“IGBO CIVILIZATION” EXHIBITION

12 – 15 February, 2009. I was represented in an art exhibition in commemoration of the golden jubilee of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart held as part of the Ist Festival on Igbo Civilization at the Ofu Obi Africa Centre, Enugu, Nigeria. Below are my works in the show and a shot taken at the opening.

At the opening

Yam Bodies, 2009, TV casing and terracotta, 77x48x45cm

War Victim, 2003, wood and terracotta, 110x73x25cm

War Victim (detail)

ARESUVA 2008

Two of my works were included in the First African Regional Summit & Exhibition on Visual Arts (ARESUVA), held recently at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, Nigeria. I post here shots from the event and images of one of my two ceramic installations included in the show (entitled “Of Oil, War and Casualties”). Details on ARESUVA can be found at www.aresuva.com

CAPE TOWN SHOW

The young Nigerian curator, Okey Nwafor, included my works in his recent project at the Cape African Platform, Cape Town, South Africa (Experimental Frontiers: Society through the Eyes of South African and Nigerian Artists). I post here several shots of my works in that show.

MURAL AT SKOWHEGAN

I was among participants who engaged portions of the ‘archival’ Fresco Barn at Skowhegan. For my mural, entitled "Sweeping and Shooting", I continued my examination of the rape of Africa by ‘powerful’ nations. My technique included sweeping (using broom), shooting and buffeting (with a jack knife) and burning (with an oil-burning lamp). The historical medium called fresco was very appropriate for my view of Western imperial recklessness in Africa as one that has had a long history, beginning many centuries ago with slave trade.

CERAMICS AT SKOWHEGAN

At Skowhegan, I enjoyed my play with the new potter’s wheel in the Sculpture Shop, producing tea pots, flower vases, mugs and dishes. Most of these were collected by members of the Skowhegan community. Here are a few samples.

OZIOMA ONUZULIKE: CERAMICS AND FRESCOES

My solo exhibition OZIOMA ONUZULIKE: CERAMICS AND FRESCOES (offering a total of 34 ‘tablets’ of fresco paintings measuring 32x24x2 inches each, 12 ceramic/fresco sculptures measuring about 14x16x6 inches at the average and over 20 ceramic vessels of various sizes) opened here at Skowhegan Tuesday (August 4) with a poetry performance by me. To the glory of God, my strength!


Hayee!
Ihe anya anyi huru eriela onu anyi-o!
Akwa alili etiwala anyi isi-o!
Akwa alili akpochiela anyi olu-o!
Hayee!
Emeliooo!
Ihe anya mmiri juru Afrika n’onu kpum-kpum

Aga m agu ole ghara ole?
Ethiopia
Somalia
Chad
Morocco
Algeria
Congo
Kenya
Nigeria
Uganda
Rwanda
Burundi
Angola
Namibia
Sudan!... Su-daan-nu!
Ewo!
A gam agu ole ghara ole?


Hayee!
Akika atabisiala ome ji anyi-o!
Ewu-Chukwu-ooo!
Akika atariela ubi anyi-o!
Akika atariela ugbo anyi-o!
Haye!
Haye!
Akika atapiala ike akpati anyi-o!
Emelioooo!

Gini kpotara akika n’ala Afrika?
Gini butere ijere n’ime ulo Afrika?
Okwa mmanu Chineke gbajuru ha n’ite?
Okwa ihe ekwe-ekwe
Chineke kpuchiere ha n’ike akpati?
Onwere ihe ozo?


OZIOMA ONUZULIKE: CERAMICS AND FRESCOES

Venues: Sculpture Yard 13 & Fresco Barn
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine, USA.
August 5-12, 2008

Opens 8.00pm Tuesday August 5 in the Fresco Barn with a poetry performance by the artist

Ozioma Onuzulike’s new works in ceramics and frescoes rely on the nature and metaphorical significance of materials, studio processes and gestures to examine ways by which Africa’s natural resources have remained at the heart of its woes, occasioned by the competing and clashing interests of powerful nations in those resources. The artist seeks to raise discourses over the devastating impact of Western imperialism on the people of Africa by drawing attention to the powerful hands that foment the unceasing wars in the continent, which have continued to claim millions of lives and displace others from their ancestral lands. This is why the metaphorical gesture of ‘sweeping’ appears to be a dominant one in the artist’s current body of works, just as he also uses smoke/soot as his dominant pigment for the same reason. By using fresco (a largely Western medium) Onuzulike also examines the role of the imperial press in furthering Western interests in Africa, especially by the way they typically focus on the smoke, fire or aftermaths of imperial interventions rather than the real hands setting those fires. The artist uses texts in Igbo language to underscore Africa’s loss of voice. The western media frames Africa and speaks for Africa!

This exhibition highlights the potentials of Skowhegan for challenging and developing the artistic practice of emerging artists. At Skowhegan, Onuzulike encountered large sheets of styrofoam and the fresco medium and techniques for the first time. He also learnt mold-making using natural latex rubber, with which he made molds of split logs of wood and reproduced them in clay. These were fired in Skowhegan’s electric kiln and smoked/carbonized in open fire with grasses and cow dung collected from the pasture around the Upper Studios. By starving the welding torch of oxygen, the artist turned the oxy-acetylene kit into a metaphorical tool for laying smoke/soot on wet plaster – an experiment that has become a breakthrough in the use of alternative pigment in fresco painting.

By his decision to exhibit this body of works first in Skowhegan (a total of 34 ‘tablets’ of fresco paintings measuring 32x24x2 inches each, 12 ceramic/fresco sculptures measuring about 14x16x6 inches at the average and over 20 ceramic vessels of various sizes) and to also perform the poems he wrote during the period of residency, Ozioma Onuzulike seeks to emphasize and extol the positive side of the school.






ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Western imperialism versus Africa's natural resources
and/as
The cause of wars, refugee situation, hunger, deaths ... in Africa
Examined
Through
Materials
Processes
Gestures...

Styrofoam = natural resources (oil...)
Wood, latex rubber and clay = natural resources
Jute material = natural resources, slave labor
Kerosene = natural resources (oil...)
Oxy-acetylene kit = war industry, military hardware, weapons proliferation, weapons exports...
Fire/Firing = fire arms, arms deals, arms transfers, militarization, killing, maiming, raping, violence...
Smoke and soot = death, devastation, havoc, ravage
Fresco = history, Western media, imperial press...
Hansa yellow pigment or Omu color = exploitation, abuse, dispute, conflict, danger, bad news, death…
Broom/Sweeping = genocide, dislocation, displacement, annihilation, brutalization, holocaust, depopulation
Igbo texts = Africa's loss of voice
You = passive observer, beneficiary, witness, victim...

About the artist
Ozioma Onuzulike is a 2008 Skowhegan participant from Nigeria. He holds an MFA in Ceramics (2001) and a Ph.D in Art History (2007) from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he also lectures in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts. He is also a poet and writer. This is his eighth solo exhibition.

Chris Echeta's Ceramic Chronicles of Nigeria

Critical Ceramics (http://www.criticalceramics.org), an e-journal of ceramic art, has just announced it's publication of my article on an important contemporary Nigerian ceramic artist, Chris Echeta.

I post the announcement here:

Dear Ceramics Patron,
Critical Ceramics has just published an important article, Chris Echeta's Ceramic Chronicles of Nigeria by author Ozioma Onuzulike. This article provides an all too rare peak into the contemporary importance of ceramics beyond "making nice pots."

Onuzulike writes:
Over the last two decades, Nigerian Chris Echeta has produced a large corpus of works, most of them pursuing social themes and satirizing poor leadership and the consequent suffering of the common man. In the case of Nigeria, ceramic artists' search for a just and responsible society has not been put into any meaningful perspective, appraised, or critically discussed. This is in spite of the fact that Chris Echeta has created a large body of work that reflects on Nigeria's socio-political and economic history.

You can read the article in full on this link http://www.criticalceramics.org/articles/echeta.shtml