What distinguishes modern Nigerian art from its traditional form? I had this question in mind when I attended a private viewing of Tate Modern’s new exhibition, Nigerian Modernism, which traces artwork from the period of indirect colonial rule to post-independence.
Walking through the gallery with the curator Osei Bonsu, learning about the incredible ways in which modern Nigerian artists sought to define, shape and rebel against the beautiful but contested state, I found answers.
‘The arrival of an independent Nigeria’
Osei Bonsu, the curator of international art at Tate Modern alongside assistant curator Bilal Akkouche, tells me that Nigerian Modernism is around three years in the making, though his initial research began as early as the Covid pandemic. “I was able to research the collections of the Universities of Birmingham, York and Chichester, all of which have really rich African collections.” He found that modern Nigerian artists were often categorised within ideas of “traditional” African art, which he felt decontextualised the work and severed its links to modernity.
Intricate textile design … Nike Davies-Okundaye’s adire pieces place the mythological into the right context. Photograph: Guy Bell/Alamy Live News
Many of the artists in Nigerian Modernism grappled with this question of cultural nationalism and identity, which had been shaped as much by interactions with European colonial culture as by their heritage. This was an especially pressing question in the build up to independence in 1960. That is immediately apparent in the first room of the exhibition, which features the work of the modern arts teacher and painter Aina Onabolu. Bonsu draws my attention to his 1922 oil painting of an elite Lagosian woman, Charlotte Obasa: “Commissioning her portrait was a way of signifying her wealth and importance within Lagosian society. If you look at her dress and how she’s framed, there’s a sense of the British upper class.”
Portraiture was a kind of artistic realism that helped define class structures. But realist art also served more democratic purposes. Akinola Lasekan, a student of Onabolu’s, took a very different approach to painting. “Instead of engaging in the honorific language of portraiture, he was more invested in portraying scenes of everyday life, but also scenes of Nigerian mythology,” Bonsu explains. In Onabolu’s works, we see watercolour paintings of Hausa traders at Lagos market, as well as a depiction of the creation story through Obatala, the orisha who descended from the sky to create the Earth. “You could say these artists were revolting against the grain of Christian missionary culture that discouraged the representation of daily Nigerian realities.”
Cultural dichotomy … the exhibition features pieces by Ben Enwonwu and Aina Onabolu. Photograph: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum/Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art
Being half Bini (the ethnic group of Nigerian descendants of the Benin empire), I am especially interested in a vitrine containing photographs by Jonathan Adagogo Green, which depicts Ovonramwen, the Oba of Benin, just after the sacking of his kingdom in 1897. Bonsu included such work because they provide “a mini retrospective of his photographic practice that was, at the time, interested in traditional rules, and these transitions of power”. Though he notes that Green was employed by the British colonial government and operated as a double agent, representing both traditional Nigerian culture and the sweeping changes of colonial rule.
These changes are also recorded in one of the exhibition’s most remarkable acquisitions: a panel of doors by the sculptor and innovator of Yoruba visual language Olowe of Ise, which was gifted to the British Museum. The carving depicts a meeting between the ogoga (king) of Ikere and a colonial officer, Captain William Ambrose. Bonsu says: “We often think about traditional Yoruba carving as being used to represent honorific dynastic culture. But this spoke to a social critique and depicted the captain as a supplicant of the king, which in a sense used sculpture to politicise a national event.”
Despite this exploration of colonial relations, you won’t find stolen Benin bronzes here, or any other plundered art. “It was important to start where that narrative leaves off,” Bonsu explains. “These are the artists who emerge on the other side of that violence, grappling with a loss of tradition and trying to relocate forms and techniques.”
One of the show’s stars is the sculptor and painter Ben Enwonwu, who is often described as the most influential African artist of the 20th century. His work Negritude is the lead promotional image for the exhibition; it depicts a woman dancing, and in the galleries I find a series of similar pieces. Bonsu explains that these were inspired by Enwonwu’s attendance of the legendary Nigerian nightclub Caban Bamboo: “You can see he’s trying to catch movement through the brushstrokes, and the layering of limbs to depict the performance of dance in a painterly form.”
Technical brilliance … the talented Ben Enwonwu’s Seven Wooden Sculptures make a star turn in this exhibition. Photograph: Jai Monaghan/© Tate
There is technical brilliance in Enwonwu’s work, but he is also an interesting study in contradiction. One of his most famous sculptures is, in fact, of Queen Elizabeth, commissioned to inaugurate a state visit she made to Nigeria in 1956. “He’s heralding this arrival of a newly independent Nigeria,” Bonsu says. “But he’s also embodying a lot of the virtues of the Commonwealth through his presence as a Black artist who received a great deal of privilege and access.”
Even where Enwonwu depicted Nigeria’s struggles, they were sometimes at a remove. His epic oil painting Storm Over Biafra, portraying the devastation and loss caused by the Nigerian civil war, was painted five years out from the conflict, because he was able to flee to the UK during it. Other modern Nigerian artists were less of the establishment, such as those of the Zaria Art Society, who came together in 1958 to decolonise arts education in Nigeria. “Unlike Enwonwu who was a kind of national figure, these were figures who were questioning the politics of nationalism but also trying to create art that embodied the possibilities of independence.”
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Taking in the expanse of the exhibition, from the pottery of Ladi Kwali and the wall reliefs of El-Anatsui to the adire (indigo dye) art of Nike Davies-Okundaye, I wonder about the challenges of acquisition. British university collections were generous, and there was good cooperation from Nigerian authorities. What proved more difficult was accessing private collections. Restoration was another issue, with about 50 works needing treatment, including Enwonwu’s Negritude, which was aided by conservators from the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) in Benin City, Nigeria.
A remarkable acquisition … wooden door panels by the sculptor and innovator of Yoruba visual language Olowe of Ise. Photograph: Guy Bell/Alamy Live News
I have to ask Bonsu what made him pursue Nigerian modernism specifically, considering that there are non-Nigerian artists in the show. (Bonsu himself is Ghanaian.) “I ask myself that question every day!” he says with a laugh. “In this period in particular, Nigeria was a melting pot for so many west African cultures. Lagos in the 19th century was a crossroads for formerly enslaved Afro-Brazilians who returned, Victorian Britons who were coming to create industry, and there were enterprising Nigerians creating economic networks across west Africa. So I think this is a west African story.”
He expands, saying: “Many of these artists deal with the idea that Nigerian culture has to be taken as a multinational and multi-ethnic question, in which artists are free to disrupt and redirect different narratives in service of their own artistic vision. So when we talk about independence in this exhibition, it’s not just about political independence. It’s about the freedom of artists to choose what kind of narratives they want to absorb or reject.”
Bonsu also wants us to think of Nigeria as an international hub for artists in the way that Paris, New York and London are: “People such as Ibrahim El-Salahi from Sudan, Naoko Matsubara, who’s Canadian-Japanese, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, who’s German, they were all coming to Nigeria to be part of this cultural renaissance.”
Bonsu is hoping to tour the exhibition to other cities after it concludes its run at the Tate, focusing on locations where you can find the Nigerian diaspora. “If the show does anything, I hope it encourages local museums everywhere to really think, ‘What does it mean to preserve your national heritage?’” Bonsu also wants custodians of these works to figure out how they can offer access to the public domain. “Artists have always resisted exclusion,” he says, and so “the more ways to create access to these works, the better”.
Nigerian Modernism is at Tate Modern, London, until 10 May.
