Thomas’s pith helmet to take the photograph. NWT 157, RAI 400.17960.

Thomas’s anthropological reports and other publications contain no information about these stone axes. Indeed, it is important to note that the vast majority of Thomas’s fieldwork findings remained unpublished. In a letter written in 1923 to his friend and colleague Bernhard Struck, Curator of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden, he notes that he published only 10 per cent of his material from his Edo tour – that deemed to be of relevance to members of the colonial service. Among the fragments of unpublished fieldnotes and manuscripts that survive, however, there are a few pages in which he discusses the celts.

Northcote Thomas, Edo manuscript, stone celts
Unpublished handwritten manuscript notes on ‘stone implements’ from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 Edo tour. The hand-writing on these pages is not Thomas’s – possibly that of an assistant or his wife. University of Cambridge Library.

Thomas writes that ‘Aro [i.e. Chief Ero] told me that they were used with Osun [a deity] or put in the ancestral shrines to represent their fathers, and were also used in foretelling’. They could also be used as objects to swear by or curse: ‘Chief Ine of Edo said that when they have to reprove a wife or child or anyone, they take a stone implement and lick it and curse them. If a man is before them whom they wish to curse, they take a stone and an uxure [ukhurhẹ]. They knock the uxure on the ground, lick the stone and blow the spittle over the man and wish that he may not prosper’.

Northcote Thomas, Edo manuscript, stone celts
Unpublished handwritten manuscript notes on ‘stone implements’ from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 Edo tour. The hand-writing on these pages is Thomas’s. University of Cambridge Library.

It was not only in Benin City that Thomas encountered these stone implements. He also records examples in Irrua, Okpe, Otua and other locations in what is today Edo State. At Okpe he was shown a stone called ‘esax evalalox umu‘ [?] that was said to have fallen from the sky. Elsewhere he was told that ‘a stone axe is a “steward” of lightning’, and in Otua he explains that they are placed in the Osun shrine, and if they are given palm oil (as a sacrifice), then lightning will not strike the house.

The association between these axe heads and lightning is widespread, not only throughout West Africa, but also in Europe and elsewhere, where they are regarded as ‘thunderbolts’ or ‘thunderstones‘ – weapons wielded by gods of thunder, hurled to earth, and not of human manufacture. In 1903, Henry Balfour, Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, had written about such ‘”Thunderbolt” Celts from Benin’ in the anthropological journal Man, which was then edited by Thomas. In a later article in Folklore, in which he surveyed the phenomenon of thunderbolts throughout the world, Balfour also discussed a number of small bronze pendants in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection made in the form of miniature stone axes, which had also been acquired in Benin City

Pitt Rivers Museum, bronze amulet representation of thunder stone
Left: excerpt and figures from Henry Balfour’s article ‘Concerning Thunderbolts’, originally read to the Folklore Society in 1929. Here Balfour describes and illustrates the miniature bronze reproductions of stone axes from Benin in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection. Right: a more recent photograph of one of these bronze pendants (Figure 11 in the 1929 article), PRM 1909.61.1.

In addition to the examples he photographed at Chief Ezomo’s palace, Thomas also photographed an assemblage of stone axes from an ancestral shrine at Chief Ogiame’s palace in Benin City, and another set at a shrine dedicated to the deity Oxwahe at Eviakoi, in the north-west outskirts of Benin City. Thomas also appears to have collected a number of examples, including one evidently dug up during forestry operations, although we have been unable to trace any of them during our research at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores.

Stone implements from Ogiame shrine, Benin City,1909
Stone axe heads from an ancestral shrine at Chief Ogiame’s palace, Benin City. Photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1909. Clockwise from top left: NWT 80, RAI 400.17889; NWT 83, RAI 400.17893; NWT 82, RAI 400.17893; NWT 81b, RAI 400.17891.
Face of Ochwaihe, Eviakoi, Benin City, 1909
Oxwahe shrine, Eviakoi, Benin City. Photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1909. In addition to the stone celts placed on the altar, the assemblage in the recess includes lozenge-shaped shaped blocks of kaolin clay/chalk (orhue), also a ritual substance. On the envelope in which the negative was stored, Thomas has written ‘Face of Ochwaihe [Oxwahe]’. NWT 1206. RAI 400.18311.
Stone implements from Ochwaihe, Benin City,1909
Stone axe heads/implements from the Oxwahe shrine, Eviakoi, Benin City. Photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1909. Clockwise from top left: NWT 1208, RAI 400.18313; NWT 1209, RAI 400.18313; NWT 1210b, RAI 400.18316; NWT 1210, RAI 400.18315.

It was not until Graham Connah‘s Polished Stone Axes in Benin, published in Nigeria in 1964, that a more substantial study of these stones became available. A British archaeologist, Connah had been appointed by the Federal Department of Antiquities to conduct a programme of archaeological excavation in Benin City in 1961. Connah was interested in these prehistoric stone axes since they represented the earliest evidence of ‘human industry’ in the region. During his research, Connah was able to consult authorities such as the well-known historian and curator of the Benin Museum, Chief Jacob Egharevba, as well as the Oba of Benin, Akenzua II, himself.

Connah, Polished Stone Axes in Benin
Front cover and illustration from Graham Connah’s Polished Stone Axes in Benin publication. The photograph (top right) is a detail of a brass altar group thought to depict Oba Ohen at the Agwe festival, holding a stone axe head in his left hand. The line drawing is of an axe head obtained from Chief Osuabor of Benin City. Both were/are in the collection of the National Museum, Benin.

Connah provided a review of the existing, though scant, literature on the celts and drew attention to the depiction of such axes in some of the famous Benin bronze artworks. With Egharevba, he also acquired over 20 examples for the Benin Museum, the close examination of which formed the focus of his publication. It is evident that Connah had no knowledge of Northcote Thomas’s unpublished photographs and notes, which would have otherwise made an important contribution to his study.

Connah, Polished Stone Axes in Benin
Plate 5 from Graham Connah’s Polished Stone Axes in Benin. ‘Group of polished stone axes etc. on Oba Akenzua II’s shrine to Eweka II. (Note matchbox positioned for scale.)

In the present context, perhaps the most interesting section of Connah’s publication is that on ‘Bini beliefs about stone axes’. Connah notes that the Bini call the axes ughavan, a contraction of ughamwan (axe) prefixed to avan (thunder), and meaning ‘thunder-axe’ or ‘thunderbolt’. In the early 1960s they were evidently not uncommonly found on household shrines throughout Benin City, and Connah states that they could be seen on Oba Akenzua II’s shrines to his predecessors, Eweka II, Overamwen and Adolo. In historical bronzes, obas are sometimes depicted holding an ughavan in their left hand. Here, its function is ‘to increase the potency of a cursing or blessing’.

Altar pieces Benin from Plankensteiner, Benin Kings and Rituals
Two 18th-century altar groups depicting obas holding thunder-axes in their left hands. Left: Oba Akenzua I (ascended throne c. 1711-15); right: Oba Ewuakpe (ascended throne c.1685-1700), both in the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. Reproduced from Benin Kings and Rituals exhibition catalogue, ed. Barbara Plankensteiner.

Connah further notes that there was no realisation in Benin that these prehistoric stone tools had a functional origin. ‘To the Bini’, he writes, ‘they are “thunderbolts”, and “thunderbolts” they remain. Any suggestion that they could be stone tools made at a time before the availability of iron in West Africa is met by polite misbelief’. He also doubts that they have been made in more recent centuries for ‘cult purposes’, having recorded stories about how they were found during farming or embedded in trees that have been struck by lightning.

In her recent book, Iyare! Splendor and Tension in Benin’s Palace Theatre, Kathy Curnow provides a succinct summary of these fascinating objects:

Prehistoric stone axe heads antedate metal tools. Easily damaged, they were tossed away and replaced, and readily turn up today when land is farmed. In Benin, as in many other parts of the world, they are not always recognized as man-made objects. Instead, they are considered thunderstones (ughavan), the product of lightning strikes. The Edo believe Ogiuwu, the god of death, hurls them to the ground as manifestations of his power and anger. The Oba likewise has the right to kill, and gripped thunderstones or celts to magnify his curses. Still kept on altars, they call the ancestors into service as witnesses and supporters.

References

  • Balfour, H. 1903. ‘”Thunderbolt” Celts from Benin’, Man, vol.3, pp.182-3.
  • Balfour, H. 1929. ‘Concerning Thunderbolts’, Folklore, vol.40, pp.37-49, 168-173.
  • Connah, G. 1964. Polished Stone Axes in Benin. Nigerian National Press.
  • Curnow, K. 2016. Iyare! Splendor and Tension in Benin’s Palace Theatre. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
  • Plankensteiner, B. (ed.) 2007. Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria. Snoeck Publishers, Ghent.

All Northcote Thomas photographs reproduced here have been scanned from the glass plate negatives in the collection of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and are reproduced courtesy of the Institute.

Conservation notes: ‘Akosi’ figure from Fugar

‘Akosi’ shrine figure collected by Northcote Thomas in Fugar in present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909.

In her latest blog post from UCL’s Conservation Lab, Carmen Vida discusses how Northcote Thomas’s historical field photographs inform the work of reassembling ‘composite’ objects from the collection and help conservators’ make decisions about appropriate conservation treatments.

It often comes as a bit of a surprise to people when they first get to know about museum conservation to learn that conservators do not necessarily always do everything that can be done to an object, or try to make it complete, new, or ‘like it was’. Out of many possibilities, conservators decide on what is an appropriate treatment for each object in dialogue with experts, curators and other stakeholders. As a conservator, I am very aware that every conservation intervention is a new event in the life of an object, an event that can be ‘life-changing’ – though, hopefully, a change for the better by extending the object’s life and making it more meaningful to others. It is the conservator’s job to ensure that the conservation intervention always fits with and helps reveal what the ‘life’ of the object was and is, and that it never obscures its significance, values and stories, but rather helps to reveal them.

For conservators, damage is not always bad. It can, rather, be an interesting thing: it can, for example, tell us about the way an object was used, help us to understand its ‘biography’, inform us about the conditions in which it has be stored, and so forth. For this reason, conservation always starts with research and investigation. We seek to get to know an object as closely as possible through documentation, through comparison with similar or related objects, and through the signs left on the object by its previous history. This helps us to design conservation treatments that fit with the object’s past history as well as its present and future use. In a way, conservation is a bit of a time machine, moving between the object’s past, present and future!  

As discussed in a previous post, Giving Objects a Voice, many objects appear to be ‘mute’. That is, they have no accompanying information, and conservators must rely entirely on what they can discover from their analysis of the object itself. But working with the collections assembled by Northcote Thomas is providing me with a unique opportunity because the archive itself is so rich and varied: not only objects, but written records, sound recordings and, very importantly for the conservator, historic photographs. These different elements in the archive can sometimes be brought together to shed light on each other. So just as the historic photographs of people have been affording their descendants in West Africa the possibility of reconnecting with their ancestors (see for instance the blog Ancestral Reconnections), the historic photographs of the objects are affording conservators the possibility of reconnecting with the earlier life of some of the objects we are treating. This information is vital to guide our conservation treatment choices because it allows us to compare two different moments in the life of the object, and it helps us decide what the treatment should achieve and how. It ultimately helps us make ethical treatment decisions.

Elements of the figure prior to conservation. NWT 2659. MAA Z 12292, Z 12293, Z 12294.

Some of the objects we have been working with in the UCL Conservation Lab illustrate this well. I have recently been revisiting the treatment of a figure that Thomas collected in Fugar in present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909, which was conserved by one of our students last summer. In Thomas’s catalogue, the figure is labelled with the single word ‘akosi’, with no further information. The object is a ‘composite’ insofar as it consists of several elements and materials: (1) a carved wooden figurine with a feather, (2) a red glass bead ‘necklace’ or ‘bracelet’, and (3) a ‘headdress’ consisting of strings of cowrie shells threaded though cane and plant material. At the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, these three elements have been accessioned and stored separately. Bringing together the [Re:]Entanglements project’s archival research, collections-based research and fieldwork, it has, however, been possible to re-associate the elements that make up this assemblage with reference to a photograph that Thomas made of the figure at the time of collection. This, we assume, shows the assemblage as Thomas initially encountered it in its original context.

Northcote Thomas's photograph of 'akosi' figure, taken in Fugar in 1909.
Northcote Thomas’s field photograph of the ‘akosi’ shrine figure, taken in Fugar, present-day Edo State, Nigeria, in 1909. NWT 1095. MAA P.29204.
Fieldwork in Fugar, examining Thomas's photograph of the 'akosi'.
Discussing Northcote Thomas’s photograph of the ‘akosi’ figure during fieldwork in Fugar, March 2020. Paul Basu notes that ‘Those we spoke with in Fugar did not recognise the type of figure or the word”akosi” recorded by Thomas. In some dialects of the Edo language, however, “akosie” refers to shrine figures moulded from mud. The Fugar carving resembles an “ikenga” or “okega” figure more typically found in Igbo- and Igala-speaking areas of Nigeria, where they are a form of ‘alusi’ (deity). Igala and Igbo influence can be discerned in masquerades and material culture in the area around Fugar. An example of an “okega” from Igala in the Smithsonian collection shares some features with that collected by Thomas in Fugar’. Photograph by Paul Basu.

This ‘akosi’ figure will form part of the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition scheduled to open at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in April 2021. As such, one of the conservation treatment aims was to ensure that, after 111 years, all three elements could once again be put back together for display.

'Akosi' assemblage collected by Northcote Thomas in Fugar in 1909.
Elements of the figure prior to conservation annotated to highlight areas of damage (see notes below).

An initial condition assessment of the object revealed several instances of damage:

  1. The wooden figure was covered in surface dirt and dust, and debris from insect activity.
  2. There was a through crack in the left wrist that severed it completely from the rest of the arm.
  3. The left foot had suffered extensive insect damage and was largely missing.
  4. The feather had also suffered extensive insect damage and was dirty, broken and misshapen. There is a corresponding hole on the right side of the figure where presumably a second feather used to be, but this is totally missing now.
  5. The cane and plant fibres in the cowrie shell headdress had become brittle, inflexible and unable to support the weight of the cowries. The headdress was made up of five tendrils. Of these, one was very short and another slightly shorter than the other three. There were also loose cowries bagged separately, indicating that perhaps originally there were only four strands and that when one had broken, the broken end had been reattached at the top.

We had to decide what level of treatment would be appropriate for each of these issues, and we were able to do so thanks to the possibility of referring to the historic photograph.

Annotated photograph of 'akosi' figure, taken in Fugar in 1909.
Annotations on Northcote Thomas’s 1909 photograph of the figure showing existing condition and damage at the time of collection (see notes below).

Close examination of the photograph revealed:

  1. That the surface dirt present was most likely museum dirt, although there were areas of dirt in the original figure the ghost of which could still be seen in the object. For this reason, it was decided to sensitively clean the wooden elements with only dry cleaning methods and to avoid the use of any solvent which may have removed more than simple surface dirt. In this way we could guarantee the cleaning of recent dirt but leave behind any deposits that may be related to the use or beliefs associated with the figure.
  2. The through crack on the wrist can already be seen in the historic photograph. Wood is anisotropic and moves in different directions in reaction to changes in humidity and temperature. Cracks of this type often occur through movement tensions in green wood that has not been properly allowed to dry before being carved. That the crack can already be seen in the historic photograph suggests that the object may have already been in existence for some time before Thomas acquired it. This information clarified that it would be totally inappropriate to fill that crack because it has been there for over 100 years and allowed the wood to move in response to environmental changes without further stresses, but also because a fill would have obscured important information about the object history.
  3. The insect damage caused to the left foot can also be seen in the historic photograph, although perhaps it was not as extensive then. Because of this, only minimal intervention fills were done to support any areas at risk. The fills were done with long fibre Japanese tissue paper (a very thin but strong paper) and a cellulose based adhesive that was sympathetic to the nature of wood. Watercolours were used to tint the Japanese tissue paper to blend the fills with the surrounding wood. The insect damage visible in the historic photograph again seems to indicate that the object was not new when it was acquired by Thomas.
  4. Two feathers are visible in the historic photo, one on either side. The remaining feather was repaired with fills done in the vane to strengthen it and realign it back to its original shape. The feather was also dry surface cleaned and also cleaned with solvents to restore its shape as much as possible.
  5. It was clear from the historic photos that only four strands of similar length were originally present as part of the cowries headdress, confirming that the two shorter strands were originally one and that the loose cowries were probably part of this broken strand. That information, together with the need to strengthen the cane so that it would be able to support the weight, allowed us to take quite an interventive approach: the fourth strand was lengthened with the lose cowries, and all the strands were stabilized by threading them with nylon fishing wire, to support the weight instead of the fragile cane threading. Tinted epoxy buttons were made matching the colour of the cowries to serve as stoppers for each of the cowrie strands. Three nylon lengths were braided to create a stronger wire that was used at the top of the object to connect the nylon fishing wire used on the cowrie strands, and to allow the headdress to sit again on top of the figure during exhibition.
Cowrie 'headdress', part of Aksoi assemblage photographed and collected by Northcote Thomas in Fugar, 1909.
The cowrie ‘headdress’ after conservation treatment. The nylon thread is nearly invisible, but can just be made out, particularly at the top.

The conservation treatment given to this object is a good illustration of the decision making processes we conservators go through as part of our work. Ethical treatment decisions were made in this case because we were seeking to stabilise the object and bring it to the condition that best reflected its values and affordances. This meant different approaches to different areas of the object:  minimal intervention was adopted for most elements whereas the headdress required a far more interventive solution to allow the object to be displayed back together and have its integrity restored.

Traditional Nigerian Folktales

Pages from Northcote Thomas’s Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria; Part IV: Proverbs, Stories, Tones in Ibo (London, 1914). Click here to open in a new browser window.

In the early 20th century, the disciplines of anthropology and folklore studies were very close. Prior to his appointment as Government Anthropologist in 1909, Northcote Thomas was a member of the Councils of both the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Folklore Society. Folklorists, in particular, documented traditional stories and songs, and Thomas had edited a number of such collections.

During his anthropological surveys in Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone, Thomas recorded many stories on wax cylinder phonographs. He transcribed and published many of these in his Anthropological Reports and in articles in the journal Man. Other than regarding these as specimens of ‘native texts’ (though, of course, they were not ‘texts’ but oral traditions), he provided little explanation or commentary. Given that his surveys were intended to be of practical value to the colonial governments that were funding them, neither did he attempt to explain the utility of collecting the stories from a governmental perspective. As with so many aspects of Thomas’s surveys, while the value of the research at the time was unclear, the significance of the recordings as historical documents is now considerable.

The recordings are, however, challenging to listen to and the transcriptions and translations Thomas provided have many errors and inconsistencies. The potential for future research is immense. To illustrate this the [Re:]Entanglements project has worked with Yvonne Mbanefo of the Igbo Studies Initiative and Ugonna Umeike of the Department of Fine and Applied Art, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to bring some of the stories to life. Yvonne has rendered some of the stories into contemporary Standard Igbo, re-recorded and translated them, while Ugonna has illustrated the stories, drawing upon Northcote Thomas’s photographs for visual reference. Here is one of the stories Thomas recorded in Asaba in 1913…

Akuko onye isi, onye ngwuro, ogbenye na Eze

(The Story of the Blind Man, the Cripple, the Poor Man, the Thief and the King)

Above: Ugonna Umeike’s illustration of the story; below: some of Northcote Thomas’s photographs used as visual references informing the illustration.
Northcote Thomas’s original 1913 recording of the story. NWT 613. (British Library C51/2930.)
Re-recording of the story in Standard Igbo. Transcription/translation by Yvonne Mbanefo; voiced by Oba Kosi Nwoba.

Otu nwoke onye isi nọ n’obodo ọ maara ọfuma oge oke ụganị dakwasara ya.
A blind man was in a town that he knew very well when a great famine befell him.
Ọ gara na be Eze obodo ahụ, wee yọọ ya nri.
He went to the king of that town, and asked him for food.
Eze nyere ya ji na anụ, ọ wee were obi aṅụrị pụọ.
The king gave him yams and meat, and he walked away rejoicing.
Mana tupuu ọ pụọ, Eze nyere ya ndụmọdụ, gwa ya ka ọ ghara ịgwa onye ọbụla na e nyere ya nri.
But before he went the king advised him not to tell anyone that he was given the food items.
Ọ pụwara, wee hụ onye ngwụrọ bụ onye oke agụụ ji,
He walked  away and  met the cripple who was very hungry
Wee gwa ya ka ọ gaa na nke Eze ka ọ nata ya ihe oriri.
And he told him to go to the king to receive things to eat from him.
Onye ngwụrọ gakwuuru Eze wee yọọ ya nri.
The cripple went to the king and asked him for food.
Eze jụrụ ya onye gwara ya na ọ nwere nri.
The king asked him who told him he had food.
O kwuru na ọ bụ onye isi gwara ya.
He said it was the blind man that told him.
Eze weere ji na anụ nye ya, ka o si nye onye isi.
The king took yams and meat and gave to him as he gave to the blind man.
Ọ nyekwara ya otu ndụmọdụ ahụ.
He gave him the same advice.
Ozugbo nje, onye ngwụrọ wee jiri nwayọọ wee laa.
Immediately the cripple went quietly.
Ọ gatụrụ n’ụzọ, wee hụ ogbenye, malite kwuwe n’olu ike
He went a little way, then met a poor man and began saying in a loud voice,
“Gakwuru Eze maka oke nke gị; ọ na-eyere ndị nwere nsogbu.”
“Go to the king for your share; he is aiding the helpless.”
Ogbenye gakwuuru Eze wee yọọ ya oke nke ya.
The poor man went to the king and at once asked for his own share.
Eze jụrụ ya onye gwara ya na ọ na-enye ndị mmadụ nri.
The king asked him who told him he was giving food to people.
O kwuru na ọ bụ onye ngwụrọ.
He said it was the cripple.
Eze nyere ya ihe ka o sị nye Onye ngwụrọ, wee gwakwa ya ihe ọ gwara ya (onye ngwụrọ).
The king gave to him as he gave to the cripple, and told him the same word he told him (the cripple).
Ogbenye pụwara, wee hụ onye ohi.
The poor man went away and saw a thief.
Onye ohi yọrọ ya gwa ya ebe ọ nwetara ji na anụ mana ogbenye ekweghịị.
The thief begged him to tell him where he got yams and meat but the poor man refused.  
Onye ohi gakwuuru Eze ka ọ yọọ ya nri.
The thief went to the king to ask for food.
Eze jụrụ ya onye ọ hụrụ n’ụzọ.
The king asked him whom he met on the road.
Ọ gwara ya na ọ bụ onye ngwụrọ.
He said it was the cripple.
Eze jụrụ ya ma ọ nwere ihe ọ gwara ya, ọ wee sị mba.
The king asked him whether he told him anything and he said no.
Ọ gwara ya gaa n’ụlọ onye isi na onye ngwụrọ, zuo ihe ha nwere.
He said go to the house of the blind man and cripple and steal what they have.
Eze gwakwara ya hapụ ogbenye, ka a ghara ikpe ya n’aka Eze.
The king told him to leave the poor man alone so that he does not get reported to the king.
Onye ohi zuuru ihe onye isi, ma onye isi ahụghị ya, zuo ihe onye ngwụrọ ma onye ngwụrọ enweghi ike iso ya.
The thief robbed the blind man who didn’t see him, he robbed the cripple who couldn’t chase after him.
Ọ bụrụ na o zuuru ihe ogbenye, Ogbenye ga- ekpe ya n’aka Eze.
If he had robbed the poor man, the poor man would have reported him to the king.


Many thanks Yvonne, Kosi and Ugonna for bringing this story to life for us!

[Re:]Entangled Traditions exhibition, Nsukka

Re-entangled Traditions exhibition, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
‘Red cap chiefs’ appreciating Chijioke Onuora’s large scale batik portrait of Ezeana Odigbo.

For 10 days in February 2020, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka hosted the third [Re:]Entanglements project exhibition to take place in Nigeria. The exhibition, ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions: Nsukka Experiments with an Anthropological Archive’, was the culmination of a collaboration between the project and eleven artists associated with the famous ‘Nsukka Art School‘, as well as colleagues from the departments of Music and Linguistics.

Nsukka’s Department of Fine and Applied Arts was established in 1961 by Ben Enwonwu and was one of the earliest departments of the University of Nigeria. The Department became famous in the years following the Biafran War (1967-70) when luminaries such as Uche Okeke, Chike Aniakor and Obiora Udechukwu began turning away from Western art traditions and finding inspiration in indigenous art, culture and philosophy. In particular a number of artists began rediscovering and experimenting with Igbo uli body and wall art traditions. Northcote Thomas‘s photographs are some of the earliest and most comprehensive visual documentations of uli wall paintings. This represents an important new reservoir of traditional uli work and, not surprisingly, a number of the participating artists drew upon these photographs in their contemporary works in different media.

Re-entangled Traditions exhibition, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Visitors at the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

As with earlier exhibitions in Benin City and Lagos, the objective of the collaboration was to explore the ‘creative affordances‘ of the photographs, sound recordings and artefact collections produced during Northcote Thomas’s anthropological surveys in Nigeria between 1909 and 1913. As the leading university in the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria, the Nsukka collaboration focused on materials assembled by Thomas during his second and third tours – those focusing on areas of what are now Anambra and Delta states.

The collaboration began in 2018 with an open workshop to introduce prospective participants to the [Re:]Entanglements project and Thomas’s archival materials. Following a call to submit proposals, projects were given the go-ahead and provided with a budget to cover materials and expenses. A follow-up workshop took place in 2019 in which participants presented their works-in-progress.

The exhibition was opened by HRM Obi Martha Dunkwu, the Omu Anioma, a well known female chief from Delta State. The Omu has been a close friend of the [Re:]Entanglements project since our visit to Okpanam. In a very moving speech Obi Martha Dunkwu told the story of how Northcote Thomas’s 1912 photograph of the Omu of Okpanam settled a dispute in which the Omu’s right to wear the red cap of chiefly office had been contested. The story illustrated powerfully how these colonial era archives could intervene in contemporary issues. The Omu explained that this was no small matter.

Re-entangled Traditions exhibition, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Scenes from the opening event with special guest HRM Obi Martha Dunkwu, the Omu Anioma.

There was a lively and well-attended opening ceremony in which each of the artists presented their work to the Omu and her entourage. The event was accompanied by a traditional music ensemble made up of students of the Department of Music under the direction of Ikenna Onwuegbuna, Head of the Department of Music. The music included versions of songs originally recorded by Northcote Thomas himself.

Re-entangled Traditions exhibition, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Artist Chinyere Odinukwe introducing her work to HRM Obi Martha Dunkwu and other guests at the exhibition opening.

In ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’, each of the artists took on a particular Igbo cultural ‘tradition’ – uli body and wall painting, ichi scarification, hair-styles, clothing, wrestling – that featured in Northcote Thomas’s photographic archive. These visual references formed the basis of their experiments. In the following sections we present each of the participating artists’ works juxtaposed with some of the Northcote Thomas photographs that inspired them. The musicological and linguistic contributions to the exhibition are the subject of separate blog posts (see Revisiting some Awka folksongs).

Chijioke Onuora, Ezeana Obidigbo

Chijioke Onuora, Ezeana Obidigbo
Chijioke Onuora, Ezeana Obidigbo, 2019, batik, 396x207cm
Chijioke Onuora, Ezeana Obidigbo - Northcote Thomas reference
Listen to Chijioke Onuora discussing his training at the ‘Nsukka Art School’, his contribution to the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition and the significance of the N. W. Thomas archives.

Chijioke Onuora is Head of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He initially trained at Nsukka as a sculptor in the early 1980s and was taught and influenced by many of the leading figures of the ‘Nsukka School’. Through this training he came to appreciate the traditional Igbo art that was fast disappearing in his village in the Awka area and made studies of shrine carvings. For his PhD in Art History, Onuora made an extensive study of ikolo drums, including their sculptural, musical and socio-cultural dimensions.

Onuora works across many different media, though he regards drawing – the line – as fundamental to all these. For the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ collaboration, he was particularly interested in re-engaging with Igbo ichi scarification, with its linear markings. As a child, Onuora encountered men – and, indeed, one woman – bearing these marks. Now he believes there is just one elderly man in his village who has still has the marks.

When he was introduced to the Northcote Thomas archives as part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, he was struck by the large number of photographs of men of all ages with ichi scarification. This has inspired him to focus on ichi in his ongoing work.

Onuora produced two monumental batik works for the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition. The first is a portrait of Ezeana Obidigbo of Neni, originally photographed by Thomas in 1911. Onuora’s village was close to Neni and his grandparents walked every week to the Oye market there – the scene of some of Thomas’s most memorable photographs. The Umudioka community of Neni were specialist surgeons who travelled throughout the region making the ichi marks.

Chijioke Onuora, Nze na Nwunye ya
Chijioke Onuora, Nze na Nwunye ya, 2019, batik, 376x220cm.

Onuora’s second batik, ‘Nze na Nwunye ya’, is based on a photograph taken by Thomas in Agulu of a mud relief sculpture of a male and female figure, and marks a return to Onuora’s earlier work on shrine figures. The male figure again wears the ichi scarification marks. In both ‘Ezeana Obidigbo’ and ‘Nze na Nwunye ya’, the central panel is flanked by two panels evoking traditional wood carving – symbols of prestige and status – also photographed by Thomas during his 1910-11 survey of what was then Awka District.

Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Playing with Time and Memory

Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Playing with Time and Memory
Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Playing with Time and Memory, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 4x 101x101cm.
Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Playing with Time and Memory - Northcote Thomas references
Listen to Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi discussing the history of uli at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, including his own engagement with the uli tradition.

Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi is a painter and Associate Professor in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Nsukka. He joined the Department as an undergraduate in 1987 and, like many students of his generation, was influenced by Uche Okeke and others who had rediscovered the uli painting tradition as a demonstration of Igbo cultural resilience, first as an indigenous response to European colonialism and subsequently in the wake of the traumatic defeat of the Nigerian Civil War. Ikwuemesi was encouraged to continue the work Okeke’s generation had begun and to conduct research with the last generation of women who created uli wall paintings in the traditional setting of the village.

Although much of Ikwuemesi’s work is more overt in its political engagement, providing commentary on the violence and corruption of contemporary Nigeria, alongside this, he continues to draw upon uli explicitly in his paintings. This he sees as a form of cultural activism. In particular, Ikwuemesi is keen to promote the popularisation of uli design, so that it reaches beyond elite art audiences and collectors, and returns as a popular form.

For the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition, Ikwuemesi drew upon Northcote Thomas’s photographs of uli wall paintings, merging motifs and linear forms from different locations, to produce a series of four acrylic paintings on canvas. The title of the series, ‘Playing with Time and Memory’, reflects both the long history of uli painting among Igbo-speaking people and his own part in that history.

Exploring Thomas’s photographs of uli wall painting, Ikwuemesi was struck by the continuities and changes in the art form. Despite the ruptures of colonialism and war, he celebrates the resilience of cultural traditions, how people continue ‘to do old things in new ways’. ‘Colonialisation’, he argues, ‘did not take away the soul of the people or the soul of their culture’.

RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah, Igbo Kwenu

RitaDoris Ubah, Igbo Kwenu
RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah, Igbo Kwenu, 2019, appliqué, 305x144cm.
RitaDoris Ubah, IgboKwenu - Northcote Thomas references
Listen to RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah discussing her translation of uli mural designs into textile art and her incorporation of N. W. Thomas archives into her teaching.

RitaDoris Ubah is a Lecturer in Textile Art. She completed her BA, MFA and PhD all at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Ubah’s aunt was herself a traditional uli artist. When Ubah started teaching at Nsukka, she realised that while uli traditions had been incorporated into other forms of contemporary art practice, including painting, ceramics and other graphic arts, they had not been explored in textiles. Thus Ubah was keen to bring uli into the curriculum, whether through weaving, embroidery, knitting or appliqué.

Ubah was particularly excited to discover the rich historical documentation of uli in Northcote Thomas’s photographs. As well as inspiring her own work, she has introduced her students to the archive and it now the subject of various class assignments. She describes the photographs as a ‘landmark resource’ and explains that every student passing through Nsukka is taught about it.

RitaDoris Ubah, Oje Mba Enwe Ilo
Some of RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah’s fashion collection inspired by N. W. Thomas’s documentation of traditional uli designs.

For the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition, Ubah produced several works, including a large appliqué panel entitled ‘Igbo Kwenu’, a second appliqué of a masquerade figure photographed by Thomas, and fashion collection featuring uli motifs from Thomas’s photographs. Ubah is particularly interested in the history of uli as a women’s art form, originally painted on the body. (The word uli comes from the plant from which the dye is made.) Ubah’s fashion collection, which was worn by models at the exhibition opening, represents an interesting return of uli to ‘clothing’ the body.

Chinyere Odinukwe, Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi

Chinyere Odinukwe, Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi
Chinyere Odinukwe, Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi, 2019, oil on canvas, 2x 61x76cm.
Chinyere Odinukwe, Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi - Northcote Thomas references
Listen to Chinyere Odinukwe discussing her work for the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition.

Chinyere Odinukwe took her BA and MA in the Department of Fine and Applied Art, Nsukka. She works mainly with acrylic paint on canvas, but also incorporates other materials in her work, notably salvaged plastics and metal foils.

For her [Re:]Entanglements project, Odinukwe wanted to juxtapose the historical and the contemporary by transforming the appearance of a woman named Nwambeke, photographed by Thomas in Nibo in 1911. (Odinukwe’s maternal home town is Nibo.) In order to do this, Odinukwe subtly altered the Nwambeke’s dress and jewellery – adding earrings, make-up and bra-top, for instance. In particular, she transformed her wrapper from a locally-made plain cotton garment (akwamkosa) into a dazzling contemporary fabric.

Odinukwe replaces Thomas’s plain photographic backdrop with a background inspired by one of Thomas’s photographs of uli wall painting.

Chinyere Odinukwe, Ulomdi
Chinyere Odinukwe, Ulomdi, 2019, oil on canvas, 76x61cm.

In re-imagining Nwambeke as a modern Nigerian woman, albeit one framed by her indigenous culture, Odinukwe draws attention to the transformed place of women in Nigerian society today. Odinukwe says that she has given this woman her freedom. She observes that, even today, some people are enslaved in their different ways of life, whether religiously, politically or pyschologically. Odinukwe argues that we should not be chained by our traditions.

Chikaogwu Kanu, Isi Mgbe Ochie

Chika Kanu, Isi Mgbe Ochie
Chikaogwu Kanu, Isi Mgbe Ochie, 2019, photography, 178x114cm.
Chika Kanu, Isi Mgbe Ochie - Northcote Thomas references

Chikaowu Kanu trained at Nsukka as a sculptor. He is now pursuing a PhD in Art History, while continuing to develop his skills as a photographer, videographer and graphic designer. Familiar with the Nsukka School’s long-standing engagement with traditional uli art, Kanu was impressed by another form of body art that was very evident in Northcote Thomas’s photographs – hair dressing.

In his project for the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition, Kanu sought to recreate some of the hairstyles that Thomas photographed. This proved to be a challenging task. It was not easy, for example, to find models willing to have their hair dressed in such remarkable styles. Others – barbers and models alike – assumed that Kanu would make lots of money from the photographs he was taking and thus demanded high fees that Kanu could not pay. Eventually, however, Kanu succeeded in collaborating with barbers and models, and displayed the results as a photo-montage in the exhibition. Kanu’s display drew a great deal of interest from visitors.

Ngozi Omeje, Eriri ji obele

Ngozi Omeye, The String That Holds the Pot
Ngozi Omeje, Eriri ji obele, 2020, clay, nylon thread, steel.
Ngozi Omeye, The String That Holds the Pot - Northcote Thomas references
Listen to Ngozi Omeje discussing her work for the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition.

There is a long tradition in ceramics and installation art at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, associated with artists such as El Anatsui and Ozioma Onuzulike. Ngozi Omeje is foremost in the younger generation of ceramicists at Nsukka. In 2018, when the [Re:]Entanglements project collaboration with Nsukka began, she was in the middle of producing work for her highly successful exhibition, ‘Connecting Deep’, at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos.

Omeje creates sculptures by suspending small clay pieces – miniature cups, leaves, rings, balls, etc. – on nylon threads. Often her works are of monumental proportions. For the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition, Omeje echoed the form of an elaborated decorated clay pot photographed by Northcote Thomas by suspending miniature leaves made from clay. On the one hand, her use of leaves fashioned from clay allowed her to follow the form of the linear patterns on the pot; on the other hand they are expressive of the temporality of the archive – the play of ephemerality and permanence.

The title of Omeje’s piece, Eriri ji obele, refers to an Igbo aphorism – ‘the string that holds the pot’ (or, more correctly, ‘the string that holds the calabash’). Our lives are in God’s hands.

Chukwunonso Uzoagba, Ogu Mnwere Onwe

Chukwunonso Uzoagba, Ogu Mnwere Onwe
Chukwunonso Uzoagba, Ogu Mnwere Onwe (Struggle for Freedom), 2019, acrylic on canvas, 130x97cm.
Chukwunonso Uzoagba, Ogu Mnwere Onwe - Northcote Thomas references
Listen to Chukwunonso Uzoagba discussing his work for the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition.

Chukwunonso Uzoagba in a Lecturer in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Nsukka, specialising in graphics and art education. He has a particular research interest in Igbo rites of passage and ritual practice – aspects of traditional life that were thoroughly documented by Northcote Thomas.

When Uzoagba encountered the Northcote Thomas archives as part of the [Re:]Entanglements workshop at Nsukka, he was immediately drawn to Thomas’s photographs of wrestling matches. Wrestling was very much a traditional art form and part of festivals marking coming of age ceremonies. Combining various elements from different photographs, including a portrait of Thomas himself, Uzoagba wanted to use the wrestling match as a metaphor for the struggle of Igbo people with the forces of colonialism. The title ‘Ogo Mnwere Onwe’ translates into English as the ‘Struggle for Freedom’.

Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, Nibo Lady Fashionista, The Last Sacrifice, Eze Nri

Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, Nibo Lady Fashionista, The Last Sacrifice and Eze Nri
Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, left to right: Nibo Lady Fashionista, 2019, 87x117cm; The Last Sacrifice, 2019, 95x171cm; Eze Nri, 2019, 93x120cm; all poly material, wire gauze and acrylic.
Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, Nibo Lady Fashionista, The Last Sacrifice and Eze Nri - Northcote Thomas references
Listen to Chukwuemeka Nwigwe discussing his work for the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition.

Chukwuemeka Nwigwe teaches art history, textiles and fashion at Nsukka. He has a particular interest in the history of Igbo dress and had already drawn upon the work of Northcote Thomas and other colonial-era publications in his PhD research. While Nwigwe made use of the small selection of photographs published in Thomas’s Anthropological Report of the Igbo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, through the [Re:]Entanglements project he was able to access a vast archive of thousands of images relevant to his research. He was able to utilise these in a recent postdoctoral fellowship.

For the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition, Nwigwe produced three mixed media works, experimenting with weaving techniques inspired by the nest-building techniques of the village weaverbird to create silhouetted figures of characters from the Thomas archive. He used silhouettes to reflect the mystery surrounding these characters, which can only be seen imperfectly in Thomas’s monochrome images.

The backgrounds of each panel are made from discarded poly materials – especially brightly-coloured polythene strips used to wrap motorbike tyres. Nwigwe explains how he collected these from roadside mechanics’ shops.

Jennifer Ogochukwu Okpoko, The Beauty Within

Jennifer Ogochukwu Okpoko, The Beauty Within
Jennifer Ogochukwu Okpoko, The Beauty Within, 2019, tapestry weaving, embroidery, 3x 150x61cm.
Jennifer Ogochukwu Okpoko, The Beauty Within - Northcote Thomas references

Jennifer Ogochukwu Okpoko graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 2018 just before the collaboration with the [Re:]Entanglements project began. She specialises in textile design. As part of her undergraduate studies, she conducted research with traditional Igbo weavers in Delta State.

When Okpoko started exploring the Northcote Thomas archives after the initial [Re:]Entanglements collaboration workshop, she was excited to see photographs of uli murals from her hometown, Agulu, in Anambra State. She chose to feature one of these in her work for the exhibition.

Her piece, entitled The Beauty Within, comprises three large panels, each reproducing the uli mural using different textile materials and techniques. The first uses tapestry weaving using a limited palette of earth colours, similar to the colours that are likely to have been used in the original wall paintings. The second panel has a tiled form, in which vibrant colours are used in the tapestry woven squares, juxtaposed with the earth colours in the other sections. The third panel is mixed media using tapestry weaving and embroidery techniques to recreate the mural in bright contemporary colours.

Ugonna Umeike, Renewal

Ugonna Umeike, Renewal
Ugonna Umeike, Renewal, 2019, digital painting.
Ugonna Umeike, Renewal - Northcote Thomas reference

Ugonna Umeike majored in sculpture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, but he has a wide range of interests including illustration, painting and digital art. Umeike was particularly interested in Northcote Thomas’s artefact collections and field photographs of traditional material culture. These he brought to life in a series of digital illustrations that were exhibited in the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ show.

Umeike also exhibited an illustration of one of the stories that Northcote Thomas recorded and transcribed – ‘The Blind Man, the Cripple, the Poor Man, the Thief and the King’ – which will be the subject of a separate blog post. Finally. he is working on a comic strip of another story recorded by Thomas.

Ugonna Umeike, Open;y covered
Left: Ugonna Umeike, Openly Covered, 2019, digital painting; right: charm collected by N. W. Thomas, used to keep owner from getting wet when raining.

Livinus Kenechi Ngwu, Mask with ichi

Livinus Kenechi Ngwu, Mask with ichi
Left: mask featuring ichi scarifications collected by N. W. Thomas in Ugwoba; right: Livinus Kenechi Ngwu holding his freshly carved response to the mask in the N. W. Thomas collection.

Livinus Kenechi Ngwu is a Lecturer in Sculpture at Nsukka. He works in various materials. For the ‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions’ exhibition Ngwu carved a wooden mask using traditional tools and techniques inspired by one of the masks collected by Northcote Thomas in 1911.

The original mask, which was collected in Ugwoba in present-day Anambra State, is described by Thomas as ‘isi maun apipi’. On its forehead are representations of the ichi scarification marks.


‘[Re:]Entangled Traditions: Nsukka Experiments with an Anthropological Archive’ was curated by George Agbo and Paul Basu. We would like to thank all the artists who participated in the collaboration. Especial thanks to Chijioke Onuora and Krydz Ikwuemesi for championing the project within the Department of Fine and Applied Arts; to Chika Kanu for designing the exhibition catalogue; to Glory Onwuasoanya Kanu for coordinating catering at the exhibition launch; to HRM Obi Martha Dunkwu for travelling from Okpanam to open the exhibition; to Emmanuel Ifoegbuike for his invaluable assistance; and to Charles Igwe, Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka for supporting the initiative.

See also the following posts on other contributors to the exhibition:

Colonial Indexicality

Kelani Abass, Stamping History series, National Museum, Lagos
Four of Kelani Abass’s ‘stamping history’ works, which form part of his Colonial Indexicality series, for the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the National Museum, Lagos.

On 21 September 2019, the [Re:]Entanglements: Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives exhibition opened at the National Museum, Lagos. The opening event was attended by an estimated 300 people, including many from Nigeria’s vibrant arts scene. Following on from our successful exhibition in Benin City, this collaboration between the [Re:]Entanglements project, the National Museum, and the Lagos-based artist Kelani Abass continues our exploration of artistic engagements with the archival traces of Northcote Thomas’s anthropological surveys.

Scenes from opening of [Re:]Entanglements exhibition, National Museum, Lagos
Scenes from the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition opening, National Museum, Lagos, 21 September 2019. Photographs by Paul Basu and Nnaemezie Asogwa.

Unlike the Benin exhibition, this initiative focused specifically on the photograph albums from Thomas’s three Nigerian surveys, which we have discovered in the National Museum library and archive collections. Indeed, these albums, dating from 1909 to 1913, appear to be the only substantial archival traces of Thomas’s anthropological surveys to have survived in Nigeria. The initiative is also different insofar as it features the work of a single artist rather than a collective.

Pages from one of the photograph albums from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 survey of Edo-speaking peoples. Note the index panel at the bottom right of each page. National Museum, Lagos.

Over the course of a year, Kelani Abass has produced two series of works for the exhibition under the common title of Colonial Indexicality. These both employ techniques developed in earlier works by Abass, including his Calendar and Stamping History series, first exhibited at exhibitions at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos in 2013 and 2016 respectively. In both of these series, Abass explored a more personal history through sifting through the archives of his parents’ printing business in Abeokuta, incorporating both the technologies of hand-operated letter-press printing and the accumulated materials – photographs, leaflets, design motifs – deposited at the press by customers. The Colonial Indexicality series produced for the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition connects this family history with a broader cultural history as refracted through Northcote Thomas’s colonial anthropological lens.

Indexicality in its most literal sense. Northcote Thomas took over 8,000 photographs during his four anthropological surveys. Each was individually numbered and entered in a pre-numbered photograph register book. We know that negative No.649 is of a boy named Ike, and that this was one of 122 photographs Thomas made in Okpe.

The pervasiveness of numbering systems and indexes are, of course, characteristics of all archives, and the archives of Thomas’s anthropological tours are no exception. Thomas numbered each of his photographic negatives, for example, and he made notes about each negative in a series of pre-numbered photographic register books. Most literally, the negative number acts as an index in relation to corresponding prints, but also indexes other information, for instance, the identity of the person photographed, where the photograph was taken, and places the particular photograph in relation to a sequence. We know, for example, that Thomas’s negative number 649 is of a boy named Ike, and is one of a series of 122 photographs that Thomas made in Okpe in present-day Edo North in 1909. There is a further note in the corresponding photographic register – ‘meas.’ – short-hand for ‘measurement’, recording that Thomas also recorded Ike’s anthropometric measurements, indexing how this young man entered other forms of colonial scientific calculation.

It is no surprise, then, that the theme of numbers and numbering emerges prominently in Abass’s artistic responses to the albums in the National Museum. Indeed, each work in the Colonial Indexicality series bears a simple number as its title – the number of the particular photograph the work itself indexes.

[Re:]Entanglements exhibition view, National Museum, Lagos
Installation view. Room 1 of the [Re:]Entanglements: Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives exhibition, National Museum, Lagos. Note the juxtaposition of Thomas’s original photograph albums, the large-scale digital prints and Kelani Abass’s paintings. Photograph by Paul Basu.

The principle of indexicality is also evident in the very grammar of the exhibition. In the first room of the exhibition, we brought three elements into relation: examples of the original photograph albums from Thomas’s 1909-10 Edo tour; enlarged digital prints of a selection of pages from these albums; and a series of 12 mixed media paintings by Abass that respond to the particular qualities of these albums.

Kelani Abass, Colonial Indexicality series, National Museum, Lagos
A page from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 Edo album alongside one of Kelani Abass’s Colonial Indexicality paintings (No.256). The index panel on the album page provides the inspiration for Abass’s background, while Thomas’s neg.256 (top left) is the source for the foreground figures.

The pages of the Edo albums are arranged in a uniform manner, with five photographs in a grid with a paper index panel cut to the same size as the prints and pasted in the grid. For each of the 55×68 cm paintings, created in acrylic and oil on canvas, mounted onto board, Abass reproduces these index panels as his backgrounds. He captures the ‘texture’ of the yellowed parchment-like paper panels, complete with Thomas’s handwriting and various other ticks, annotations and crossings-out that have been added in different coloured inks. He then selects one of the photographs from the same album page, which he paints in tones which evoke the photographic originals. The number of the photograph is used as a title for the work, which is also inset into the painting either using letterpress types or components of a numbering machine.

Kelani Abass, Colonial Indexicality series, National Museum, Lagos
Six of Kelani Abass’s Colonial Indexicality portraits, clockwise from top left, No.130, No.237A, No.239, No.248, No.245 and No.243. Acrylic, oil on canvas mounted on board with either letterpress type or numbering machine inserts.

In the second room of the exhibition, the juxtaposition of original archives, digital prints and Abass’s contemporary artworks continues. Additional themes of disintegration and dissolution are invoked here, pointing to the fragility of the archive and the impermanence of memory. In one 105×127 cm digital print of an album page from Thomas’s 1912-13 tour of Igbo-speaking peoples, for example, the faces in Thomas’s physical type photographs have faded to little more than ghostly impressions. Indeed, one objective of the exhibition was to draw attention to the urgent need for better storage and conservation of the National Museum’s important archival collections.

[Re:]Entanglements exhibition view, National Museum, Lagos
Installation view. Room 2 of the exhibition. Enlarged, ghost-like images from the Northcote Thomas albums are juxtaposed with addition examples of the historical albums themselves and with the second part of Kelani Abass’s Colonial Indexicality series. This room also featured enlarged digital prints of some of Thomas’s remarkable panoramic photoagraphs. Photograph by Paul Basu.
Broken pages from one of the albums from Northcote Thomas’s 1910-11 tour of Igbo-speaking peoples. Some of the albums in the National Museum are in extremely poor condition and in urgent need of conservation.

Abass refers to the second series of works in Colonial Indexicality as a continuation of a ‘performative oeuvre’ that ‘calls attention to the interplay of manual and mechanical processes involved in the production of printed works, photographs and drawings’. This work comprises of five interlinked 126×90 cm ‘drawings’ of Northcote Thomas photographs, which have been laboriously made using a hand numbering machine.

Kelani Abass’s hand numbering machines. He used such stamping machines as a child in his parents’ printing company, now he uses them as a medium for his performative art practice.

The use of the numbering machine as a medium again relates to Abass’s family history and childhood memories. After a day at school, Abass and his siblings would help out in their parents’ print shop, using these automatic numberers to stamp sequences of numbers in newly printed invoice books and other stationery. In relation to the [Re:]Entanglements project, Abass was struck by the sequential printed numbers evident in the stationery used by Northcote Thomas. Indeed, to create these ‘stamping history’ drawings he used stamping machines with a similar font style to the numbers used in Thomas’s photographic registers.

Kelani Abass, Stamping History series, National Museum, Lagos
Juxtaposing Northcote Thomas’s photograph no.1639 (top left) with Kelani Abass’s Colonial Indexicality No.1639 (top right). Below are details of the work, showing how the image is made up of multiple stamped numbers.

The numbers that Abass stamps in these works are not arbitrary either. They index both the specific photographs from the Thomas archives that Abass reproduces, but also act as a form of accountancy, allowing Abass to quantify his artistic labour and reflecting the labour entailed in producing the anthropological archive in the first place. Thus, Abass’s first impression in this work was the number 1155, corresponding with Thomas’s negative number 1155. After each impression, the number on the stamping machine increases by a digit to 1156, then 1157 and so on. At the end of the process of creating these five works, the final number stamped was 85,867. Thus Abass is able to quantify the work as representing 84,710 acts of stamping – this Abass conceptualises as a process of ‘stamping history’, and of ‘making or marking time’.

The grid-like layout of these five ‘drawings’ echoes the layout of the photographs in Thomas’s albums, but also speaks to the fragmentary nature of the archive – an assemblage of parts that must be assembled together in order to make sense. The actual archive is rarely so complete, and the bigger picture is often based on as much conjecture as it is evidence.

Northcote Thomas Igbo Report Part 1, Plate XIV, halftone printing
Left: Plate XIV from Northcote Thomas’s Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Part 1. Right: Enlarged detail of the same photograph showing the halftone printing technique.

It is, of course, only when one stands back from Abass’s large-scale stamped drawings that the picture, quoted from Thomas’s archive, becomes clear. Up close, one sees a mess of over-lapping stamped numbers. Seen from a distance, however, the individual numbers from which the pictures are made disappear and the eye perceives the pattern. It is the same principle as halftone printing – the technique used to print Thomas’s photographic plates in his published reports (a set of which also resides in the National Museum library). Indeed, the same principle applies to Thomas’s original photographic negatives and our digital scans of them today, in which the coating of granular light-sensitive crystals is translated, imperfectly, into pixels. Switching to a metaphorical register, Abass’s work reminds us that what we perceive in the colonial archive depends on where we stand, as well as how close we look.

Video documentation of the [Re:]Entanglements: Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives exhibition, National Museum, Lagos.

[Re:]Entanglements: Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives is open at the National Museum, Lagos until 27 October 2019. Do go along if you can and let us know what you think!

Read Molara Wood‘s review of the Colonial Indexicality exhibition in The Lagos Review.

Kelani Abass [Re:]Entanglements exhibition

Kelani Abass [Re:]Entanglements Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives Exhibition, National Museum Lagos

We are delighted to announce the next [Re:]Entanglements project exhibition, which will be taking place at the National Museum, Lagos, between 21 September and 27 October 2019.

The exhibition is the outcome of a collaboration between the [Re:]Entanglements project, the Lagos-based artist Kelani Abass, and the National Museum, Lagos. The exhibition features a series of new contemporary artworks by Kelani Abass, which respond to archival holdings in the National Museum of Northcote Thomas photograph albums. This will be the first exhibition at the National Museum that focuses on the Museum’s archival collections, and that brings together contemporary art and colonial archives.

The photograph albums were originally deposited at the Colonial Secretariat in Lagos at the time of Northcote Thomas’s anthropological surveys. They are the only substantial part of the Thomas collections that remains in Nigeria. At the beginning of the [Re:]Entanglements project, we believed these to be duplicates of photograph albums that are held in the UK’s National Archives (originally kept in the Colonial Office Library in London) and at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. When we tracked the albums down, however, we discovered that the albums from Thomas’s 1909-10 tour in Edo-speaking areas of Nigeria were actually very different from the albums in the UK, not least in the layout of the photographs on the pages and inclusion of additional descriptions on each page.

A page from one of the albums from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 anthropological survey of Edo-speaking peoples of Southern Nigeria in the archival collections of the National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria.

The exhibition will include displays of the original albums, and juxtaposes Kelani Abass’s new works, produced on various media, with large scale digital prints of pages from the albums. Abass has created two series of works for the exhibition under the title Colonial Indexicality. First, is a series of 12 works produced using acrylic, oil on canvas and letterpress type, which explores the archival textures of the albums from Thomas’s Edo tour. The paintings reproduce the yellowed paper panels on the album pages, including texts in various coloured inks and pencils, some in Thomas’s own hand. On each canvas Abass has painted one of the photographs from the corresponding album page, capturing the aging of the photographic images in the subtle tones of his paint. Inset in each panel, letterpress type blocks with the corresponding number of the photographic image is set.

Three of Kelani Abass’s works in his Colonial Indexicality series, which will feature in the [Re:]Entanglements: Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives exhibition.

A second series of works forms a large-scale intersecting collage reproducing five of Thomas’s photographs. Remarkably, these are ‘painted’ using a hand automatic number stamping machine. Like dots in halftone photographic printing, from a distance the photographic image can be seen, but as one approaches, the integrity of the image breaks down to its component ‘dots’, which in this case are each unique numbers. This speaks powerfully to seemingly obsessive use of numbers used by Thomas to index not only the photographs he made during his anthropological surveys, but also his sound recordings, artefact collections, botanical specimens and indeed every page of fieldnotes. This gives rise to the title of Abass’s work for the project, Colonial Indexicality.

Details of one of Kelani Abass’s ‘stamping history’ works for the Colonial Indexicality series. Large scale reproductions of photographs from Northcote Thomas’s albums are created using a handheld numbering stamp (see close up on the right).

The ‘dissolution’ of the photographic archive so powerfully evoked in Abass’s works, is reflected too in the large scale digital prints of Thomas’s original albums. As such the exhibition is also a reflection on the precarious state of the archive itself – especially in West African institutions. The condition of the albums is extremely poor as a result of the environmental conditions in which they have been stored and pest damage. They, along with many other collections in West African museums and archives, are in urgent need of conservation care if they are to survive. This can be seen, for example, in the way in which the photographs in some of the albums have faded – in some cases, they have become almost invisible. As well as drawing attention to the precarity of the archive, this speaks eloquently to fading of memory – something that we have been very aware of during fieldwork in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Fading photographs, fading memories. A page from one of the albums from Northcote Thomas’s 1912-13 anthropological survey of Igbo-speaking peoples of Southern Nigeria in the archival collections of the National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria.

It has been especially rewarding working with Abass on this collaboration, since the themes of the [Re:]Entanglements project link closely with themes that he has been exploring in other work over a number of years (see, for instance, this interview with Kelani Abass). We were introduced to the work Abass produced for his solo exhibitions If I Could Save Time and Àsìkò: Evoking Personal Narratives and Collective History at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos, and we are especially grateful to Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, curator at CCA, for working with us on the curation of the exhibition at the National Museum. We are also very grateful to Mrs Omotayo Adeboye, Curator of the National Museum, and Mr Taye Pedro, Librarian and Archivist at the National Museum, for providing access to the collections and hosting the exhibition. Without their support the exhibition would not be possible.

[Re:]Entanglements: Contemporary Art & Colonial Archives is on at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos between 21 September and 27 October 2019. See our next blog about the exhibition, including video documentation of its installation and opening event.

110 years of photographing N. W. Thomas collections

Five photographs, spanning a century, of the same agbazi mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Fugar, North Edo in 1909 (NWT (1) 2654; MAA Z 12287 A).

As part of the [Re:]Entanglements project we have sought to document the material culture collections assembled by Northcote Thomas during his anthropological surveys in Nigeria and Sierra Leone as thoroughly as possible. An important aspect of this has been to photograph the collections at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores, and then to use the photographs during our fieldwork activities in which we have been revisiting the communities from which they were originally sourced.

Left: George Agbo, postdoctoral researcher on the [Re:]Entanglements project, photographing Isi abogefi mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu in 1911 (NWT (2) 390, MAA Z 13689); right: community members in Nise, Anambra State, Nigeria, discussing photographs of objects collected by Thomas in the town during fieldwork (photograph by George Agbo).

As we have been pursuing this research, we have encountered various other photographs of the Northcote Thomas collections. Indeed, we have discovered that some objects in the collections have been photographed many times since they were collected – starting in 1909 with Northcote Thomas’s own field photographs. In this article, we bring some of these photographs together as a kind of visual history of the photographic documentation of the collections.

The relationship between photography, ethnographic objects and ethnographic display has been the subject of much academic discussion. The manner in which objects have been photographed has shaped how such objects have been perceived, often within a strong Western modernist aesthetic, constituting them as ‘art objects’. Walker Evans‘ photographic documentation of African masks and sculptures displayed at the ‘African Negro Art‘ exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1935 is a famous case and has been the subject of an exhibition and catalogue in its own right – Perfect Documents. As well as lighting and framing, a key part of this aesthetic is the separation of an object from its context, accentuating the object’s formal qualities, while disembedding it from the cultural context that often gives an object its original meaning and significance. This practice was evident in Northcote Thomas’s own use of a blank photographic background sheet, and it is there, too, in our own photographic documentation of the objects. It has been difficult to escape these dominant photographic tropes, although we have also tried to experiment with other approaches in our creative collaborations with local artists.

[Re:]Entanglements team members, Katrina Dring and Paul Basu, setting up the photographic background paper at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores. (Photograph by George Agbo.)

Northcote Thomas, 1909-15

Northcote Thomas made extensive use of photography during his anthropological surveys as we have discussed in many other project blog posts. While much of his photographic documentation was focused on people and their cultural practices, he also devoted considerable energy to photographing local material culture, including everyday utensils, tools and technologies, as well as ‘decorative art’ and objects associated with ceremonies, rituals and ‘secret societies’. Much of this material culture was photographed in situ in its cultural as well as physical context. Very occasionally it appears that Thomas acquired objects that he had first photographed in their original context, such as this ikenga-like figure that Thomas collected in Fugar in the north of present-day Edo State, Nigeria.

Ikenga-like figure identified by Northcote Thomas as Akosi, collected in Fugar, Northern Edo, 1909. (Photograph by N. W. Thomas, NWT 1095, MAA P.29204; Object NWT (1) 2659, MAA Z 12293.)

In addition to photographing objects in situ, Thomas also photographed objects isolated from their cultural context. This is evident, for example, in these photographs of masks collected by Thomas during his first and second tours respectively. Thomas photographed many masquerade performances, showing how masks were just a part of a much more elaborate performative display that included full costumes, music, dance, other ceremonial objects and audience interaction. On occasion, he was able to collect entire masquerade costumes, but, as with other collectors, he also collected head pieces alone. While we do not know the circumstances in which he collected these for sure, we do know that at least some of the objects he collected were specially commissioned from artists – this may have been the case with these masks from Fugar and Agukwu. Note the physical arrangement of the masks from Fugar on the left, and the use of backdrop and a book as an improvised mount in the photograph on the right.

Left: Twin masks described by Thomas as Ibonodike, collected in Fugar, present-day Edo State, in 1909. (Photograph by N. W. Thomas, NWT 1088, RAI 400.17528; Objects NWT (1) 2602a & 2602b, MAA Z 12252 A & Z 12252 B.) Right: Mask described by Thomas as Isi abogefi collected in Agukwu, present-day Anambra State, in 1911. (Photograph by N. W. Thomas, NWT 2934b, MAA N.78430; Object NWT (2) 390, MAA Z 13689.)

During Thomas’s second tour, which focused on the Igbo-speaking peoples of what was then Awka District (present-day Anambra State, Nigeria), Thomas started lining up the objects he had collected to photograph them prior to having them shipped to the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (then known as the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology). This example shows a series of items with Thomas’s original object numbers (352 to 372), collected in Awgbu and Enugu Ukwu. One can get a good sense of Thomas’s photographic backcloth here, supported on bamboo canes, which were in turn supported by two assistants, whose hands can be seen on either side! These photographs have been extremely useful in identifying Thomas’s collections in the Museum’s stores today, since many objects have since become separated from their labels. We have not, however, been able to locate all these objects.

Array of objects collected by Thomas in 1911 in Awgbu and Enugu Ukwu, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. (Photograph by N. W. Thomas, NMT 2934, MAA N.78429.)

Arts of West Africa, 1935

To date, the earliest photographs we have discovered of Thomas collections after they had entered the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge were published in 1935, 20 years after Thomas returned from his final tour. These are two photographs of the same Aule mask collected by Thomas in Agenebode, North Edo, in 1909. They were published in a book entitled Arts of West Africa, which was commissioned by the UK’s Colonial Office following the recommendation of its Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies. In the acknowledgements it is stated that the book’s plates were produced by the ‘expert photographers’ of the Empire Marketing Board, under the supervision of John Grierson, pioneer of the British Documentary Film Movement. It is also noted that ‘the British Museum afforded special facilities for the photography of [the] objects’, including those lent by other museums. It is likely, therefore, that the Aule mask was sent to the British Museum to be photographed.

Plates XX and XXI in Arts of West Africa (1935). Aule mask collected by N. W. Thomas in Agenebode in 1909 (NWT (1) 2722, MAA Z 11910).

It is interesting that the editors of the book considered it worthwhile to illustrate the mask with two different views (it is the only example in the book). In the description of the mask in the text, reference is made to photographs taken by Thomas of Igbo hair designs similar to those carved on the mask published in Peoples of All Nations in c.1920. The photographs show how lighting and camera angle can be used to dramatize the appearance of the mask.

British Museum, dates unknown

We have recently chanced upon a series of photographs of Northcote Thomas collections in the British Museum. Only one of these had a catalogue note mentioning the name of Thomas, but we were able to identify others and the British Museum catalogue will be updated accordingly. It is not clear whether the photographs were all taken at the same time, or if they were photographed at the British Museum or supplied to the Museum by Cambridge. Nor do we have any information about the year in which they were taken. It is possible that they were also photographed for the Arts of West Africa book, but not included – we don’t know.

Below we provide three examples, juxtaposed with our own photographs of the same objects. These highlight another value of historical photographs of objects, insofar as we are able to compare them with the objects as we encounter them today. The first photograph is of the same Aule mask collected by Thomas in Agenebode and published in Arts of West Africa. As can be seen in the recent photograph on the right, the mask has been fitted onto a wooden display mount. These mounts are also evident in some of the Len Morley photographs taken in the late 1940s. This mount is not present in the British Museum photograph of the same mask on the left, suggesting that the photograph was indeed taken earlier – perhaps in the 1930s.

Aule mask collected by N. W. Thomas in Agenebode in 1909 (NWT (1) 2722, MAA Z 11910). Left: photograph in British Museum collection, date unknown (BM Af,B62.18); right: photograph taken by George Agbo for [Re:]Entanglements project, 2019.

Comparing historical and contemporary photographs also allows us to gather information about the changing condition of objects. The foot of this ngene shrine figure from Awgbu, for example, has clearly been damaged since the British Museum photograph on the left was made. Actually, during our collections-based research, we have located the missing part of the foot and this figure will be repaired prior to being displayed at the [Re:]Entanglements project exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, in 2021-22.

Ngene shrine figure collected by N. W. Thomas in Awgbu in 1911 (NWT (2) 378, MAA Z 14234.1-2). Left: photograph in British Museum collection, date unknown (BM Af,B62.11); right: photograph taken by George Agbo for [Re:]Entanglements project, 2019.

In the example below, we can see that a piece of patterned cloth was originally attached to the mask when it was collected and has subsequently been lost. In fact, on closer inspection, we see that this is the same Obo mask collected in Fugar that Morley photographed (see below). The negative of Morley’s photograph has been printed back to front, such that the large crack that appears on the left side of the helmet can be see on the opposite side. The fact that the mask is attached to a wooden mount in Morley’s photograph of 1949, but is no longer attached to the cloth, also suggests that the British Museum photographs are earlier. Today, both the cloth and the wooden mount are missing.

Obo mask collected by N. W. Thomas in Fugar, 1909 (NWT (1) 2662, MAA Z 12297). Left: photograph in British Museum collection, date unknown (BM Af,B62.16); right: photograph taken by George Agbo for [Re:]Entanglements project, 2019.

Len Morley, 1949-51

In 1947, a faculty photographer was appointed to work in the Anthropology and Archaeology sections of Cambridge University, including at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – his name was Len Morley. He continued working at the Museum until 1974. To date we have been able to identify around 15 objects from the Thomas collections photographed by Morley between 1949 and 1951. The objects are taken against a plain background and include a small scale. Two of the masks in the examples below have been fitted with wooden mounts similar to that discussed above, giving an indication of how they would have been exhibited in the Museum at the time.

Three examples of Len Morley’s mid-20th-century photographic documentation of masks collected by Northcote Thomas in North Edo in 1909-10. From left to right: Ogbodu, collected in Agenebode (NWT (1) 2729, MAA Z 11917.1), Amababa, collected in Irrua (NWT (1) 2566a, MAA Z 12816), Obo, collected in Fugar (NWT (1) 2662, MAA Z 12297).

Some masks are difficult to photograph without expensive purpose-designed mounts due to their shape and weight-distribution. In one remarkable photograph taken by Len Morley, we can see how he addressed this problem by getting an assistant, or perhaps a member of the Museum’s curatorial staff, to wear the mask. The area around the mask has then been painted out on the print making it suitable for publication purposes.

Moji mask, collected by Northcote Thomas in Afikpo, present-day Ebonyi State, Nigeria in 1912-13, photographed by Len Morley in 1951. (NWT (3) 50, MAA Z 13585.)

African art publications, 1960s-80s

A number of objects from the Northcote Thomas collections have featured as plates in more recent popular reference works on African art. In African Sculpture by William Fagg and Margaret Plass, first published in 1964, the authors use explicitly European art historical vocabularies to discuss African objects. At the time the book was published, Fagg was Deputy Keeper of Ethnography at the British Museum. Margaret and Webster Plass were American collectors of African art; Margaret donated their collection to the British Museum after her husband Webster’s death in 1952.

Fagg and Plass use the example of a mask Thomas identifies as agbazi, which was collected in Fugar in 1909 to illustrate what they refer to as an ‘African Gothic’ style (‘the strong tendency towards a ‘Gothic‘ verticality in African woodcarving’, p.101). The mask, which also appears in the photographs at the top of this post, appears to have been photographed lying on the floor of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge.

Front cover and p.101 of William Fagg and Margaret Plass, African Sculpture, first published in 1964. The photograph on p.101 is an agbazi mask collected by Thomas in Fugar in 1909 (NWT (1) 2654; MAA Z 12287 A).

Like William Fagg, Frank Willett was a leading Africanist anthropologist and archaeologist. Having spent a number of years working in the antiquities department in Nigeria in the 1950s, at the time he published his classic survey of African art in 1971 he was Professor of African Art and Archaeology at Northwestern University in the USA. African Art has remained in print ever since, and was revised in 2002. Willett used a photograph of a carved wooden figure Thomas collected in Sabongida, in the so-called Ora country, north of Benin City in his introductory chapter, discussing the development of the study of African art.

Willett refers to the ‘cubist qualities’ reflected in the artistic traditions of the Edo-speaking peoples. He also notes how little known these artistic traditions are when compared to the ‘better known art of the Benin court’. Thomas’s label and catalogue entry describe the figure merely as a doll. A piece of string is tied around its neck, attached to which are two cowrie shells.

Front cover and p.31 of the revised edition of Frank Willett, African Art, the original edition of which was first published in 1971. The figure on p.31 is described by Thomas merely as a doll, collected in Sabongida Ora in 1909 (NWT (1) 2164; MAA Z 13449).

A photograph of the Isi abogefi mask collected by Thomas in Agukwu, discussed above, was published by G. I. Jones in his monograph, The Art of Eastern Nigeria, published in 1984. Gwilym Iwan Jones was a colonial administrator in Igbo-speaking Eastern Nigeria between 1926 and 1946. During his time in the Colonial Service he undertook anthropological training at Oxford. In 1946, he left the Colonial Service and became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Cambridge, specializing in Igbo art. Jones made extensive collections himself, now in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and he was also an expert photographer – his photographs of Igbo masquerade performances are especially well-known. In the 1930s and 40s, he worked in many of the same areas that Thomas visited during his second and third tours (1910-13), and he makes frequent reference to Thomas’s collections in the book.

Jones uses the mask as a particularly fine example of a ‘maiden spirit’ helmet mask. The marked-up, camera-ready artwork used in the production of Jones’ book can be found in the archives of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, among Jones’ papers.

Isi abogefi mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Agukwu, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1911 (NWT (2) 390, MAA Z 13689). Left: camera-ready artwork of Figure 46 (MAA archives); right: Figure 46 of G. I. Jones, The Art of Eastern Nigeria.

Jean Borgatti, 1969

In 1969, the art historian Jean Borgatti conducted the first comprehensive research on Northcote Thomas’s collections, focusing on the material he collected in North Edo sixty years previously. This research would form an important part of Borgatti’s MA dissertation, ‘The Northern Edo of Southern Nigeria: An Art Historical Geography of Akoko-Edo, Ivbiosakon, Etsako and Ishan’, submitted to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1971. Her decision to concentrate on this area was a response to William Fagg’s observation that ‘the arts of the Northern Edo and Ishan have remained “a universe … practically unknown to the outside world, but which is extremely rich in new forms”‘ (Borgatti 1971: 2). Building on her MA work, she would go on to conduct PhD research in the same region and, indeed, devote much of her career to studying the arts and masquerade of North Edo (see, for example, her guest blogs for the [Re:]Entanglements project).

Borgatti made extensive use of photography in her research on the Thomas collections at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, using formal analysis to categorize the artworks according to a series of ‘style provinces’. She focused especially on carved figures and mask types. As well as presenting the photographs in the appendix of her MA thesis, she used these in her PhD fieldwork, during which she would rephotograph many of the same masquerade types, providing a remarkable analysis of how they have changed and developed over several decades.

Examples of Jean Borgatti’s contact sheets of her photographic documentation of N. W. Thomas’s North Edo collections in 1969.

Roger Blench and Mark Alexander, 1983-90

Prior to the [Re:]Entanglements project, the most sustained attempt to document Northcote Thomas’s collections was carried out by Roger Blench and Mark Alexander in the 1980s. Blench and Alexander were graduate students in the Anthropology Department at Cambridge. Together they set about cataloguing Thomas’s papers, sound recordings, photographs and material culture collections across various institutions. Blench presented an overview of the results of this survey in an article, ‘The Work of N. W. Thomas as Government Anthropologist in Nigeria’, published in The Nigerian Field in 1995. They also published a bibliography of Thomas’s written works, while Alexander used Thomas as one of a number of case studies in his MPhil dissertation, ‘Colonialism and the Political Context of Collection: A Case Study of Nigerian Collections in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’, submitted in 1982.

As part of this work, Blench and Alexander created a computerized database of the Thomas collections and photographs in Cambridge, and photographed as many of the objects as they could locate. Blench notes that many seemed to be missing. In the early 1990s, Blench and Alexander pursued other interests and passed on their catalogue and photographs to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Their photographs are pinned to the reverse of the Thomas object index cards in the Museum’s original card index catalogue system. While we have made many discoveries since, Blench and Alexander’s work with Thomas’s collections may certainly be regarded as laying the foundations of the [Re:]Entanglements project.

Examples of Roger Blench and Mark Alexander’s photographs of Thomas collections pinned to the reverse of MAA index cards. Anticlockwise from top right: guitar (NWT (4) 132, MAA Z 14553), charm (NWT (4) 130, MAA Z 14551) and powder horn (NWT (4) 100, MAA Z 14527), all collected from Yalunka-speaking areas of Sierra Leone (probably Musaia); charm (NWT (4) 74, MAA Z 14502), collected from Sendugu, Sierra Leone.

Benin City: Colonial archives, creative collaborations

Installation view of Andrew Omote Edjobeguo’s ‘First Contact’, pictured against one of Enotie Ogbebor’s paintings.

On July 4, 2019 the first of the [Re:]Entanglements project exhibitions resulting from our creative collaborations in Nigeria and Sierra Leone opened at Nosona Studios, Benin City. The exhibition featured the work of 15 young Edo State-based artists responding to the archives and collections that resulted from Northcote Thomas’s 1909-10 anthropological survey of Edo-speaking communities in Southern Nigeria.

The artists had participated in workshops introducing them to the Northcote Thomas materials as well as the work of established artists who have interrogated colonial archives in their practice. Over the past several months they have developed their work, supported by Enotie Ogbebor, Creative Director of Nosona Studios, as well as the [Re:]Entanglements project team.

The opening event of the exhibition included some of the artists working of their pieces live, exhibiting something of the process of engaging with the archival materials. In the foreground, Ojevwe Onomigbo works on her ‘Ovia’ collage; in the background Jahyém Jombo works on his painting ‘Against the Odds’.

Nosona Studios is a large industrial, workshop type space in the centre of Benin City. In keeping with the character of the space, a section of the exhibition was set up as an artists’ studio, with a number of artists continuing to work on their pieces during the opening. Works included painting; sculpture in wood, bronze and iron; digital art; and mixed media pieces. Each was exhibited with a label illustrating some of the archival source materials that the artists had engaged with. There were also displays of enlarged digital prints of a selection of Northcote Thomas’s photographs, and a TV monitor on which all c.1,800 photographs that Thomas made during his Edo tour played on a continuous loop.

Scenes from the exhibition opening. Clockwise from top right: Jayhem Jombo discusses his work ‘Against the Odds’ with Mark Elliot, Senior Curator at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; Edo State Commissioner for Arts, Culture, Tourism and Diaspora Affairs, Hon Osaze Osemwegie-Ero with a photograph of his ancestor Chief Ero and his son; Paul Basu and George Agbo; Joseph Ogie Obamina discussing his painting ‘The Anthropological Gaze’ with Prof John Ogene of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Benin.

The opening was scheduled to coincide with a meeting of the Benin Dialogue Group in Benin City and served as the venue for the evening reception on the first day of talks. The Benin Dialogue Group is a forum for discussing the future of artefacts looted from Benin City during the British Punitive Expedition of 1897, which are now dispersed in museums and collections across the world. The Group comprises representatives of the Oba of Benin, the Edo State Government, National Commission for Museums and Monuments and several European museums which hold Benin artefacts in their collections. This provided a wonderful opportunity for young artists to meet and talk to both Nigerian and international members of the museum/heritage/culture sector about their work on the project.

Jonathan Chambalin Nwachuckwu (left) and Randy Osabuohien Edughaen (right) discuss their respective works, ‘A Game of Numbers’ and ‘Ol’akohen‘, with members of the Benin Dialogue Group, including HRH Prince Gregory Akenzua, Jonathan Fine (Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Barbara Plankensteiner (MARKK Hamburg), Michael Barrett (Världskulturmuseet, Stockholm), Julie Hudson (British Museum) and Sam Nixon (British Museum).
Exhibition visitors watching and rephotographing the loop of Northcote Thomas photographs taken during his 1909-10 anthropological survey of Edo-speaking Peoples playing on a TV monitor.

In the following sections, we include a photograph of each of the works produced by the artists and displayed in the exhibition, together with a selection of images providing insight into some of the archival materials the artists worked with in their individual projects. Our commentary is based on interviews with each of the artists. In the case of Enotie Ogbebor and Jahyém Jombo we include the video interviews themselves.

Creative engagements with the colonial archive

Enotie Ogbebor, Chronicles of an Era

Enotie Ogbebor, Chronicles of an Era
Enotie Ogbebor provides some background information about Nosona Studios and the collaboration with the [Re:]Entanglements project. He goes on to discuss his own contribution to the ‘Colonial Archives, Creative Collaborations’ project, ‘Chronicles of an Era’.

Joseph Ogie Obamina, The Anthropological Gaze

Joseph Ogie Obamina, The Anthropological Gaze

Joseph Ogie Obamina was born in Edo State. He studied art first at Auchi Polytechnic and subsequently at the University of Benin. He works with oil on canvas, and also acrylics and pastel. Obamina was struck by the interchange of gazes evident in Thomas’s photographic archive: the gaze of the people Thomas photographed, and the gaze of Thomas himself through the camera lens. Thomas’s survey of Edo-speaking Nigeria came just 12 years after the Punitive Expedition of 1897. Obamina wonders how they were feeling then – were they oppressed? The photographs show that some were happy, others were not happy. He feels there was some ‘agreement’ between Thomas and the people, which allowed him to photograph almost every aspect of their lives. He is interested in how they perceived the anthropologist.

Obamina expresses this exchange of gazes by creating a pixelated portrait of Northcote Thomas himself, based on the now iconic photograph of the Government Anthropologist wearing his pith helmet, shirt and tie. Viewed from a distance the patterns of the pixels reveal the figure of Thomas. As one approaches one can see that each individual pixel is made up of a scene photographed by Thomas. In addition to reproducing Thomas’s images in the pixels, Obamina adds numbers and texts. The numbers reflect Thomas’s numbering of the photographs, while Obamina uses the texts to add commentary on the nature of Thomas’s anthropological project and its archival legacy.

Ojevwe (Ojay) Onomigbo, Ovia

Ojevwe Onomigbo, Ovia

Ojevwe Onomigbo is from Delta State. She is a collagist, who ‘paints with paper’. She studied first at Delta State University and then came to the University of Benin. She has been a practicing artist for about 10 years. Onomigbo created this work, entitled simply ‘Ovia’, during the exhibition’s opening event.

Onomigbo’s work depicts the main masquerade of the Ovia cult at Iyowa. Ovia is a female deity, worshipped in various communities surrounding Benin City. Each Ovia society holds an annual festival at which the ancestral spirits of the society (the masqueraders) dance. Thomas documented the Ovia festival held in Iyowa in 1909. Onomigbo’s reproduction of one of Thomas’s photographs of an Ovia spirit is made from cut up strips and fragments of copies of Thomas’s field notes and publications that document the festival itself.

Jonathan Chambalin Nwachukwu, Game of Numbers

Jonathan Chambalin Nwachukwu, Game of Numbers

Jonathan Chambalin Nwachuckwu is a photographer and digital artist, working with images and sound. He splits his time between Benin City and Lagos. Like many of the exhibitors, he was first introduced to the archives of Northcote Thomas at a workshop held at Nosona Studios. Nwachuckwu produced a series of six digital animations for the project, which were accompanied by a sound track combining archival and contemporary recordings. His works involved collaborating with a painter, a spoken-word artist, an animator, sound engineer and a number of models.

Each of the six pieces explored a different aspects of the Northcote Thomas archives, from his documentation of female Iwu body scarification to his physical type photographs of members of the local police force. Each work involved the layering of archival images and texts with Nwachuckwu’s contemporary photographs of models posed in the manner of Thomas’s anthropological subjects – their bodies sometimes painted with numbers and symbols. Another digital collage shows a more dejected looking Northcote Thomas himself superimposed on a map of Benin City torn out, as it were, from Thomas’s own notes.

Andrew Omote Edjobeguo, First Contact

Andrew Omote Edjobeguo, First Contact

Andrew Omote Edjobeguo is from Delta State. He studies art and industrial design at Auchi Polytechnic. A sculptor, he works in different metals including bronze and mild steel as well as recycled scrap metals.

In his piece ‘First Contact’, Edjobeguo was interested in exploring the points of contact between the anthropologist and the society he was documenting. Thomas’s survey of the Edo-speaking peoples of Nigeria was his first experience of anthropological fieldwork and his first encounter with Africa. Edjobeguo’s sculpture explores how Thomas was in some sense ‘indigenized’ through this experience (he was thought of as an eccentric who had ‘gone native’ by many in the colonial service). This is represented by the incorporation of Edo design motifs on Thomas’s chest and back. These motifs were, of course, drawn from Thomas’s documentary photographs.

The piece also reflects the entanglement of Thomas and Edo culture. Thomas’s career is, as it were, propped up by Edo culture (or a distorted version of it), represented by the ukhure that support Thomas’s bust. Yet the ukhure themselves are supported by Thomas’s work represented in the open book (his Anthropological Report on the Edo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria).

Jahyém Jombo, Against the Odds

Jahyem Jombo, Against the Odds
Derek Jahyem Jombo-Ogboi presents his work for the Colonial Archives, Creative Collaborations project. He explains how he drew upon the historical archive of Northcote Thomas to address contemporary issues faced by young people in Edo State, and discusses the importance of the archive more generally.

Osaru Obaseki, The Journey amidst Time

Osaru Obaseki, The Journey amidst Time

Osaru Obaseki is a self-taught artist from Edo State based at Nosona Studios in Benin City. She paints using a combination of acrylic paint, sand and glue. This adds depth and texture to the surface of her work, into which she inscribes African patterns and symbols. The fine sand she uses also links her work to the ancient bronze casting tradition of Benin – the sand, which is unique to the region, is essential to the lost wax casting technique.

Obaseki was especially interested in the representation of women in Northcote Thomas’s photographs from Benin. In particular she was fascinated by the unnatural, formal poses in which Thomas positioned his photographic subjects. She echoes these group profile portraits in her work for the [Re:]Entanglements project, which is entitled ‘A Journey amidst Time’. Rather than merely reproducing the photographs, however, Obaseki dresses the women differently, showing the continuities and changes in their attire and hair styles over the 110 years since Thomas visited Benin. In the background, she inscribes abstract designs into the acrylic-sand mix, quoting from the designs which decorated the walls of houses that Thomas documented in his Benin photographs.

‘I am so happy that Northcote Thomas was there at the time to document the way women looked, what they did, how they dressed’, Obaseki explains. ‘It was really exciting seeing the photographs – I also saw a picture of my great-grandfather, Chief Agho Obaseki. I was thrilled’. Reflecting on the importance of the archive, she states that ‘it encourages us to do more now to cultivate a culture of documentation for posterity’.

Randy Osabuohien Edughaen, Ol’akohen (The Flute Player)

Randy Osabuohien Edughaen, Ol'akohen (the flute player)

Randy Osabuohien Edughaen is an artist from Benin City. He studied art at Auchi Polytechnic and the University of Benin, and is now based at Nosona Studios. Edughaen explains how excited he was to participate in the [Re:]Entanglements project and the opportunity to explore the Northcote Thomas archive. ‘This archive is so important to me’, he states. ‘I am the kind of person who doesn’t attach much value to my culture, I don’t know why. But this archive has opened my eyes to my culture. It has made me understand our collective past. Looking at the face of the people in Thomas’s photographs. They have all gone. Their bones must be dust, but seeing the faces of my people gives me joy. Thomas has been able to conserve our culture. He makes me understand where I am coming from. We should try to understand our people – their artefacts, their way of life, their way of dressing … Moving from place to place, Thomas was able to capture these things’.

The dominant figure in Edughaen’s painting, inspired by a photograph taken by Thomas, gives the painting its title, Ol’akohen (‘The Flute Player’). It is the flute player who can communicate with the spirits of the ancestors. The passing of time is the central theme of the piece. Images of the past captured in Thomas’s photographs pass, like sand through an hour glass, through the body of the flute player and are brought up-to-date in colour scenes drawn from press cuttings charting more recent transformations in Benin life, culminating in an image of the present Oba Ewuare II. Among the press cuttings pasted onto the canvas, one in particular poses a challenging question: ‘What Are You Doing About Saving Our Culture?’

Victor Chiejine Mowete, Ọmwan nọr dia uyi ẹdo yi

Victor Chiejine Mowete, Omwan nor dia uyi edo yi

Victor Chiejine Mowete is a sculptor who works in various metals, including steel and bronze. He trained as an artist at Delta State University and the University of Benin. Like many of the artists collaborating with the [Re:]Entanglements project, Mowete is conscious of the ambivalence surrounding the Northcote Thomas archives. He is interested how over time, photographs and collections that were assembled as part of a colonial project – with all its associations with appropriation, exploitation and violence – have become important resources for present-day populations. As he says, ‘Those things that were collected for exploitative reasons, in later years are also going to be important to us and can be used to our own advantage’.

For his contribution to the project, entitled Ọmwan nọr dia uyi ẹdo yi (meaning ‘Preserver of Edo culture and glory’), Mowete has cast a work in bronze that speaks to one of Benin’s most iconic treasures – the 16th-century ivory Idia pendant mask, versions of which are in the collections of the British Museum in London and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This famous mask was also used as the emblem of FESTAC in 1977, thus becoming an icon of Nigeria and African arts and culture more generally.

In place of the Iyoba – the Queen Mother, Idia – Mowete has used the head of Northcote Thomas wearing his distinctive pith helmet. The top of the original mask is decorated with heads representing the Portuguese, symbolizing Benin’s alliance with and control over Europeans. These have been replaced, in Mowete’s work, with the heads from various ukhure (rattle staffs) that Thomas collected in Benin City, as well two heads taken from a carved shrine figure (ikute) collected by Thomas from Okpe. Thus, the ambiguity remains: the piece is, on the one hand, a celebration of Thomas as the ‘preserver’ of Edo cultural heritage; on the other hand, however, there is the suggestion that this preservation entails the control of the ancestral objects and knowledges that Thomas assembled as a government anthropologist.

Yewande E. Oyeniyi, Evolution of Benin Attire

Yewande E. Oyeniyi, Evolution in Benin Attire

Yewande Oyeniyi initially studied Fine Art at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, and is now pursuing postgraduate studies in Theatre Arts at the University of Benin. Oyeniyi was particularly interested in representations of women in Northcote Thomas’s photographic archive and chose to focus on dress in her work for the project: ‘Evolution of Benin Attire’.

When Oyeniyi started to engage with the archive, the impression she had was of a timeless world in which there was no anticipation that things would change. Many of the women photographed were unselfconscious of their exposed breasts, for example. Oyeniyi wanted to explore how this had now changed with Western influence that was already apparent in Thomas’s photographs. She also wanted to show how certain aspects of traditional Benin attire, notable the red coral beads, which were once the preserve of the elites, had become more widely popular and iconic of Benin identity.

Imoudu Ameen Bello, Loss or Gain?

Imoudu Ameen Bello, Loss or Gain

Imoudu Ameen Bello is from Edo State. He works with oil on canvas. Bello is particularly interested in Benin’s royal heritage and its system of palace and town chiefs. Since Thomas’s survey of Edo-speaking communities took place between 1909-10 when Ovonramwen was in exile in Calabar, the Oba is, of course, conspicuously absent from the archive. Bello was, however, particularly struck by Thomas’s photographic portrait of Chief Ero, Izedonmwen, and his son, Evbuomwan. From ancient times, the Ero chiefs were senior members of the Uzama (king-makers) of Benin. Izedonmwen was a particularly celebrated Ero and was instrumental in the restoration of the monarchy after Ovonramwen’s death in 1914.

Bello created a diptych for the [Re:]Entanglements project, posing a question regarding what was lost and what gained in the encounter between European colonisers and the Edo people. The panel on the left represents a people embedded and inseparable from their indigenous culture. This is represented by the traditional Edo design motifs on both background and the bodies of the people. The panel on the right represents the same scene today. Edo cultural heritage, again represented by the traditional designs, now merely acts as an aesthetic background, while the people – especially the younger generations – go about in Western-styled clothing. Bello states that ‘We are doing away with our own lifestyle, and adopting that of the European’. Despite being part of that colonial contact, Bello is grateful that Thomas came to Benin and documented traditional life.

Bello also prepared a preliminary sketch for another work that we hope he will develop entitled ‘Chief Thomas’. It portrays Northcote Thomas as a traditional Benin chief, seated on a throne, and surrounded by artefacts that he collected and documented during his 1909-10 anthropological survey.

Imoudu Ameen Bello, Chief Thomas

O. Kenneth Ugherughe, Glass Plates

O. Kenneth Ugherughe, Glass Plates

Kenneth Ugherughe was born in Benin City, though his family hail from Delta State. He works in oil on canvas. His work, ‘Glass Plates’, is a reflection on the fragility of the archive. Northcote Thomas’s photographs were exposed on glass plate negatives. A number of these negatives have been broken over time and reassembled by the [Re:]Entanglements team in the process of digitisation. In his painting, Ugherughe pieces together different fragments from the photographic archive in his new composition. Although he insists that he did not intend his painting as a critique of colonialism, we find it hard not to read these broken plates in the light of the fracturing impact of colonialism on Edo society. What was broken in Thomas’s efforts to document traditional Edo life, including its ‘secret societies’ and ritual performances, which were not intended to be accessed by outsiders? Working merely 12 years after the destruction of Benin City at the hands of the British expeditionary force, might it be said that Thomas was documenting a social world that had been irredeemably damaged?

Tony Efeakpokrire, Voices from the Past

Tony Efeakpokrire, Voices from the Past

Tony Efeakpokrire was born and bred in Warri, in Delta State. He studied art at Auchi Polytechnic and now works as a studio assistant at Nosona Studios. This give him the opportunity of practicing his art on a full time basis. In addition to contributing an artwork, Efeakpokrire worked very hard, assisting the project team install the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition (thanks Tony!).

When Efeakpokrire began exploring the Northcote Thomas archives, it was the material culture collections – and especially the sculptural pieces – that spoke to him most. Efeakpokrire is a keen student of Edo history and Edo art and he has read widely on the subjects. Seeing photographs of Thomas’s collections made a great impression on him: ‘I have never seen images like this. I realised that this is what I had been reading about’. He reflected on the differences between reading about traditional art and its functions and actually seeing the objects – even photographs of them – themselves. ‘On a normal day’, he explained, ‘I would just get a history book. I would just read – ok, this is what happened. This is how it went. Finish. Close the book. But with the archive, it is like I have been able to travel back to that period’. This gives rise to the title of his work: ‘Voices from the Past’.

Efeakpokrire composition brings together a series of objects that, he says, almost selected themselves. They are all objects collected by Thomas during his survey of Edo-speaking people, and extend the familiar repertoire of Palace art to the material cultures of other groups in the region. He states that Northcote Thomas is, for him, ‘like a deity of sorts, like an ancestor’. Without the archive created through his work he would not be aware of these things.

Efeakpokrire was struck by how advanced Edo society was at the time Thomas documented it, and he sees the archives as issuing a challenge to the present: ‘These images will play a very big role in our lives. They allow us to understand what has changed. How far have we developed? How far have we come? Where do we need to be? Given the distance in time, have we grown? Have we advanced enough? You can see that our ancestors were so civilized. We need to beef up our game. We still need to put in the work. The archive is a challenge. This is the standard. We don’t need to relax’.

Adeyemi Semiu, Rhythm of Thought

Adeyemi Semiu, Rhythm of Thought

Adeyemi Semiu is an artist based at Nosona Studios working in mixed media. He trained initially at Yaba College of Technology and then at the University of Benin. Semiu was inspired by both photographs and material culture collections in the Northcote Thomas archive. In particular, he was interested in how the archive reflected the more performative aspects of Edo cultural heritage – music, dance, festivals, masquerade.

The music and materiality of the drum are central to Semiu’s work for the project, ‘Rhythm of Thought’. Rather than painting on a stretched canvas, his work is painted onto a stretched animal skin, traditionally used as a drum skin, which he procured from traditional hunters. His medium speaks directly to the drums in the Northcote Thomas collection, including a wonderful example with a painted skin collected in Okpe in North Edo. Semiu uses some of the animal motifs on the Okpe drum to decorate the edge of his work, which is cut and stretched into the shape of the map of the Edo-speaking area of Nigeria published in Thomas’s Anthropological Report.

Semiu’s ‘Rhythm of Thought’ is suspended like a mobile from the ceiling in the exhibition, allowing visitors to inspect both sides. Semiu argues that be creating his work on a drum skin, his very medium invokes the memory of Edo’s past.

Ayodeji Ayimoro, The Gods are Safe

Ayodeji Ayimoro is an artist and textile designer based at Nosona Studios. As someone who works in textiles, Ayimoro was particularly interested in Northcote Thomas’s documentation of traditional weaving in the Edo-speaking world. The work Ayimoro produced for the project is entitled ‘The Gods are Safe’ and it reproduces in a woolen tapestry one of Thomas’s photographs of the Ovia masquerade taken in Iyowa in 1909. The base into which Ayimoro wove his design is piece of cloth he obtained in Somorika, in North Edo, where textiles are still produced using tradition looms as documented by Thomas. The tapestry is suspended on a reproduction of a ‘loom sword’, which were used on traditional looms, to separate the warps and compress the wefts. Thomas collected a number of such loom swords during his Edo tour.

Another interesting apect of Ayimoro’s composition is the inclusion of Northcote Thomas and his equipment. The figure of Thomas is hunched under the dark cloth of his camera in the act of taking the photograph of the Ovia masquerade, while his phonograph machine with its recording horn documents the masquerade song. The process of Thomas’s anthropological survey, including the equipment used and the presence of Thomas himself, is largely absent from the archive, and Ayimoro’s work reinserts this into the frame. Indeed, it is interesting that, in one way or another, most of the artists chose to depict Thomas in their work.

Christopher Osayimwen, Ukhure

The exhibition ‘[Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Archives, Creative Collaborations’ is on at Nosona Studios, Benin City until the end of August 2019. A selection of the artists’ work will later be displayed at the end of project [Re:]Entanglements exhibition at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

In addition to the AHRC, the main funder of the [Re:]Entanglements project, we gratefully acknowledge HE Godwin Obaseki and the Government of Edo State for its generous support of the exhibition and opening event. We’d like to thank all the artists who enthusiastically engaged in this creative collaboration with the Northcote Thomas archives, and especially thank Enotie Ogbebor for his enthusiasm and support of the venture. We look forward to many future creative collaborations!

‘Artist: Unknown’ exhibition

Northcote Thomas collections in Artis Unknown exhibition, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
Installation views of objects collected by Northcote Thomas featuring in the ‘Artist: Unknown’ exhibition, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Photographs by Nicholas Thomas.

One consequence of the [Re:]Entanglements project is that the various archives and collections assembled by Northcote Thomas during his anthropological surveys in Nigeria and Sierra Leone are gaining greater exposure. This is true in West Africa, but also in the UK and elsewhere. As a example, two objects collected by Thomas are currently being featured in an exhibition at Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge entitled ‘Artist: Unknown, Art and Artefacts from the University of Cambridge Museums and Collections’. The exhibition opened on 9 July 2019 and will run until 22 September 2019.

The exhibition brings together a selection of artworks and artefacts from across the University of Cambridge’s diverse collections, including the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (which holds the Northcote Thomas collections), Cambridge Botanic Garden, Museum of Classical Archaeology, The Fitzwilliam Museum, The Polar Museum, Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Museum of Zoology, University Library and a couple of the colleges. The selected items share one thing in common: despite displaying remarkable creativity and skill, the identities of the artists or makers are not known. As an exhibition text states, ‘Not knowing, in each instance, who the artist or maker is, shifts our attention from a name and a known or imagined persona, to focus instead on the multiple reasons why the creator is lost to history’.

In the context of historical ethnographic collections, of course, the absence of a named individual artist or maker is the norm, rather than the exception. We’ll return to this issue, but first let us take a look at the two artworks/artefacts collected by Thomas that feature in the exhibition.

Z 14207: Lamellophone (ibweze)

Lamellophone (ibweze) collected by Northcote Thomas in Enugu Ukwu, Nigeria
Lamellophone (ibweze) collected by Northcote Thomas in Enugu-ukwu, 1911. NWT 351; University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Z 14207.

According to Thomas’s label, this lamellophone or thumb piano was collected in 1911 in Enugu-ukwu, south-west of Awka, in present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. It is one of a number of lamellophones collected by Thomas. The Igbo word for a lamellophone is ubọ-aka, and it is thus curious why Thomas gives this particular instrument the name ibweze. According to Dr Ikenna Onwuegbuna, a lecturer in the Music Department at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and native of Awka, ibweze – which should actually be spelt ibhe-eze – means simply ‘the thing belonging to the king’, or ‘the king’s thing’, and is not the name of an instrument at all. Onwuegbuna speculates that this ubo-aka was made for the Eze (king) or a musician in his court.

Judging from the lamellophones collected by Thomas, they were a medium for displaying the virtuosity of those who made them as well as the musicians who played them. However, the ibweze is particularly remarkable given the elaborate superstructure (indeed, a lamellophone fit for a king!). The finger-board, which has six cane tongues, is mounted onto a wooden block. Above the finger-board, this has been carved with two human faces, one facing front, one facing back, as well as two antelope heads facing left and right. Surmounted on the antelopes’ horns is a cat-like creature – probably a leopard given its spots. The leopard is also a symbol of kingship.

Northcote Thomas photograph of ibweze (lamellophone) being played, Enugu Ukwu
Sequence of photographs by Northcote Thomas showing the ibweze being played. NWT 2889-2891; RAI 400.16305-16308.

The elaborate carving makes the instrument heavy and poorly balanced. One would imagine that it is impossible to play, but Thomas also took a series of photographs of the ibweze being played along with a drum, which Thomas also acquired. In his register book, Thomas describes the photograph series simply as ‘Young men’s dance’. A further photograph shows both the thumb piano and the drum (Z 14200) lined up before a backcloth with other objects that he had collected in Enugu-ukwu.

Photograph by Northcote Thomas of objects lined up prior to being sent to Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
During his second tour, in Igbo-speaking Awka District, Northcote Thomas sometimes arranged his collections in a line to photograph them prior to sending them to the Cambridge. Here, the ibweze can be seen alongside other objects collected in Enugu-ukwu. Photograph by Northcote Thomas.

We know that Thomas purchased objects for his collections and he also commissioned artists and craftspeople to make things for him. We do not know, however, whether the ibweze was a specially commissioned piece. If it was, we might speculate that the ibweze-maker used the opportunity to show off his skills as an artist, perhaps aware that his work would travel to a distant land, carrying his reputation and fame with it. Did he imagine that 108 years later, his masterpiece would be displayed in a fine art gallery in Cambridge?! If Thomas did commission the ibweze, it is possible that he was aware of the artist’s name – what a shame that he appears not to have recorded it.

Z 25889: Carved and painted wooden head

Carved and painted head collected by Northcote Thomas in Nigeria
Carved and painted wooden head, collected in Southern Nigeria between 1909 and 1913. University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Z 25889.

The second object from the Thomas collections featuring in the ‘Artist: Unknown’ exhibition is much more enigmatic. The label is of a kind that was attached to Thomas’s collections when they were originally accessioned at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. It reads simply ‘Head, one side painted white, the other with white spots, straw round neck’. There is no surviving record of where it was collected or what its original purpose or function was, let alone who created it.

Unlike the ibweze, Thomas took no photographs showing the carving in situ prior to being collected. There are, however, some formal similarities with some shrine figures photographed by Thomas in December 1909 in Aja-Eyube (spelled Ajeyube by Thomas), which is now a suburb of Agbarho in Delta State, Nigeria. This is, however, inconclusive.

Northcote Thomas photograph of Nama shrine, Aja-Eyube
Nama shrine, Aja-Eyube (Ajeyube), in present-day Delta State, Nigeria. NWT 1394a; RAI 400.16630.

The division of the body using paint – in this case white on the right side, and spotted on the left – has cosmological significance and is found on both carved figures and human bodies. The Anglican missionary, George Basden, published a photograph of a man with his left side painted white in his book Niger Ibos [sic] (1938), which he stated represented the dualism of ‘body’ and ‘spirit’.

George Basden photograph of man with body painting, from Niger Ibos

More than many of the objects that Thomas collected, this carved wooden head perhaps most closely resembles an ‘art object’, the primary function of which is aesthetic.

Artists unknown

In a podcast accompanying the ‘Artist: Unknown’ exhibition, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Nicholas Thomas (no relation to Northcote!) reflects on historical distinctions between art museums and ethnographic museums. In the following excerpt he discusses a Fijian painted barkcloth from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology that also appears in the ‘Artist: Unknown’ exhibition, but the broader points apply equally to the Nigerian objects.

Excerpt from Nicholas Thomas’s podcast. Listen to the full version by clicking here.

Whereas (Western) art objects are often valued because of their association with individual artists, (non-Western) ethnographic objects were historically valued as ‘specimens’ of the material culture of particular societies and cultural groups. Although they recognized and appreciated the skills and artistry of individual makers, anthropological collectors such as Northcote Thomas were primarily interested in what material culture could tell them about a given ‘people’. Thus, Thomas conceptualised his collections in terms of ‘technologies’, or their function in relation to religion and ritual. He was also interested in documenting ‘decorative arts’, both in architecture and artefacts. This was, however, principally of interest insofar as distinctive styles and techniques were perceived to delineate cultural boundaries and influences. Thomas used art(efacts) much as he used language and physical type photography as a tool in cultural mapping.

It was only in the 1980s that the distinction between art objects and ethnographic objects began to be questioned critically. This period also saw the rebranding of many ethnographic collections as ‘World Art’. Today, acknowledging the individuality of the artists and craftspeople responsible for making these works is part of a decolonisation agenda. The reduction of singular works such as the ibweze or carved head collected by Thomas to representative specimens, with the corresponding erasure of the identities of their individual makers, is part of the epistemic violence of colonialism. But, at the same time, we might also question whether the highly-commoditised global art system, with its obsession with the named celebrity artist, represents another form of coloniality, obscuring other possible artworlds in which creativity is not necessarily the property and outcome of individual activity.

Creative engagements with the archive

Art workshop at Nosona Studios, Benin City
Art workshop at Nosona Studios, Benin City. Introducing the colonial ethnographic archive to participants. Photograph by Paul Basu.

As part of our exploration of the contemporary value of the colonial-era collections and archives assembled by the Government Anthropologist, Northcote Thomas, in Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915, we are working with various young artists in the areas in which Thomas worked. To facilitate this, we have held a series of workshops in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, at Nosona Studios in Benin City, and at the Sierra Leone National Museum in Freetown. We have also been developing collaborations with more established artists, for instance with Kelani Abass, Mike Omoighe and Ndidi Dike in Nigeria, and with Charlie Haffner in Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone artists workshop at the Sierra Leone National Museum
Sierra Leonean artists discuss each others’ initial ideas for works engaging with the archives and collections assembled by Northcote Thomas during his 1914-15 tour in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone National Museum, Freetown. Photograph by Paul Basu.

At the workshops we have been introducing artists to the Northcote Thomas archives and collections, and discussing the context of the colonial anthropological surveys through which they were assembled. We have then looked at other examples of how contemporary artists have engaged with the colonial archive in their work – often as a way of interrogating or critiquing colonialism and its legacies. Participants then discuss their initial ideas for how they might respond specifically to the Northcote Thomas collections through their art practice. After the initial workshops we have held follow-up sessions and been in close contact with the artists as they have developed their initial ideas and begun producing their works. We report here on just a few of these works-in-progress.

Derek Jahyem Jombo Ogboi work in progress, Benin City
Work-in-progress by Derek Jahyem Jombo-Ogboi, Benin City. Derek Jahyem is especially drawn to the expressions on the faces and the body language of those Northcote Thomas photographed. ‘I can’t really say much about the piece, as it’s ongoing’, he explains. ‘The eyes of these people in the images keep directing me on where to go … it’s like I hear each one of them whisper to me, saying: “Tell my story, tell my story!”‘. Artist photograph by Jonathan Chambalin Nwachukwu.
Uli-based art projects, Department of Fine and Applied Art, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Uli-inspired works-in-progress, Nsukka. There is a long-standing tradition of creating contemporary work inspired by Igbo uli body and wall painting in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Continuing the tradition of the ‘Nsukka School’, a number of workshop participants, including C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah, Jennifer Ogochukwu Okpoko and Chinyere Odinukwe are developing works in different media inspired by Northcote Thomas’s documentation of historical uli art. Left: preliminary drawings for mixed media work by Chinyere Odinukwe ; Right: RitaDoris Edumchieke Ubah, discusses her ideas for translating uli motifs documented by Thomas into textile designs.
Jonathan Chambalin and Anedu Edozie work in progress, Benin City
Work-in-progress by Jonathan Chambalin Nwachukwu, Benin City. Photographer and sound artist, Jonathan Chambalin Nwachukwu, is collaborating with painter, Anendu Edozie, to create a series of linked cinemagraphs (a hybrid of stills photography and video) and sound installations based on Northcote Thomas’s photographs and phonograph recordings. Jonathan is recreating a number of Thomas’s photographic portraits using the painted bodies of live models. Artist self-portrait by Jonathan Chambalin Nwachukwu.
Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, work in progress, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Works-in-progress by Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, Nsukka. Chukwuemeka is a textile artist who combines traditional weaving techniques with the use of discarded plastics and foils. He is producing a series of works featuring silhouettes of figures drawn from Northcote Thomas’s photographs woven into colourful backgrounds formed of waste materials. His work highlights the contrast between the historical Igbo worlds documented, in monochrome, by Thomas, in which organic materials dominated, and the present environment, full of colour, but also facing a crisis due to the dominance of petrochemical industries and plastic waste.
Bello Ameen, work in progress, Benin City
Works-in-progress by Bello Imoudu Ameen, Benin City. Among the works that Bello Ameen is producing for the project is a pair of paintings provisionally entitled ‘Loss or Gain’. Based on Thomas’s photograph of Chief Ero and his son, taken in Benin City in 1909, he is re-imagining the scene in oils, with abstract backgrounds incorporating architectural design motifs that Thomas also documented. The foreground characters are represented ‘then’ and ‘now’ as a way of reflecting on what has been gained in Nigerian society in the last 100 years, but also what has been lost.

Contemporary artworks resulting from these collaborations will be exhibited at a series of exhibitions over the coming months and years. The first will open at Nosona Studios, Benin City, in July 2019, to coincide with a meeting of the Benin Dialogue Group (a forum to discuss the future of antiquities looted from Benin during the 1897 Punitive Expedition). Then exhibitions will be taking place at the National Museum, Lagos, in October 2019, and at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in February 2020. A selection of the works will then be redisplayed in the final [Re:]Entanglements exhibition that will be held at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, due to open in April 2021.

Ichi scarification and the Nka Dioka Festival, Neni

by George Emeka Agbo, Chijioke Onuora and Paul Basu

Nka Dioka Cultural Festival, Neni, December 2018
People of Umudioka dressed in the specially designed uniform at the Nka Dioka Cultural Festival, Neni, December 2018.

On 31 December 2018, the pavilion of the Umudioka Arts and Cultural Centre in Neni, Anambra State, Nigeria was filled by thousands of people who attended the 40th Nka Dioka Cultural Festival of Umudioka, Neni. Ndi Igwe (community leaders), titled men, and state functionaries graced the occasion. A live orchestra, cultural musical troupes (such as Egedege), and masquerades (agbogho mmonwu, otenkwu, etc.) electrified the arena with their performances. The people of Umudioka filed in in groups according to their age grades, all dressed in the same uniform designed exclusively for the occasion. The main motif repeated on this uniform comprised of a man’s face with ichi marks positioned above the tools used for the scarification, framed with the inscription ‘40th Year Nka Dioka Cultural Festival of Umudioka Community Neni’. The motif is a visual articulation of the event, giving insight into the history and culture of this town in Anambra State.

Nka Dioka Cultural Festival, Neni, December 2018
Textile design for the 40th anniversary Nka Dioka Cultural Festival.

Umudioka communities (in Neni and seven other towns among the Igbo) were historically known as specialist surgeons who carried out ichi and nki facial scarification, mbubu (body marking from neck to belly) and iwa eze (tooth filing). Among the photographs that Northcote Thomas made during his 1910-11 anthropological survey of what was then Awka District (corresponding more or less with present-day Anambra State), there are numerous portraits of people with facial and body scarification. Due to its broad social, political, and economic signification, ichi was the most common of these markings. Ichi specialists from Umudioka were invited to various towns across the region to create the marks on those who wanted them. Their clients were mainly male, although certain women, including priestesses, could also obtain the marks. Thomas wrote about the practice in his Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria.

Northcote Thomas photograph of Iyiazi, ichi marks, Nri, 1911.
Northcote Thomas photographs of a man named Iyiazi with ichi scarification marks, Nri, 1911. (NWT 2629 and 2930; RAI 400.15109 and 400.15110)
Woman with mbubu body marks, photographed by N. W. Thomas in Nri, 1911.
Northcote Thomas photograph of a woman with mbubu body scarification marks, Nri, 1911. (NWT 2430; RAI 400.15311)

In the case of families of high social and economic status,ichi marks could be obtained for their children at a relatively early age. In adulthood one can also do it as an expression of one’s wealth and prestige. The ichi scarification process begins with a journey by the Nwadioka (ichi specialist from Umudioka) to the Nwa Ichi (his client). The Nwadioka is accompanied by Nwa Nso, an assistant who carries the the Nwadioka’s tool bag and prepares the ground (mat and wooden pillow) on which the Nwa Ichi lies for the marking. He is also accompanied by the Nwa Mgbado Ichi, a second assistant who holds down the Nwa Ichi’s legs on the mat while the scarification is taking place. It is, of course, painful to receive ichi marks; so, to assuage the pain during the procedure, the Nwa Ichi’s mother or wife intermittently gives him a piece of fish to eat. Words of encouragement and melodious songs are also used to soothe the pain. At the same time, the lyrics of the songs convey various messages about ichi, the dexterity and experiences of the Nwadioka, and the value of the art. Nwa Nso plays the role of a nurse for fourteen days, cleaning the cuts with warm water and administering herbs that facilitates the healing.

Implements used for making ichi scarification marks, Neni
Implements (mma nka) used for ichi scarification. Clockwise from top left: (1) ichi knife for marking the affluent; (2) ichi kninfe for marking less affluent; (3) knife for isu nki (the short strokes on the temples and bridge of the nose); (4) knife used for itu mbubu (body marks for women).
Northcote Thomas photographs of ichi marks the day after they were cut
Northcote Thomas photographed this man in Achalla the day after he received ichi marks, indicating how painful it must be. It was, however, highly dishonorable to flinch during the operation. (NWT 3742 and 3743; TNA CO 1069/60)

Before the incursion of Christian missionary activity, ichi served as a means of protection for those who had the marks. For instance, they were not prone to abduction for slavery which was rampant at that time. The high value placed on ichi also made it a prerequisite for ozo title taking in most Igbo communities. In fact, ichi is seen as a sign of class stratification, not only by virtue of receiving the marks, but by the Nwa Ichi’s ability to ‘hire’ the costly implements used to make the marks. There are two types of ichi knives which do not necessarily produce different results but the use of one attracts higher payment than the other. Thus, there is an ichi knife for the highly affluent and another for the average class. When the Nwadioka completes the ichi cutting, he remits a certain percentage of his pay to the group of retired Nwadioka called Ndi Isimmanka.

In the mid-twentieth century, the ichi marking tradition was disrupted by the expansion of Christianity, which held that it was a fetishistic practice. Following the consequential decline, and after much controversy, the ichi tradition was, however, reinvented in Neni in 1978. From then on, ichi marks would no longer be received in the actual sense of cutting the skin, rather it became a symbolic practice performed annually at the Nka Dioka Cultural Festival. We witnessed this reinvented tradition being performed at the 40th anniversary of Nka Dioka in Neni on 31 December 2018. Two men received the symbolic marks that day. Then men were carried on the backs of attendants and laid on mats where the ceremony took place. The marking ceremony was accompanied by the traditional ichi songs and the Nwa Ichi were given fish to eat as in the original ceremony. The marking itself, however, did not involve cutting; rather the ichi knife merely traced the patterns on the men’s foreheads, leaving no visible trace.

Nka Dioka Cultural Festival, Neni, December 2018
Scenes from the symbolic ichi marking ceremony at the Nka Dioka Cultural Festival, Neni, December 2018. Left: Nwa Ichi being carried on the back of an attendant; right: the symbolic cutting being performed.

Northcote Thomas was not the only ethnographer to make a study of ichi scarification among the Igbo people. The anthropologically-minded missionary, George Basden, who spent most of his career working in the Awka/Onitsha area from 1900 to 1926, discussed ichi scarification in his 1921 book Among the Ibos of Nigeria. In particular, Basden noted the important role of Umudioka (which he spelled Umu-di-awka) communities in the practice. He observed that the men of Umudioka ‘hold a sort of monopoly of the profession [of ichi cutting], and travel all over the country for the purpose’; further noting that ‘judging by the number of those bearing the ichi marks, it must be a prosperous business’ (1921: 183).

It was, however, a later Government Anthropologist, M. D. W. Jeffreys, who made a more extensive investigation of facial scarification as part of a study of ‘the magico-religious beliefs of the Umundri’. Jeffreys identified two distinct ichi patterns, one associated exclusively with Ndri, another which he termed the ‘Agbaja Pattern’. In his article, ‘The Winged Solar Disk of Ibo Itchi Facial Scarification’, published in 1951, Jeffreys provides a detailed account of ichi from a man named Nwora from Nibo, who was an old man when interviewed in 1930, when he recalled having the ichi operation in his youth. Nwora explained that the Eze Nri had told the Umudioka to cut other towns differently to Nri, and it is forbidden to use the Nri pattern elsewhere.

Figures from M D W Jeffreys article 'The Winged Solar Disk of Ibo Itchi Facial Scarification'
Figures I, II and IV from M. D. W. Jeffreys’ article ‘The Winged Solar Disk of Ibo Itchi Facial Scarification’, published in 1951. Figures I and II show the differences between the Ndri (Nri) and Agbaja ichi patterns. Figure IV shows the Ndri (Nri) pattern as it appears on the face. Compare this with Northcote Thomas’s photograph of Iyiazi taken in Nri in 1911.

Ichi patterns were not only cut into people’s forheads. The same patterns are used to decorate a wide range of objects, including wooden door panels, ancestral figures, stools, masks and pottery used for ritual purposes. Thomas photographed many such objects during his survey work, and we have also come across examples in the artefact collections he made, which are cared for by the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We will be including a section on ichi in the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition in 2020 when we will display some of these objects alongside contemporary artwork by Chijioke Onuora, who is developing a series of batik paintings drawing on ichi motifs documented in Northcote Thomas’s photographs and collections.

Ichi designs on objects in the Northcote Thomas collections at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Ichi patterns carved into objects in the N. W. Thomas collections at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Clockwise from top left: ‘Pot used for giving Ndicie palm wine’ from Nibo (MAA Z 13800); Ngene shrine figure from Nibo (MAA Z 14234); base of wooden ozo title stool from Awgbu (MAA Z 14011).
Uwho, Ancestral shrine figure, Nri, photographed by Northcote Thomas, 1909-10.
Ichi designs on ‘uwho’ shrine figure at Nri, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1911.

As can be seen in the Nka Dioka Cultural Festival in Neni, ichi is celebrated as an important part of Igbo cultural heritage – especially among Umudioka communities. In this respect it is interesting to note how Chief Odidika Chidolue (also known as Oke Iwe Adimma) is revered by the community as the only surviving man in Neni who has actual ichi marks. As a valued part of Neni’s living heritage, he receives a monthly stipend of 15,000 Naira from the Eyisi Ebuluo Foundation, which supports the preservation of local culture. In the course of our fieldwork we had the privilege of talking with Chief Odidika Chidolue as well as Nze R. O. Udeze (Eyisi Ebulue II) and Fidelis Igwilo, and were fortunate in being able to record some of their traditional ichi songs.

Video documentation of song traditionally sung during ichi marking. Performed by Chief Odidika Chidolue and Fidelis Igwilo, January 2019.
Chief Odidika Chidolue, Nze R. O. Udeze and Chirizu Igwilo, Neni
Many thanks to our friends in Neni: Chief Odidika Chidolue (also known as Oke Iwe Adimma, the only surviving member of the community to have ichi scarification marks), Nze R. O. Udeze (Eyisi Ebulue II) and Fidelis Igwilo.

We look forward to continuing our research in Neni and, through the [Re:]Entanglements project, exploring other opportunities for documenting this fascinating cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations.

References
Basden, G. T. (1921) Among the Ibos of Nigeria. London: Seeley, Service & Co.
Jeffreys, M. D. W. (1951) ‘The Winged Solar Disk or Ibo Itchi Facial Scarification’, Africa 21(2): 93-111.
Thomas, N. W. (1913) Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Part I: Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood, S. Nigeria. London: Harrison & Sons.

Conversations with a carver

George Agbo in conversation with Chief Anaemena, Amansea.
George Agbo and Chief Anaemena discuss photographs of wood carvings collected by Northcote Thomas in 1911.

In 2018 we photographed many of the artefacts collected by Northcote Thomas during his anthropological surveys in Nigeria and Sierra Leone and now held at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This allowed us glimpse into the artistic skills of the various communities in which Thomas worked. This included metal working such as bronze casting and blacksmithing, wood carving, pottery, basketry, weaving and leather working. Our engagement with these collections has led us to pursue certain lines of inquiry in our fieldwork: for instance, we are interested in who made these objects, why and how they were made, to what uses were they put, and whether these artistic practices have survived.

Carver, Felix Ekhator, Sakpohba Road, Benin City.
Carver, Felic Ekhator, of Sakpohba Road, Benin City.

In some place, such as Benin City, we have found that traditional arts continue to flourish, as can be seen in the metal working guilds in Igun Street or the nearby wood carvers who produce works not dissimilar to those collected by Thomas over 100 years ago. In many places, however, it appears that these skills are being lost or have died out.

Chief Anaemena, Amansea.
Ozo Chief Raphael Anaemena of Amansea, Anambra State, Nigeria.

In Amansea, Anambra State, Nigeria, which Thomas visited in 1911 during his first tour among Igbo-speaking communities, we met a carver – Chief Raphael Anaemena – who also holds the Ozo title. We did not see him work; he is advanced in age and has not carved in a couple of years, but he shared interesting insight into the art. He is from the Ibe family in Amansea, historically known across the region for the art of carving.

Although we do not have record of any wooden artefacts collected by Thomas from Amansea, Chief Anaemena’s father or grandfather may well have carved the doors or shrine figures that Thomas photographed in the town. He and other carvers from the Ibe family also received commissions from neighbouring towns such as Ebenebe, Ugwuoba and Awka where Thomas did collect. There were carvers in these places too, but the works of the Ibe of Amansea were particularly sought after due to the high quality of their craftsmanship.

Examples of wood carving photographed by Northcote Thomas in Amansea in 1911.
Examples of wood carving photographed by Northcote Thomas in Amansea in 1911. Left: carved door (NWT 3466; RAI 400.20020; MAA P.31638); Right: shrine figure (NWT 3473; RAI 400.20026).

We sat down with Chief Anaemena to look over some of the photographs of the wooden objects Thomas collected in the area and benefitted from his insight into production techniques. Consider, for example, how carvers joined pieces of wood.

Thumb piano collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu, 1911. NWT 2 0351; MAA Z 14207.
Elaborately carved thumb piano or ubo collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu in 1911. (MAA Z 14207)

Looking at the above elegant wood carving to which a thumb piano (ubo) is attached, and which was acquired by Thomas in Awgbu, Chief Anaemena explained that some parts such as the leopard and the animal heads with horns were carved separately and then joined together. While other carvers would use glue, such as the type made of wax from a certain insect in the bee family, to join the various parts, the Ibe would achieve a better result by creating a protrusion on one piece of wood and a groove on the other wood into which the protuberance would be fitted. Another joinery technique is ‘nailing’ with thorns such as those from orange trees, palm branches or pieces of wood given nail-like shape. However, this technique only works with soft woods such as the type used in the production of the box for keeping eagle feathers which Thomas collected from Nise.

Box collected by Northcote Thomas in Nise, 1911. NWT 2 0599; MAA Z 13900.
Box for storing eagle feathers collected by Northcote Thomas in Nise, 1911. (MAA Z 13900)

Generally, the kind of wood used for carving is determined by the object the carver intends to create. Masks for instance would be produced from light wood so that they could easily be carried by the masker. Other production specifications such as size and design are largely determined by the one who commissioned the carving. Carvers do not usually produce carvings to be kept for sale. The work is driven by demand, where the carver could even be employed for some time in his client’s home. One who wishes to have an ikenga figure made, for example, would give the carver specifications about size and the objects it would carry in its hands. However, clients could at times ask the carver to make design decisions for them. According to Chief Anaemena, it was once common to see the ikenga figure with a knife in one hand and a human head in the other as exemplified by the one Thomas collected from Awgbu.

Ikenga collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu, 1911. NWT 2 0348; MAA Z 14203.
Ikenga figure collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu, 1911. (MAA Z 14203)

The trophy is suggestive of the malevolent side of ikenga’s power. At some point, people began to find that too fierce. Ozo Chief Anaemena explained that, in the 1970s, he began to put the ofo stick in one of the ikenga’s hands and a knife in the other to suggest ‘okpegbuo ogbuo’ (it can only kill justly). This was well received and it soon became fashionable.

Stool carved by Chief Anaemena for his Ozo title taking ceremony, Amansea
Stool carved by Chief Anaemena for his Ozo title taking ceremony, Amansea.

Today, Ozo Chief Anaemena does not carve anymore but he still has some of his works. An example is the stool he carved in 2013 for his Ozo title taking ceremony the following year. He also showed us some of his carving tools including nkori oshishi (for creating effects on the wood), muma (for shaping), ugama (for cutting), and mma oge (for cutting). We hope that in the course of our fieldwork we will meet some traditional carvers who still practice their art and look forward to learning more from them.

Some of Chief Anaemena's woodworking tools, Amansea.
Some of Chief Anaemena’s wood carving tools, including: (1) nkori oshishi (for creating effects on the wood); (2) muma (for shaping); (3) ugama (for cutting); and (4) mma oge (for cutting).

Faces|Voices – confronting the photographic archive

Looking through the photographic archives of Northcote Thomas’s early twentieth-century anthropological surveys of Nigeria and Sierra Leone, one gazes upon thousands of faces. Faces of men, women and children, many photographed against a canvas backdrop; all of them silent. What were they thinking as they were being photographed by this Government Anthropologist, perhaps with a number card held above their heads? Was the encounter with this pith-helmeted white man, with his entourage of carriers and boxes full of strange equipment, an unpleasant one, or an amusing distraction from everyday chores? What can we see in the faces Thomas photographed? What can we read in their expressions?

In Faces|Voices, a short film we have made as part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, we invited participants to reflect upon some of the faces captured in Thomas’s photographic portraits and to comment more generally on the significance of these archival images. Adding their voices to the mute photographs, we find that the same portrait may invite quite different ‘readings’. Where one may see coercion, another might detect boredom. The crushing experience of colonialism may be found in one subject’s expression; optimism and resilience in another’s. Perhaps most surprising is the sympathetic view – even identification with – the face of the Government Anthropologist himself.

The film complicates any simple reading of the colonial archive. Even ‘physical type’ photographs, intended to identify and classify people into different racial or tribal categories, and which seemingly epitomize the violences of colonial ideologies, become ambiguous on closer inspection.

What do you read in these faces? Please make your voice heard by adding a comment.

Faces|Voices was made in collaboration with The Light Surgeons as a pilot for a video installation for the [Re:]Entanglements exhibition planned for 2020. See also our earlier blog entry about the making of the film. Many thanks to our participants: Ebony Francis, Robert Kelechi Isiodu, Kofi Mawuli Klu, Yvonne Mbanefo and Esther Stanford-Xose.

Faces|Voices was winner of the Best Research Film prize at the 2019 AHRC Research in Film Awards.

AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019

Hand-colouring Northcote Thomas’s photographs

Chiadikoni Nwaubani colourised versions of Northcote Thomas photographs (NWT 2972 and 2227)
Colourised versions of Northcote Thomas’s original monochrome photographs. Left: Nwamboyi (Nwamgboye) (NWT 2972); Right: Eze Nri Obalike (NWT 2227). Both photographed in Agukwu Nri in 1911. Coloured by Chiadikōbi Nwaubani, 2018.

Although there were many early experiments with colour photography from the 1850s, it was not until the mid-1930s, with the introduction of Kodachrome film, that it became widely used. All of Northcote Thomas’s photographs made during his anthropological surveys of Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915 were monochrome. Since the beginning of photography, however, various techniques have been used to hand-colour monochrome prints. Hand-colouring photographic prints using a fine brush with different kinds of dyes, watercolours and oils was a highly-skilled task. Demand for hand-coloured photographs reached its peak in the early twentieth century.

To date, we have come across only one historical example of a photograph taken by Thomas that has been hand-coloured. This was published in the serialised pictorial encyclopaedia, Peoples of All Nations, around 1920. In the section entitled ‘British Empire in Africa’ Thomas contributed around 23 photographs, many of which have been touched-up for publication, among these is the colour plate disparagingly entitled ‘Gewgaws of Primitive Society’. The photograph shows two young girls, which Thomas elsewhere describes as ‘onye ebuci’, adorned with bracelets of hippo ivory, anklets and garters of cowries, and necklaces and headdresses of long red beads. In addition to colouring the photograph, a vaguely ‘tropical’ background has been painted in place of Thomas’s calico photographic backdrop.

Comparison of Northcote Thomas's original photograph 4136 and the coloured version published in Peoples of All Nations
Comparison of Northcote Thomas’s original photograph of ‘onye ebuci’ girls (NWT 4135), photographed in Onicha Olona in 1912 and the hand-coloured version published in c.1920 in the popular encyclopaedia, Peoples of All Nations.

Today, with digital tools such as Adobe Photoshop, new possibilities for colourising historical monochrome photographs present themselves, though the process is no less skilled. Artist and Ukpuru blogger, Chiadikōbi Nwaubani has long been interested in historical visual representations of Nigeria and has been digitally colourising some of the Northcote Thomas photographic archive.

Chiadikoni Nwaubani colourised versions of Northcote Thomas photographs (NWT 1853 and 1846a)
Colourised versions of Northcote Thomas’s original monochrome photographs. Left: ‘Nwaeyeye girl’ (NWT 1853); Right: Nwaifu (NWT 1846a). Both photographed in Awka in 1910. Coloured by Chiadikōbi Nwaubani, 2018.

Chiadikōbi explains:

I’ve started colouring some of the photographs from the Northcote collection and I’m focusing mainly on the photos of his tours of the Igbo area. Since the colouring is partly based on guess work, some knowledge about the culture helps in deciding what is coloured what, such as the indigo cloth in the picture of the Eze Nri. Resist-dyed indigo cloth like that is still popularly used and I could notice the depth of the grey and the patterns and guess that it was one of the indigo cloths.

I started colouring some of these pictures a few years ago from digital scans of the printed Anthropological Report volumes. I was looking at other areas of the past, and at the time I used the Northcote Thomas images to practice colouring photos. I think the impact of the original black and white photos was less than these coloured versions because of the quality, but there was another sense of familiarity that was added to the pictures after they were coloured, partly because the age and the surroundings had already made the images quite distant.

One of the reactions to Northcote’s pictures I’ve heard is that ‘they don’t look like Igbo people’ (by some Igbo people referring to the pictures he took of Igbo people), and I think this was partly because of the lack of reference for anything in the pictures that they can relate to today, which may also be related to the ambiguity that black and white gives some objects, in this case cultural ones. The colourisation adds another sense of life to the photos, which also includes the colouring of material culture.

Chiadikoni_Nwaubani_colourised version of Northcote Thomas photograph (NWT 3649a)
Colourised version of Northcote Thomas’s original monochrome photograph. Mooku(?) (NWT 3649a), photographed in Mgbakwu in 1911. Coloured by Chiadikōbi Nwaubani, 2018.

 

Chiadikobi Nwaubani animated gif of photograph by Northcote Thomas (NWT 1853)
Animated image showing stages in colourising Northcote Thomas’s photograph of ‘Nwaeyeye girl’ (NWT 1853) using Photoshop. Note the multiple layers needed to build up the skin tones. Chiadikōbi Nwaubani, 2018.

 

See Chiadikōbi Nwaubani’s [Re:]Entanglements project blog on his ‘Susu Boy’ painting.

Ibillo’s Ugolo mask, Guest blog by Jean Borgatti and Wendy Emmanuel Adejumoh

Ofuno mask, collected by Northcote Thomas in Ibillo, Nigeria in 1910. University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Z 26531.
Figure 1: Mask collected by Northcote Thomas in Ibillo, Nigeria, in 1910. University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Z 26531.

Northcote Whitridge Thomas collected this helmet mask from Ibillo in 1910, towards the end of his first tour in Edo-speaking areas of Nigeria (Figure 1). Ibillo, one of the Okpameri groups in what is now Akoko-Edo Local Government Area of Edo State (then part of what was called Kukuruku), continues to use this type of mask in its age-grade festival called Ikpishionua, held approximately every 7 years. At the Ikpishionua festival the mask appears under the name of Ugolo, while during smaller annual festivals it appears as Uvbono.

Jean Borgatti photograph of Northcote Thomas Ibillo mask, 1969.
Figure 2: The mask as photographed by Jean Borgatti in 1969.

I photographed this mask at University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1969 (Figure 2) as part of a feasibility study for field research among the peoples of Edo North that I began in 1971 – though Ibillo did not figure in that early field research. When I returned to Nigeria in 2015, over forty years later, I did begin to do additional research in Akoko-Edo, and visited Ibillo at that time. When I showed my photograph to an elder and group of age-grade members, they cautioned me not to show it to women since it was in the ‘production’ stage: that is, without costume and without the line of feathers inserted into the sagittal crest, as can be seen in a video made by Emmanuel Concept Video Productions of the Ikpishionua festival in 2015 (Figure 3). I was able to obtain screenshots of various masquerades from this video and Professor P. D. Ogunnubi of Odo Quarter and age group representatives identified these for me, giving a brief explanation for each one. Subsequently, an art history student from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Benin and an Ibillo indigene, Wendy Emmanuel Adejumo, wrote his honors thesis on the masquerades (Adejumo 2017). This blog entry draws on our shared findings.

Ibillo masquerade from Ibillo People Facebook page and Emmanuel Productions video..
Figure 3: Ugolo masquerade at the Ikpishionua festival, Ibillo, in 2015. (Left: Ibillo People Facebook page; Left: Emmanuel Concept Video Productions)

The term ‘Okpameri’ dates from the mid-19th century and was the result of a number of neighboring villages solidifying their coalition against Nupe slave-raiding (Orifah n.d.). Okpameri has also come to mean ‘We are one’, though it was not a term used much before the middle of the 20th century. Okpameri includes 23 towns and villages: Aiyegunle (Osi), Anyaoza, Bekuma, Dangbala, Ekor, Ekpe, Ekpesa, Ibillo, Ikiran-Ile, Ikiran-Oke, Imoga, Makeke, Lampese, Ogugu, Ogbe, Ojah (Ozah), Ojirami-Afekunu, Ojirami-Dam, Ojirami-Kpetesshi, Somorika, Ugboshi-Afe, Ugboshi-Ele and Unumu (Orifa n.d.). Ibillo’s population as recorded in the 2006 census was 24,303 (Ojeifo & Esaigbe 2012). It consists of four kinship-based quarters. Listed in order of seniority, these are: Eku/Odo, Uwhosi/Illese, Ekuya and Ekuma/Uzeh. Ibillo’s headship rotates among these quarters. All celebrate an age grade festival approximately every 7 years, and in the past they all celebrated on the same date. In recent times, however, the quarters have staggered their celebrations to maximize local attendance. There is some controversy over this since some believe Ibillo could make ‘tourist capital’ from the festival if they celebrated together.

Though held annually to purify the community and foster community identity, the festival is celebrated in its most elaborate form approximately every 7 years when a new male ‘age group’ is formed. In this way, it resembles the situation described in a previous blog on Otuo, a community on the border of Akoko-Edo and Owan Local Government Areas, which Northcote Thomas also visited and where he photographed masquerades associated with an age-group festival called ‘Eliminia’.

Although Professor Ogunnubi identified the mask collected by Thomas as ‘Ugolo’, Northcote Thomas recorded its name as ‘Ofuno’. This appears to be a misspelling. The proper spelling should be ‘Ubvono’ or ‘Uvono’. Ubvono is only celebrated in the interval between Ikpishionua festivals, suggesting that Thomas was not in Ibillo during a year when an age company was formed. Local respondents suggested that the mask was likely to have been made in Ekuya quarter, a community known for the thick weaving of the Ugolo mask form. The Ugolo, Ubvono and other woven masks are essentially the same, differentiated only by their context of use and the ‘finishing’ or decoration of the mask. For Uvbono, the Ugolo mask would have its feathers fixed differently from when it performs during Ikpishionua, and it does not perform fully in Ubvono because Uvbono is not a ‘serious’ festival, but more entertainment oriented. A nine-day festival, its function is to keep the community busy and engaged.

A description of the mask may be found in Thomas’s typed-up fieldnotes (Figure 4). He writes that, in Ibillo, ‘headdresses are woven of cord and made upon long pieces of wood carved to the shape of each man’s head. There is a stiff crest of cord surmounted by nuts of some sort. Eye holes are surrounded with cowries. There is a wooden nose; the mouth is represented by a ring of cowries without an aperture and from it hangs a double cord with a tassel at the end. The lower part of the mask is coloured with cam wood; the upper part is black; the intervening portion is white’. (Note that the tasselled cords extending from the mouth have become detached and lost, though one can see evidence of where it was attached.)

Northcote Thomas Edo manuscript notes on Ibillo mask
Figure 4: Except from Northcote Thomas’s typed-up fieldnotes describing the mask.

Many of the characteristics Thomas described can still be found in the Ugolo masks that are made in Ibillo today. The colours include red around eyes and mouth as well as on the beak-like nose. They have sagittal crests dramatized by the addition of feathers. The feathers have not been identified, but it is possible that they include the tail feathers of a rooster since the head with its crest and beak represents the head of a cock. The body covering is made of the pith from the bark of any healthy tree with a thick bark. Once the bark is removed, it is left to soften in the river for some days to allow for easy separation of the inner part or pith from the bark. The pith is further washed to increase its pliability. The resulting material, emue, is used to create the fronds covering the masqueraders’ bodies as well as the fiber employed in weaving the masks themselves.

Ibillo masquerade from Emmanuel Concept Video Productions.
Figure 5: Ugolo masquerade wearing a cloth in the initial stages of the Ikpishionua festival. Emmanuel Concept Video Productions.

During the initial outing of the masquerades during the Ikpishionua festival, all the masqueraders wear cloth covers over the costume of fronds as illustrated in another screenshot from the Emmanuel Concept video (Figure 5). The cloth covers are only worn during the full Ikpishionua age-grade festival, and not during the minor annual festivals in intervening years. The cloth covers are also seen as a symbolic definition of women’s involvement in the festival when they have license to dance alongside masquerades without committing offense, contrary to other festival celebrations. Women and family members often wear the same cloth to indicate their relationship to a particular masquerader who may be one of the newly initiated or someone being promoted to another level – tacitly identifying him. As the festival progresses, the masqueraders abandon their cloth shawls, revealing their masks more clearly for the audience to appreciate.

Northcote Thomas photograph of Ibillo mask. NWT 1733, RAI 400.17686.
Figure 6: Northcote Thomas’s photograph of a similar mask ‘at rest’ in the ukpala, Ibillo,1910. The tasselled cords extending from the mouth mentioned in Thomas’s description of the mask can be seen here. NWT 1733. Royal Anthropological Institute 400.17686.

In 1910, Thomas also photographed a similar mask at rest in the masquerade stockade (ukpala or uyala) (Figure 6) where participants make their masks and prepare for the celebration of the festival in relative privacy, away from the gaze of women. This is also a place where those wearing masks can rehearse their dancing before coming out to display. The ukpala walls stand about 15 feet high and the interior space is as large as possible in the area allocated for its construction. It is a temporary structure with walls made of dry palm branches today as in the past.

Ibillo masquerade from Ibillo People Facebook page.
Minor masquerades at the Ikpishionua festival, Ibillo. (Ibillo People Facebook page)

During Ikpishionua, Ugolo represents the elders and chiefly ancestors of Ibillo. It plays the metal gong, elo, as it sings historical songs, eulogies and epics (welaku), communicating with the people in specific areas or quarters it visits, speaking in parables. It is one of the four main mask types seen today, and probably the oldest type, the others being Umueku, Ulele and Obibia. There are numerous minor masquerades too that use the basic knit or woven form displayed by Ugolo, often without the crest. These minor masks are created by the incoming age group, and they sport different caps or headdresses created to amuse the community, inspiring jokes and nicknames. Such names refer especially to the addition of the objects to the top of the mask, such as a pouch of ‘pure water’ (ame) for the ‘hawker of water’ and ‘water as life’ masks. The label ‘fish cold-room’ (ehwena) suggests the seller of meat or food, a female hair-do (zo ehwo eh bio za) depicts young females and their fashion, a woman’s head-tie or igaleh suggests elderly women, mirrors (ugbegbe) represent eyes in the round as well as reflection, interpretation, or the foreshadowing of possibility. Costuming and accessories are meant to encourage women to make satirical comments on the masquerades. The festival is, after all, an ‘occasion for people of different ages – men, women and children – to work together creatively, making masks, costumes, musical instruments, engaging in body painting, and performing together as a community’ (Adejumoh 2017).

References

The Eliminya Festival masquerades ‘in detail’, Guest blog by Jean Borgatti

Jean Borgatti Eliminya Festival masquerades in detail
Left: Otuoyema Group masquerades of the type referred to as Osa. Photographed by Jean Borgatti at the final performance of Igugu/Eliminya festival, Otuo, 1973. The performance was held in honor of Samuel Ogbemudia who served as military governor of what was then Midwest State. Right: Otuoyema Group masquerade photographed by Northcote Thomas (NWT 839) in Emafu (Imafun) Quarter, Otuo, in 1909.

In an earlier guest blog, the art historian Professor Jean Borgatti described her first encounter with the photographic archives of Northcote Thomas in the early 1970s. She recounted how she was able to track the changes and continuities in the masquerade traditions associated with the Eliminya Festival in Otuo from Thomas’s photographs from 1909 to her own documentation of the festival in 1973, 2003 and 2016. In this second guest blog, Jean discusses the Eliminya masquerade costumes themselves in greater detail.

Otuo community life is based on the principle of age-grading. Community member and teacher, I. Igbafe, described a series of 13 grades through which passed age sets formed every 5 years. (The anthropologist, R. E. Bradbury, described 11 such grades). Each grade bears a name and has specific tasks associated with it as well as specific ritual duties and roles. Masquerade and dance regalia characterize each group through the Otuoyema, or first title grade – the group moving upward in the Eliminya/Igugu festival. Igugu is a cognate with the Yoruba language term Egungun that refers to ancestors and ancestral masquerades, and was the name used by my informants in 1972-3. (Yoruba is spoken widely in Otuo as well as throughout northwest Edo communities.) Eliminya is cognate with the Edo term Erivi meaning the world of the dead and unborn, residence of the gods, the ancestors and masquerade-dancers (Melzian 1937: 55-6).

Jean Borgatti Eliminya Festival masquerades in detail
Osa type masquerades photographed by Jean Borgatti at the Igugu/Eliminya festival, Otuo, in 1973.

In Otuo, men between the ages of 45 and 50 both sponsor and wear masks and headdresses in festivals held to mark their entry into the group of community leaders. The sponsoring age group wears only two of the seven or eight mask types that appear, the others being worn by the age company above them. These masks are used for a season lasting 5-7 years and are thereafter destroyed. Consequently, they are almost unknown to the outside world. The masks incorporate a vast array of images that refer to ideas of power and leadership: leopards, equestrian figures, colonial officers, the Nigerian Army, heraldic angels and airplanes. The names of the masquerades belong to the esoteric lore associated with each age company, although the masks I refer to as ‘bowler hats’ are called by the popular names ‘umbrella’ or ‘helmet’ – names that suggest kingship or the military but in either case, authority.  These and the ‘whipping masquerades’ are those costumes carried by the sponsoring age company [see illustrations in Jean’s previous guest blog]. The symbolism and significance of these masks also belongs to the esoteric lore of the association. However it is said that while the activity of whipping masquerades purifies the community, the ‘umbrella’ masquerades are enjoyed for their dancing.

Jean Borgatti Eliminya Festival masquerades in detail
From left to right: Obagege, crested, and Ogbigbia type masquerades photographed by Jean Borgatti at the Igugu/Eliminya festival, Otuo, in 1973.

All the masquerade headdresses are worn with a costume of woven raffia covering the performer’s head and torso, following the shape of his body. A fringed panel falls over his chest and shoulders. The section covering his head is embellished with a nose-like tassel. The lower hem of the costume terminates in long strands of fiber. The performer’s arms and legs, painted with linear designs, are partially visible through the fringe as is his cloth applique apron. (Today, shorts are worn rather than the backless apron worn in the past that left the buttocks exposed and visible as the fringe swayed.) Each headdress appears to give a distinctive name to the masquerade. In the parade of masked figures I witnessed in 1973, where the photographs that accompany this blog were taken, costumes worn with a towering feather headdress (Obagege), a central crest of straws bound together, and small wooden caps resembling women’s plaited hairstyles (Ogbigbia) precede the whipping masquerades (Olu), a type far outnumbering the rest since each member of the age group moving upward must wear this one. The wooden capped masqueraders are said to be for maintaining order during the public displays.

Jean Borgatti Eliminya Festival masquerades in detail
Left: Olu, ‘whipping masquerades’, whose role is to disperse malevolent spirits; right: Ogbogbomudu masquerade types, which perform humorous skits in the playing ground. Photographed by Jean Borgatti at the Igugu/Eliminya festival, Otuo, in 1973.

The ‘whipping masqueraders’ perform to disperse malevolent spiritual forces, each cracking  his whip in an attempt to achieve a sound approximating a gunshot. (Those who succeeded were greeted with a resounding cheer.) These are followed by the ‘umbrellas’ (Ugbokpa) and the wooden helmet masks (Ogbogbomudu). These characters are said to be linked to the rains, and perform humorous skits in the playing ground. The most elaborate masks and headdresses featuring figural superstructures (Osa) come a stately last.

Eliminya Festival masquerade photographed by Northcote Thomas in Otuo in 1909
Northcote Thomas’s photograph of the Osa masquerade type in Otuo in 1909. NWT 837.

That each company moving upwards in the system must provide a new set of headdresses provides for the incorporation of new motifs into the compositions and new materials into their construction. Northcote Thomas photographed only three of these masquerade types in Otuo: the whipping masquerade (Olu) and the umbrella masquerade (Ugbokpa), whose later 20th- and 21st-century counterparts are dramatically similar, and one towering Osa masquerade that appears to have a canework superstructure into which are pegged multiple small figures. The final two types of masquerade I witnessed in the 1973 parade consisted of a helmet, usually janus-faced, surmounted by a superstructure containing multiple figures or simply a multi-tiered headdress with carved figures and animals attached to the basic structure, evoking the complex example photographed by Thomas.

My research in Nigeria was carried out between 1971 and 1974 under the auspices of the Federal Department of Antiquities and was partially funded by the following: UCLA Museum of Cultural History-Ralph Altman Fund and NDEA Title VI fellowships via the African Studies Center, UCLA.  Research in 2002-04 and in 2014-16 was carried out under a Fulbright-Hays teaching and research fellowship at the University of Benin in Benin City. I would like to thank the people of Otuo for sharing information and experiences with me, particularly Chief Erukpe Omokhudu, Mr Isaac Adokhai Afekhai, and Teacher Igbafe of Otuo for their personal assistance in 1973. In 2003, his Highness, Julius Elugbe, the Ovie of Otuo, was instrumental in facilitating my documentation of the festival. In 2016, his nephew, Professor Ben Elugbe, was my host during the masquerades’ morning walk-about.

Further reading:

Borgatti, J. M. 1982. ‘Age Grades, Masquerades, and Leadership among the Northern Edo’, African Arts 16 (1): 36-51+96.
Bradbury, R. 1957. The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-Speaking Peoples of Southwestern Nigeria. London: International African Institute.
Igbafe, I. n.d. ‘Age Group Organization in Otuo’. Unpublished manuscript given to the author, and subsequently deposited in the Robbins Library, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.
Melzian, H. 1937. A Concise History of the Bini Language of Southern Nigeria. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

Rediscovering Northcote Thomas’s artefact collections

Basket in Northcote Thomas collection, Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Detailed documentation photographs of a basket (nkata) collected by Northcote Thomas in Awgbu in present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. Note the various different accession numbers recorded on the label. MAA Z 13945.

Over the coming months, we shall be exploring the artefact collections assembled by Northcote Thomas during his anthropological survey work in Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915. The collection of ‘ethnological specimens’ was very much a part of anthropological fieldwork in the early twentieth century, and part of a broader project of ‘salvaging’ what was perceived to be the last vestiges of ‘primitive society’ before they were made extinct by the incursion of colonial ‘civilization’. Thomas had written about the need for making such collections long before he conducted any fieldwork himself and, in 1909, he echoed his earlier sentiments when justifying his collecting activities to the Colonial Office: ‘I regard the making of these collections as important. … The opportunities which I have may not recur, every year European goods are ousting native products more & more’.

Judging from correspondence with C. H. Read and T. A. Joyce at the British Museum, it appears that Thomas purchased most of the objects he collected at markets or else commissioned them to be made. This is in stark contrast with the looting of antiquities and treasures that accompanied colonial campaigns, such as the notorious Punitive Expedition to Benin City in 1897. Thomas initially anticipated that the collections would be acquired by the British Museum. However, Read, who was then Keeper of Ethnological Collections, declined the collections from his 1909-10 tour, partly due to a misunderstanding about funds available, partly because Thomas insisted that the collection be kept together in its entirety, but partly also because many of the objects were indeed made especially for Thomas. As Read wrote, ‘I am by no means sure that I want these modern things made to order as it were’. Today, paradoxically, Thomas’s collecting methods would be considered highly ethical.

Northcote Thomas fieldwork photograph of collections prior to sending to Britain
During his 1910-11 tour in what was then Awka District, Southern Nigeria, Thomas photographed his collections prior to dispatching them to the Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology in Cambridge. As part of our collections-based research, we are identifying these objects in the museum stores. The numbers correspond to Thomas object numbers 338 to 350. MAA P.31169.

Thomas subsequently offered the collection to the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. A draft letter by the museum’s curator, Anatole von Hügel, to the University’s Antiquarian Committee, which was responsible for the museum, survives in which he recommends acquiring the collection. Von Hügel notes that there are some ‘2500 objects, now lying in forty cases at the Colonial Office’, and ‘Mr Thomas is very anxious that the collection shall be kept together and is prepared to hand it over to our Museum at cost price’. He adds that ‘Mr Thomas procured what he believes to be the last examples of genuine native workmanship in many villages’. The sum of £100 was raised from one of the Museum’s regular patrons, Professor Anthony Bevan of Trinity College Cambridge, and the collection was duly acquired.

Letter from Anatole von Hugel proposing acquisition of Northcote Thomas collection, 1910
Draft letter from Anatole von Hugel to the Cambridge University Antiquarian Society, proposing the acquisition of Northcote Thomas collection in 1910. MAA archives.

Having acquired the collection he assembled during his first tour in Edo-speaking areas of Southern Nigeria, Thomas was then given a grant by the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology ‘for collecting purposes’ during his subsequent tours among Igbo-speaking communities (1910-11, 1912-13), and it appears that Thomas donated the collections he assembled in Sierra Leone (1914-15). Together the ‘Thomas Collection’, as it was known, provided a comprehensive representation of ‘native manufactures’ of Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The size of the collection was such that the gallery in which they were stored at the Museum was assigned as a dedicated ‘African room’.

Documenting and caring for a collection of this scale also presented challenges, especially since a large number of the objects had been damaged in transit from West Africa to Britain. The Museum’s Annual Reports in the years following the initial acquisition often mention the work of ‘cleaning, mending and restoring’ the objects; while Thomas himself assisted in the work of classifying and labelling the collections. Indeed, the work of accessioning, cataloguing and documenting the collection has continued sporadically over the decades. This work was carried out by individuals who went on to become established figures in the study of African Art, including G. I. Jones in the late 1940s and Malcolm Mcleod in the early 1970s. In the late 1980s, a project was led by Cambridge students, Roger Blench and Mark Alexander, to re-examine the collections, and today, of course, we are engaging with them again in the [Re:]Entanglements project.

Katrina Dring, George Agbo and Paul Basu working with the Northcote Thomas collection, Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
[Re:]Entanglements team members (Katrina Dring, George Agbo and Paul Basu) working with the Thomas collections in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology stores in Cambridge.
Despite this occasional attention, the collections have rarely been seen. Today, only a handful of the objects are on display in the Museum’s permanent galleries. Through the [Re:]Entanglements project, for the first time we will be taking photographs of the collections back to the places from which they were collected. Thomas’s documentation of the collections is relatively limited, and we have much to learn about them. We are also interested in how the descendants of those who made or used these objects perceive them today. What craft skills and continuities in design and materials exists in these places now? And what inspiration might these collections provide for contemporary artists and craftspeople in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and beyond? Our intention is to commission new works and to display this newly-commissioned work alongside Thomas’s historical collections in our [Re:]Entanglements exhibition that will be staged in 2020.

Catalogue of Northcote Thomas's collection from his first tour, 1909-10. Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
A page from the catalogue of Northcote Thomas’s collection from his first tour, 1909-10. Historical museum documentation has a palimpsest-like quality as different people have added notes and queries over the decades. Collections-based research is like archaeological excavation, as one deciphers the layers of knowledge and ordering systems that have accumulated.

Thomas photographed some of the objects he collected ‘in the field’, prior to having them packed in crates and shipped to Britain. Our starting point as we work through the collections is to identify and locate these same objects in the Museum stores, to photograph them in detail, and to enhance the Museum’s catalogue record of each. You can follow our progress by joining the project’s Facebook Group, and, indeed, you can make your own discoveries by searching the MAA’s online catalogue.

N. W. Thomas – an accidental artist?

N. W. Thomas, Still Life, Shrine of Olukun, Benin City. NWT 144. MAA P.28134.
N. W. Thomas, Shrine of Olukun, Benin City, 1909. NWT 144. MAA P.28134.

Along with the sound archives and collections of artefacts, the photographic legacy of N. W. Thomas’s anthropological surveys in West Africa provide a remarkable record of life in Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone in the early twentieth century. As part of a ‘scientific’ endeavour, they were intended primarily as a form of ethnographic documentation and also constituted ‘data’ in themselves – particularly with regard to physical type photography. As part of a government-sponsored project, their entanglement in colonial power relations and racial representation/categorisation is unavoidable. This political context must be the primary lens through which we approach these images and practices.

Working through this vast archive of photographs, however, one is also struck occasionally by the aesthetic qualities of the images. This extends to both portraiture – which, in many cases, complicates our reading of these as ‘physical type’ photographs (this will be the subject of a future blog) – and what we might call ‘still life’ photographs. Indeed, as the examples included here show, Thomas’s photographs of material culture or architectural details are sometimes strongly redolent of the early still-life photography of Fox Talbot or Daguerre . This includes photographs of what appear to be ‘found scenes’ as well as compositions in which objects have been arranged purposefully for the camera. (Compare, for example, with Fox Talbot’s ‘The Open Door‘ and Daguerre’s ‘Fossils and Shells‘.)

N. W. Thomas, Still Life, Instruments for marking body and medicines, Benin City. NWT 49. MAA P.28070.
N. W. Thomas, Instruments for marking body and medicines, Benin City, 1909. NWT 49. MAA P.28070.

This reminds us of a dual characteristic of photography that has been present throughout the history of the medium – that photography has been regarded as both a medium for the objective documentation of reality, independent of the photographer’s ‘artistry’, and as a medium of subjective artistic expression akin to painting or drawing. In the context of Thomas’s anthropological survey photography, a further question is raised regarding whether we may appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the photographs, while being mindful (and critical) of the racial/colonial politics in which they are entangled?

N. W. Thomas, Still Life, Shrine, Fugar. NWT 1056. MAA P.29135.
N. W. Thomas, Shrine, Fugar, 1909. NWT 1056. MAA P.29135.

‘Susu Boy’, Guest blog by Chiadikōbi Nwaubani

'Susu Boy' by Chiadikobi Nwaubani, 2018.
‘Susu Boy’ by Chiadikōbi Nwaubani, 2018.

In the first of a series of guest blogs for the [Re:]Entanglements project, the artist and designer Chiadikōbi Nwaubani introduces his discovery of Northcote Thomas’s photographic archive and how this has provided inspiration for his work. Nwaubani was born in London in 1991 to Igbo parents. He returned with them to live in Nigeria between 1994 and 1997, and subsequently travelled back and forth between the UK and Nigeria. Having encountered many historical photographs of Igbo culture online, mainly digitised from old ethnographic accounts such as N. W. Thomas’s Anthropological Reports, he created the Ukpuru blog in 2010, where he reposts them along with associated information.

In this guest blog Chiadikōbi Nwaubani describes how he began experimenting with the archival images and interrogating them through his art practice. ‘Susu Boy’ is Nwaubani’s response to Plate VIII of N. W. Thomas’s Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone, published in 1916. From Thomas’s photographic registers, we know that the subject was in fact Momo Samura. The original photographs, from which the plate was made, were taken in Samaia in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone in May 1914.

I became involved in the [Re:]Entanglements project after sharing some of the designs I made with Northcote Thomas’s published photographs online. My initial involvement with Northcote’s work was through the lens of a descendant of the people he depicted in his photographs. I was interested in the ‘physical type’ portraits he made. Even though I was not familiar with the history of this kind of anthropological photograph, I had some idea about the nature of colonialism, which these photographs seemed to affirm. I started the Ukpuru blog in 2010 in which I post old photographs of the Igbo area that I have found online, particularly from early European ethnographies. My interest in ethnography comes from witnessing masquerades in my ancestral home town in Umuahia. The Ekpo masquerades, as they are known, have an imposing presence. The designs of the masks are highly varied and quite detailed. These figures were some of the earliest images I drew.

Chiadikobi Nwaubani and Ekpo masquerade in Umuahia, Nigeria.
A young Chiadikōbi Nwaubani and Ekpo masquerade in Umuahia, Nigeria.

I took some of Northcote Thomas’s published photographs and manipulated them with gradient colours – colours that were quite sharp, like purple and a kind of neon red. These colours gave a lively theme to the photos, and also a pop art feel. In this way, I feel that the subjects are transported from being a ‘type’ into being a symbol of history – both colonial and indigenous… a kind of vision of the past.

Recoloured archive photographs by Chiadikobi Nwaubani.
A contemporary vision of the past? N. W. Thomas’s anthropological photographs reworked by Chiadikōbi Nwaubani.

More recently I have been making paintings on paper, which bring out stronger themes. My use of black for fleshing out figures, not only draws out the focus on race, but also seems quite similar to Ekpo masks – these represent ghosts and ancestral spirits. The first of this type of painting I made was ‘Susu Boy’. When I first saw the photograph in Thomas’s Anthropological Report, it struck me as a kind of lonely looking study of the young man because of where he was positioned in the book. There is no name in the caption. The only information left for the viewer is the man’s features, particularly ones that are suggested to be racial, and also his skin colour. With so little information, I am led to imagine what might be happening ‘off camera’, in the margins. What happened just before the photo was taken? Or just after? What was the nature of the relationship between the man photographed and the photographer?

Plate VIII from N. W. Thomas's Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone. The caption reads 'Susu Boy'.
The original ‘Susu Boy’ physical type photograph published in N. W. Thomas’s Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone (1916). In fact, we know this is Momo Samura, photographed by Thomas in Samaia in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone in May 1914.

The arm of a white man holds the number board. Although no measure or number board may be found on the published photograph or negative, I wanted to draw attention to the ‘scientific’ presentation of the subject. The numbers, the measure, the presence of the hand with the board – these are used to frame the story and to raise questions pertaining to what was happening around the subject, both literally and figuratively considering the situation that this area of the world was in at the time. Most of this – and his – story will, for the most part, remain unknown. The jumbled numbers and bright colours give a sense of turmoil in the background – even if not literal turmoil, then one coming from the nature of the study of the subject and the way we see these images today in relation to what we know of the past.

Chiadikobi Nwaubani installing 'Susu Boy' as part of the Photographic Affordances exhibition at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London.
Chiadikōbi Nwaubani installing ‘Susu Boy’ as part of the Photographic Affordances exhibition at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London.

Chiadikōbi Nwaubani’s ‘Susu Boy’ is currently on display alongside N. W. Thomas’s photograph of Momo Samura as part of the Photographic Affordances exhibition at the Royal Anthropological Institute.

See an interview with Chiadikōbi Nwaubani at That Igbo Girl blog.