African female artists shock the art world with exciting exhibition in Lagos

BY ADA DIKE

Lagos State, the former Capital of Nigeria and the economic hub of Africa was last Sunday painted with different colours and themes of art exhibition, hosted by queens of arts in Africa. Call it rainbow exhibition, you are not wrong!

Tagged: ‘Design is the personality of an idea’, the exhibition was presented under the Female Artists’ Platform.

The exhibition was organised by African Artists’ Foundation (AAF) and supported by The Ford Foundation.

Newswatch Times gathered that Female Artists Development Project was launched in 2010 as an annual initiative for the promotion of a more gender equal creative industry.

The organisers, African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), said each year artists are chosen to work on a project relating to a theme and they are provided with production stipends to complete their works, along with final exhibition, mentorship programmes for young girls and public discussion expand the dialogue to a larger community.

According to The Female Artists Platform, the aim was to draw attention of female artists and designers living and working in Africa, in order to unearth and develop new talents, introduce new art forms, and highlight the diversity of women who are exploring ways to express themselves through visual art.

 “Female Artists Development Project also hopes to challenge these artists to take bold steps in their creative concepts and processes, they may have the freedom to create and exhibit works that are communicative, provocative and relevant. It seeks to shed light on the role of the artists in Africa society, to create awareness around female creative expression, and address her underrepresentation in the Nigerian contemporary art community. Currently in its third year, African Artists’ Foundation remains confident that the Female Artists’ Platform will continue to spur the development of artistic expression as a tool for empowerment and social development in Nigeria and Africa,” the organisers added.

African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art. Established in 2007 in Lagos, Nigeria, AAF aims to encourage the highest standard of art in African. It serves a significant role in art and academic communities through organizing art exhibitions, festivals, competitions, residences and workshop with the aim of unearthing and developing talents, creating societal awareness and providing platform to express creativity.

By providing assistance to professionals and emerging artists in Africa with support to international exhibitions and community outreach programmes, AAF also views the contribution to a strong cultural landscape in Africa as a transformative element in driving social change.  In addition to the programmes mentioned above, AAF also organises two flagship projects annually, the LagosPhoto Festival and the National Art Competition.

Commenting on the theme, the organisers explained further thus: “We are all deluded. In the most dangerous ways, the most beautiful ways and the most banal and benign ways we all exist in a world of our own, our own creation, our own filter.  Built with our beliefs, histories, traumas, consumption, interactions, societies, habits, opportunities and dreams, we design our own identity, She added.

“Art is an expression of our reality, and design is the personality of our ideas. The artists brought together use diverse media-film, fashion, paint, photography, digital collage and sound to create full worlds with the precision and intentionality inherent in the concept of design.

“Yet, all of us, with our unique delusions, perceptions, experiences, exist in the same physical world. The exhibition was an exploration of this kaleidoscopic amalgamation of our individualities. The featured artists showed the diversity and complexity of each of our worldviews: complete, distinct, nuanced and fantastical. They design and manifest their own distinct realities. The intention is to leave the viewer with no one thing to say about female African artists. The more you see, the less you know.  The artists were asked to mentor a secondary school -aged school of their choice and work with her to produce a work for the grand finale.”

Some of the artists who graced the event are among others including: Modupeola Fadugba (Nigeria), Nkechi Ebubedike (Nigeria-America), Akwaeke Emezi (Nigeria), Nkiruka Oparah (Nigeria), The Venus Bushfires (Nigeria), Joana Choumali (Cote d’Ivoire), Selly Raby Kane (Senegal) and Moonchild Sanelly (South Africa).

Akwaeke Emezi’s short film, ‘Ududeagu’, wowed many visitors spelled bound as they stood in awe-inspiring for more than 30 minutes and watched repeatedly with mouth-wide- open in an interesting tale. The less- than- five -minutes captivating and enthralling film that held audience spellbound was produced in 2014.

Explaining to journalists, Emezi said, in creating ‘Ududeagu’, she wanted to invent a piece of visual mythology that examines loss and leaving from multiple perspectives. According to her, simplicity was important to her, so, she stuck to stark and monochromatic images, a brief script, and tight language. “I deliberately located these images of leaving, loss and loneliness in acknowledged private and intimate spaces, shooting in a bedroom and adjoining bathrooms.

“The narration was originally written in English, and then I translated it to Igbo during a visit to Aba with my father. Igbo is a language I’m not particularly fluent in, but I was insistent on doing the narration myself because it’s important to me to work in my language and to be tangibly present in the work. Being involved in the translation process allowed me to engage my father chose for ‘soul’ directly translates to ‘seed of the heart. To say ‘you cannot’ do something is to say ‘you do not possess the strength’ to do it. I found details like these engaging and profound as I reconnected with my language while editing this work.

“’Ududeagu’ is also a gendered self-portrait in which the subject’s male body becomes a proxy for my own. Additionally, it is important to note that the story told in ‘Ududeagu’ was not a pre-existing narrative. Using the structure of a folktale in the narration follows a cultural pattern of inter-generational story-telling and creates a new myth that fits into the parameters of what we have known myths to be.”

Emezi is an Igbo/Tamil writer and filmmaker based in luminal spaces. She was born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria. Her work moves through spaces of psychosexual dislocation, traditional spiritual practice, loss and death, and confronts the intricacies of navigating humanity. Her experimental short ‘Ududeagu’ won the Audience Award for Best Short Experimental at the 2014 BlackStar Film Festival and has screened in over 13 countries.

Modupelola Fadugba showcased some of her works including ‘Eight Days of Lazy”, acrylic on Canvas produced in 2014.

She began by saying that, “For a long time, I thought the world was flat. Unconsciously, I clung to the archaic concept that Earth was a plane or disk floating in orbit; that gravity mystically prevented people and large bodies of water from falling off the edge. In hindsight, this mis-education must have stemmed from my earliest recollection of a world map. I must have been four years old when the world presented itself to me as a beautifully coloured poster, plastered across my classroom wall. It was a flat, rectangular poster. The lines and shapes were pretty. It appeared as though somehow, with some manipulation, all the pieces might fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With this observation, the image of the world and its dimension were sealed in my mind with unquestionable certainty.

“As I grow older, whenever confronted with alternate, spherical model of the map, I rationalised facts and drew up creative explanations as to why, in science classes, teachers chose to display the flat world as a circle. Fundamental difference in perception, I assumed.”

Fadugba is Togo-born Nigerian of many parts. She received her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware in 2008, followed by a Masters of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education (2013). She won the “Outstanding Production” prize in the 2014 National Art Competition. Her exhibition history includes the Red Door Gallery/Art Energy Exhibition in London (2015), Joburg Art Fair (2014), Female Association of Artists in Nigeria (FAAN), the French Embassy’s “Women in Development” Exhibition, Abuja, (2014), “Path to Prominence”, University of Delaware (2008) and a Solo Exhibition in Arusha, Tanzania (200). Her works have been frequently featured in the Arthouse Contemporary Auction in Ikoyi, Lagos. She lives in Abuja, Nigeria.

Joana Choumali showcased ‘Adorn’ mixed media (2015). She explains, ‘Adorn’ means to make something more attractive by addition. It means to embellish with pretty objects or to animate, enliven or decorate with ornaments. The photographic series ‘Adorn’ deals with contemporary Senegalese women reinterpreting European beauty standards with modern makeup...”

Choumali, the fine art photographer in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire was born in 1974. She works primarily on conceptual portraiture, mixed media and documentary. She uses photography to explore her own identity. She has won many awards.

Nkechi Ebubedike digital collage printed on canvas ‘Bright Boys’ (2015) subverts the stereotype of terrifying hyper-masculinity present in mainstream media representations of black men. The pieces incorporate video stills and specific iconography from contemporary urban culture.

“I manipulate these characterizations by juxtaposing the images within an imagined landscape of my designed. The form and colour denote various psychological states, including hope, despair and isolation. I bring a female gaze and vibrant colours to alter these images to the point of near unrecognizability.

The concept of Blackness is different in Nigeria and in America. But in the US now it is a fraught topic. Black men are daily targeted, profiled, stereotyped and attacked physically by authorities and also conceptually in the ways they are represented and perceived. With this work I take the liberty to construct my own interpretation”.

Nkechi Ebubedike, born in 1984, is a Nigerian American artist living in Washington and London. She is an MA graduate from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, London (2011). She has a BFA from the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieeure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France in 2005. Working across painting, sculpture and installation, Nkechi Ebubedike makes material assemblage and videos, experimenting with the distortion and suspension of meaningful, culturally significant images.

Alien Cartoon Collection is a reflection on an Invaded Africa city, where naïve and frantic creatures would evolve among Human beings. This raises a million questions. What would this city look like? What would art become? What would its inhabitants wear? How would we go from one place to another? The possibilities are infinite. With an Afro-surrealistic and a cartoony naïve and fantastic journey could rise through garments and silhouettes.

Selly Raby Kane created the fashion label Selly Raby Kane SRK in 2011. She has a degree in Management/Business Administration and Masters in Product Management for textile and clothing industries from Mod’Spe Paris. With unbridled creativity, she builds a cartoony, surreal, playful universe through her brand and overturns Senegalese fashion codes and trends. SRK has deep fantastic in international media including WAD magazine, VOGUE IT, ARTE, Okay Africa and others.

From street fashion shows to unusual, SRK swims counter, she is building bridges between different forms of art and fashion. A darling of Dakar’s underground, Selly Raby Kane lends her style to numerous icons such as: Flaviana Matata (former Miss Universe), Cristina de Middle, Nai Palm (Hiatus Kaiyote) Poundo Gomis (Editor of Okay Africa), the Nubians, Daara-J Family. Her latest collection “Alien Cartoon” was presented last May at Dakar’s old train station, which was transformed for the occasion into a surreal and surprising alien city in the heart of

Nkiruka Opara: Love, unrealistic: a strange paradise and paranoid ideation of the mind for the fulfilment of self pleasures         

Digital collage printed on textile 2014

“It started with a search for truth. Not an objective truth or a universal truth-but a personal Truth. For that meant starting from the center and working outward, from inner experiences and the questions I had ever provided any sense of stability in my life in all circumstances”.

Nkiruka Opara is a first generation Nigerian born in Los Angeles, CA and based in Brooklyn, NY. With a background in psychology and fashion marketing, Nkiruka is self-taught in the field of visual arts. She uses her art to expose notions of self individuation of the spirit, love and sacred spaces of the psyche. Her graphic/digital collage studies and experimental practice is realized in a variety of media, from gif animations, installation editorial artwork, and video.   

Moonchild Sanelly

Rabubi Vs Rambo unveiled Instrument: Sax, trumpet, Guitar, Drums, Vocals and synths wit electronics

Length: 16 minutes

“I grew up surrounded by different sounds, my brother was a hip-hop producer, my mother played jazz and my grandmother’s house was full of kwaito dancers. Kwaito is traditional South African beats from the 90’s; it’s like South African hip-hop from back in the day. Its very ghetto, it takes me back to when people were wearing bucket hats, all these intricate details of their fashion,” she stated

“My work is an infusion of my layered influences. I’m drinking inspiration from everything around me, but what I produce is unlike anyone else’ work. I call it future ghetto funk. It reminds you of the dusty streets of Soweto. It’s edgy, electronic.

“Moonchild was born to an extroverted woman of songs whose independence was before her time. At the age 6 months Moon found love in front of the camera. Young Moon burst onto the entertainment scene as a child model and hasn’t left the scene since. She began performing at talent shows as soon as her legs could carry her and the result of her early start is an exceptional ability to improvise. Following her mother’s sudden death, when she was only a teenager, Moonchild left her home town in the Eastern Cape to study fashion in Durban. She quickly made a name for herself in the Durban music scene, performing at festivals across KwaZulu-Natal. She has since relocated to Johannesburg where her presence has been no less noticeable. Moonchild has performed alongside artists such as Madala Kunene, Gcina Hlope and Busi Mhlongo.

“I am a woman. It is part of the spirit that fills my vessel. I am truths and contradictions, courage and fear. In body and heart I am sacred and profane. It is not all I am, but nature and nurture has shaped my world largely through this perspective.”

The Venus Bushfires is a collective of one and many, of which Helen Parker-Jayne Isibor is the only constant member. The Nigerian born singer-songwriter, composer and performer artist explores the ethereal sounds of the hang, the power of the talking drum and the quirks of children’s toys, cross-fertilizing multiple visual and musical styles.”