Damiete Braide
If you are looking for somewhere to make your day in this month of July, head to the Wheatbaker Hotel, on No. 4, Lawrence Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. To mark sixty years of Prof. Bruce Onobrapkeya’s stellar career as one of Nigeria’s most celebrated pioneer contemporary artists, 36 rare prints are currently being showcased in a special commemorative exhibition, Eni! You Can Always Tell Where the Elephant Has Passed by!
Eni! marks 60 years since Onobrakpeya’s first exhibition in 1959 in Ughelli, Delta State, during his student days at the Nigerian College of Arts Science and Technology, Zaria. The rare prints presented in the exhibition provide highlights of not just the artist’s life and works but are an important chronicle of Nigeria’s post-independence era.
Onobrakpeya (born 1932) grew up in Delta State, is one of Nigeria’s most important artistic pioneers. He obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts and a Teacher’s Certificate from the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology (now Ahmadu Bello University) Zaria in 1962. Onobrakpeya was a member of the famous Zaria Art Society, a student group which sought to develop a new aesthetic language deeply rooted in African tradition and philosophy. The group included Uche Okeke, Yusuf Grillo, Demas Nwoko, Oseloka Osadebe and other students who drew strength from the post-colonial independence movement.
This group of illustrious young artists later branded the “Zaria Rebels” and made their mark internationally with their strong visual philosophy. “We were not rebelling against anything as such but thought that the idea of just using the western art technique without relating it to our culture wasn’t right, ” commented Onobrakpeya, who began to experiment with diverse media including painting, sculpture, prints, low relief foils, large scale installations and mixed media works created out of found objects.
Onobrakpeya, a recipient of many awards, has exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1990, the Tate Modern in London, the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Malmö Konsthall in Malmö, Sweden and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos to name a few. He received the UNESCO Living Human Treasures Award in 2006.
Some of his work on display at the Wheatbaker include Okpogho (The Hornbill), a print which dates back to his maiden exhibition in Ughelli in 1959, Chibok Girls, a recent print he created in 2017 as a homage to the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls and prints from his Niger Delta environmental protest series.
If you are lucky, you could run into the Old Muse himself holding an artist talk that is embedded into the Eni! exhibition. You can also visit the Freedom Park in Lagos Island where another exhibition of Onobrakpeya’s installations and sculptures is currently going-on. A third exhibition scheduled for August in Agbarha-Otor, Delta, in August to commemorate his prolific career.
Eni, curated by Sandra Mbanefo Obiago of SMO Contemporary Art, ends on July 31.