It is four years since Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, coughed out a whopping $450 million to purchase Salvatore Mundi, a Leonardo da Vinci painting, at a Christie’s auction in New York.
And just as Nigerian art lovers were hoping for a work of art by a compatriot to attract millions of dollars, in the same 2017, Njideka Akunyili’s Bush Babies was purchased at the cost of $3,400,000 at Sotheby’s, also in New York. In that same year, Ben Enwonu’s painting was sold for $1,600,000. So, 2017 was a year of glory for Nigerian artists plying their trade in the global circuit.
At a time when many Nigerian artists have since given up on the industry, in the face of weak economy that has significantly reduced the spending power of lovers of art in the country and affected their ability to cough out meaningful sums to purchase beautiful works of art, a refreshing breath of fresh air has emerged in the person of 19-year-old Miss Aishatu Tukur Yusufu Buratai,
Now, if this university undergraduate were studying abroad, her obsession with art and nature and the motive therefrom could be easier understood. But her father is a passionate Nigerian patriot who, in spite of being privileged as a former Chief of Army Staff and currently an ambassador, has ensured all his children, including Aishatu, attended schools in Nigeria.
Is he the one who influenced his young daughter to take to arts, as a profession or some means of making it big? At the maiden art exhibition by Aishatu in Abuja last week, the young artist provided the answer thus: “My involvement with art is one that came naturally.”
Though her parents and siblings were the very first customers of her products, none of them influenced her passion for that rare field of human endeavour that has seen fewer Nigerians remaining interested, often for lack of a cogent reward system or recognition in the country.
Did she study arts or nature in the university to justify the excellence of her work and sheer beauty of her products? Well, though she is undergoing a bachelor’s degree programme in the field of biotechnology, Aishatu’s passion for arts and nature was, amazingly, self-taught.
According to Miss Buratai, Newton’s third law of motion states that “for every action force, there is a reaction force equal in strength and opposite in direction.”
By her own reckoning, therefore, art is life and life is art. She believes that when emotions are well expressed through art, then inner peace settles.
Aishatu Buratai is a mixed media artist who works mostly with oil on canvas. At the exhibition, the paintings on display had different themes, but it was clear that some of her favorite pieces were very close to nature, with the sun as a recurring symbol of brightness and boldness.
Talking about boldness, Brass Tacks recalls the day her father, General T.Y. Buratai, immediately he was appointed army chief at a difficult time when Boko Haram was holding Nigerian territory the size of Belgium, audaciously travelled to the theatre of the war against terror, and he was ambushed by a large number of Boko Haram terrorists assigned to kill him.
Instead of running for dear life as many would do, Gen. Buratai personally ensured the enemies were chased deep into the forest, until many of them were either caught or neutralised. He is on record as the one army chief who would for long stretches remain with the troops in the trenches, leading from the front and ensuring fewer enemies were recorded for the country in the war that started six years before his appointment as the nation’s number one soldier. He was in the trenches fighting for Nigeria even on the day his beloved mother died in 2020. And as the foremost patriot that he has always been, he was left with very little time to mourn her, much as he deeply loved and adored her.
The exhibition presented Aishatu Buratai an opportunity to further explain that the hint of yellow in the title of the exhibition refers to her constant use of yellow and red, which runs through most of her work.
The paintings on display showed very clearly Aishatu’s interest in the environment, as well as her love for animals and animal collections. Her horse duo, one with a blue background and the other with a red background, are aptly titled “Day” and “Night.” The artist’s love of nature comes through in her recourse to water and islands, which are reflected in the colour blue in many pieces on display.
“A Drop of Sunlight” is the title of the star of the exhibition, and it is a sunburst flower that enchants and mesmerizes in all its glorious hues of orange and yellow and sunburnt red.
Some of the paintings depicted the impact of global warming, and the lesson therefrom is the consciousness towards its danger and awareness for mitigation.
It is rather surprising that a privileged daughter like Aishatu could be so passionate about an industry that, in Nigeria, has never been among the high revenue earners at the personal and national levels. But then, as she explained to Brass Tacks, she is just living true to her inner passion, and pecuniary interest definitely has less or even nothing to do with it.
Aishatu’s love for arts and nature is bound to elicit more interest in the arts and culture industry. By starting so young, at age 19, she is already beautifully leading the way in showing to her millennial peers that art presents for them a veritable platform to express themselves without recourse to violence or breakdown of law and order.
It is a platform they can also use to become more useful to the society. Clearly, this is an area Aishatu is going to deploy to galvanize the youths of this country to be more creative, productive and law-abiding, and contribute to the socio-economic well-being of the nation.
In the third quarter of 2021, the arts sector, in concert with entertainment and recreation, accounted for 0.18 percent of Nigeria’s GDP. Arts and culture related industries provide direct economic growth for our localities. They are strong complements to community development which enrich communities and help make life better for our people.
At a time the rate of unemployment in Nigeria is put at 33 percent, many of our youths will through Aishatu’s effort know that arts help create job opportunities and also directly stimulates local economies through consumer purchases and tourism.
In America for example, the US Bureau of Economic Analysts and the National Endowment for the Arts released a report earlier this week that arts contribute 4.2 percent of the GDP of the country which translates to $763.4 billion to the economy of the United States. Putting it in a more proper context, arts has surpassed agriculture, transportation and warehousing in terms of real-time contribution to the growth of the economy of America.
With more young Nigerians taking after Aishatu Buratai, there is a silver lining on the horizon. As she has told Brass Tacks, arts could well play the saviour role for our political economy and in many ways contribute to a safer and more prosperous Nigeria.