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 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.
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-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.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.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. 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.
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