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.

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.

[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.

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!

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.