Who Knows Tomorrow - the Projects

Interior of Friedrichwerdersche Church, with Shonibare's installations toward the altar and in the choir


Colonel Tarleton shooting the pheasant


spunky colonel Tarleton


The pheasant; the radiating strings take on the aspect of sacred rays



Yinka Shonibare installation, The Scramble for Africa in the Church Museum choir. It looks like Africa is being served for supper


*All photos copyright: Chika Okeke-Agulu


Pascale Marthine Tayou installation at the Neue Nationalgalerie


The Colon figures before installation


Flag installation with two Colon figures


Four Colon figures just after installation


"African" flags (each flag is a modified version of the national flag one of Africa's 54 countries)

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El Anatsui at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Installation in progress.




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Antonio Ole's work in progress, at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Ossie Enekwe & Esiaba Irobi - In Memoriam

This has been a terrible week. If it was night it would be the darkest in this spring of harvests; harvests of some of the finest minds to come out of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Nsukka, located in a valley formed by seven grassy hills in Eastern Nigeria is where I became an artist, and with Nsukka, I have a long story of love and pain. It is there that I met Ossie Enekwe, the poet, scholar and literary critic who chaired the Drama program, and Esiaba Irobi whose blood burned with thespian fire. Both died this week. And Omabe, the resplendent cousin of the sun and the brother of the leopard who descended annually from the hills of Nsukka, must be mourning tonight. And so am I, unworthy mortal, aged overnight by grief.

My youthful forays into acting--in the company of Greg Mbajiorgu, Richie Achukwu, Kalu Ikeagwu, Nnorom Azuonye and many great friends--were given the needed ballast by participation in the original casts of Esiaba most memorable works presented at Nsukka's Arts Theatre in the late 1980s. And I became a poet watching Esiaba perform his poems I mostly remember for their erotic lyricism at the epochal, short-lived phenomenon called "The Anthill" (managed by Gbugbemi Amas and Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu) outside the walls of the university, up on a scraggy hill. He was simply known as the Minstrel.

The Harmattan came in the 1990s and blew that Nsukka asunder, and we scattered to the four winds, clutching memory pictures of a time when Ana, the goddess of creativity, gathered around her countless children. Now, far away from Nsukka's tropical evening, I hear Enekwe's calm voice as he strums his guitar--Ossie Melody he was called. I hear Esiaba exclaim:

"When you set out for Mabera
Ask that your way be long
Your path a field of stones
Hedged by nettles, thorns, twigs
....
When you set out for Mabera
Make loneliness your companion
Tighten the tendons of your spirit
Until they blink
like the eyelids of history"*
....

* (from the poem "Mabera" by Esiaba Irobi)

And my grip tightens on a clump of dust.

Bisi Silva at Newark Museum

Bisi Silva, the Nigerian curator who has brought much needed life to the somnolent Lagos art scene will be at the Newark Museum this Friday. She will be speaking about her work at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. She will also have a public conversation with my good friend and colleague, Christa Clarke who, for her part, has done a lot for (contemporary) African art there at the Newark Museum. It should be a worthwhile event, especially for anyone interested in the field of contemporary African art.

Title: Contemporary Art in a Transnational Age: A Conversation with Bisi Silva
Date: May 7, 2010
Time: 7 – 8 p.m. (Reception begins at 6 p.m.)
Venue: Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

*(Free. Pre-registration required, call 973-596-6550. See Newark Museum website for more information.)