The Africa Report — July-August 2017

ALL WRIGHTS RESERVED

ALL WRIGHTS RESERVED

Last December, a vintage guitar

belonging to Grammy-nominated King

Sunny Ade, the legendary juju musician,

was auctioned for a record N52.1m;

the motif on it was created by Victor

Ehikhamenor, one of the country’s

most sought-after living artists.

Ehikhamenor, who draws some

influence from his grandmother, a cloth

weaver, swallows the entire ground

floor of the Nigeria pavilion with his

wall paintings on canvas, paired with

hundreds of mirrors and bronze heads

cast in Igun Street, Benin City. The

work (pictured), titledA Biography

of the Forgotten, is a history lesson and

elicited many questions from visitors

on the significance of the bronze

heads and mirrors. It is a large-scale

fusion of traditional sculpture with

abstract shapes, backed by influences

from classic Benin art and the effect

of colonialism on cultural heritage.

No sooner was Ehikhamenor in

Venice than he encountered an example

of the very kind of cultural “heist”

he decries. British artist Damien Hirst’s

Treasures from the Wreck of the

Unbelievableexhibition includes what

appears to be a direct copy of a

14th-century sculpted head created

in Ife-Ife, Nigeria, and now in the British

Museum. “The Oni of Ife must hear

this,” he wrote in an Instagram rant.

“For the thousands of viewers seeing

this for the first time, they won’t

think Ife, they won’t think Nigeria.

Their young ones will grow up to know

this work as Damien Hirst’s. As time

passes it will pass for a Damien Hirst.”

Victor Ehikhamenor

Appropriation exposed

Paris-based dancer Qudus Onikeku’s performance film trilogyRight Here,
Right Nowscreens in a blacked-out room. Guests at the opening found
the work intense or even overwhelming, but ultimately transcendent.
A few days later Onikeku performed to an enchanted audience (pictured).
The trilogy is presented as an investigation through dance of the workings
of body memory and its connection to national consciousness.
Born in Lagos in 1984, Onikeku was educated in Châlons-en-
Champagne, France, and cites the Yoruba culture as his primary influence,
with hip hop, capoeira, and contemporary dance vocabularies also playing
a part in his choreography. One of Nigeria’s most outstanding dancers,
he was selected as the winter 2013 Granada artist-in-residence at
the University of California Davis. Some of his dance projects include:
Do We Need Coca-Cola to Dance?(2007), an urban dance project in
various African cities;I Must Set Forth(2009) at the Bates Dance Festival
in Lewiston, Maine;My Exile is in my Head(2010) at Centquatre in Paris;
andSTILL/Life(2011) at the Festival d’Avignon. Onikeku is also the founder
of danceGATHERING Lagos, an international festival inaugurated this year
that was incorporated into the Lagos@50 celebrations in March.

Qudus OnikekuMemory in movement

ALL WRIGHTS RESERVED

ART & LIFE 87