‘My village experience influenced me’
You turned 50 recently. What was it like for you getting to that stage? I felt funny on my fiftieth birthday. I was not very well on that day, so I spent the day in sober reflection. I must say that it set the tone for me for a more spiritual approach to life more […]
You turned 50 recently. What was it like for you getting to that stage?
I felt funny on my fiftieth birthday. I was not very well on that day, so I spent the day in sober reflection. I must say that it set the tone for me for a more spiritual approach to life more than anything else. At 50, I am seeing more value in transcendental things than in things and matters of the physical.
At fifty, I read somewhere that you are to be engaged in building a legacy through mentoring. That is my desire. I started this though about five years ago without realising it. I hope to be able to be a part of Nigeria’s solution, not part of its problem(s).
Your works were a significant part of celebration. Could you define your art from when you started and the evolution that has taken place regarding them?
I think my works have evolved from everyday subject to thematic focus. You will therefore see that my works appear in serial formats. But I was able to look at my works retrospectively in a show held at the university’s main library in 2007 entitled Endangered Image.
It was a chronological view of how my works evolved from 1978 to 2007 – selected works of my drawings, pastels, charcoal, water colour, print painting, design, mixed media, photography, installation and performance. These pieces revealed my evolution from academic expression to a more conceptual interpretation of both my medium and subject-matter and life itself.
My works have shifted from the material/commodity/physicality and located in the field of idea. So you could say that my recent works may not be the type that can easily find their way into the normal or average art collector.
As a lecturer in the university, I was hoping to show through the art works that art can be a deeply intellectual phenomenon capable of engaging discourse like any other work in any academic discipline. From the interaction that the exhibition provoked in the university community and the dialogue that is still continuing up till today as I meet students and colleagues from different faculties, I am satisfied that Endangered Image has opened lively dialogue across multidisciplinary boundaries. The exhibition has also brought art into the platform of world discourse as a potent medium of human change and transformation. It should not surprise us that till date, the visual art still requires introduction in our tertiary institutions.
Do you think at 50, you are living your desires from back then?
Oh yes and no. I am grateful for what I do and earn a living off it. Art has taken me to different parts of the world – roundtables, symposia, workshops and conferences on diverse issues not directly related to art, but on topics that deal with important issues of human concern. So yes, I am grateful to the Almighty. But I can say no also because negative challenges seem to be overwhelming my surroundings.
Art is yet to fully assume the kind of status it should have in a developing society. This is contradictory when you consider the traditional role art played in development. This gives me cause for concern, and by implication, whatever my satisfaction that I get from my personal life, these challenges contaminate them because of those who I consider less fortunate; the challenges that our country is going through demand that every Nigerian should take positive action.
Works at your last exhibition possess attributes from your growing up days quoting your words “… surrounded by streams and hills…” Do those times influence you in any way today?
It is said that we are all products of our upbringing. I think my experience of nature, growing up in Akwaya left an indelible mark in my life. At fifty, believe me, I still dream of some of the serene and scenic places we used to go to hunt, fish and swim and pick wild fruits as children.
Yes, my village experience influenced my attitude to a waste generation, the consumerist tendency of the modern man and the way urbanisation has destroyed the green belts that provide us with the much-needed vegetables. I weep…
Each time I travel through our cities and observe those green belts of vegetable farms, sugar cane farms and trees, etc., I shudder at the ugly concrete structures that are gradually edging out these green spaces. That is why when I had the privilege to be the Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Design; we initiated a landscaping project that influenced the university management to expand it throughout the entire campus.
As an artist who has seen and been able to appreciate the many sides of life, what is the most treasured lesson life has taught or given you?
Wow! This is the big one. Hmm! I am constantly humbled by how insignificant I am as a human being. I am dispensable both by those who love me and those who don’t. I like to always remember this in my mortal life’s short journey. Yes, I like to always have the time to pause and reflect on this and more.