‘Poet Of Ojoto’ returns for honour at LABAF 2022

The Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) will, tomorrow, begin an interrogation of social and historical conditions shaping the country’s art space in what has been termed Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF).

The book and arts fiesta will look at challenges facing Nigeria’s cultural space, particularly, a lack of government’s assistance in whatever form and a shrinking economy that has limited corporate sponsorship.

“But we are set for the 24th edition of LABAF,” said the Programme Chair of Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), organisers of the festival, Jahman Anikulapo.

He said, “the sector has been the most resilient with practitioners doing the impossible to produce results that reverberate globally.”

According to him, “as always in its usual way of celebrating the sheer creative ingenuity of the men and women conjuring magic to keep Nigeria’s culture flag aloft, organisers of LABAF 2022 have lined up an impressive array of culture icons who have attained milestones in their birth calendars.”

They include Olu Jacobs, Tam Fiofori, Jimi Solanke, Esther Idowu Phillips, Bongos Ikwe, Dr. Bukar Usman, Bayo Awala, Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon, Adebayo Salami, Onyeka Onwenu, Duro Oni and Soni Irabor.

The 2022 festival is tagged: ‘Pathways to the Festival’ and “it is conceived to explore how Nigeria, and by extension humanity can navigate its way to brighter prospects.”

For Anikulapo, “LABAF is described as an open-air culture picnic of creativity, couched as a campaign for Literacy towards educating, enlightening, and empowering the citizens to be active participants in the democratic process and enhancement of human capital development.”

He continued, Tuesday, November 15, is dedicated as ‘Visual Arts Day’ at the 2022 Lagos Book & Art Festival, LABAF, holding November 14 to 20 at Freedom Park, by Broad Street, Lagos Island.

Anikulapo said, “though the entire week-long festival is dedicated to the celebration of the legend, Bruce Onobrakpeya, on occasion of his 90th birthday anniversary (August 30), and 60-year of illustrious career as a practising artist and teacher, a highlight of the festival is the exhibition dedicated to recalling the memory of the late Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo, the poet and librarian, who transited to ancestor-hood in the heat of the Nigeria Civil War in 1967.”

Okigbo would have been 90 years this year. His birthday coming two weeks before Onobrakpeya’s.

Themed, Songs for the Weaverbird: Writing and Art’ in celebration of Christopher Okigbo, the six-day show curated by the painter, art historian, Professor Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, and produced by Sankofa Centre for Art and Creative Education, Enugu, opens formally at 11:00am on that Tuesday in the Museum Gallery of the festival village, Freedom Park.

“The exhibition is, however, only one of the seven visual arts projects that would feature at the festival. Others are Timeless Memories…; Do Not Eat Garlic near the Queen; Eja Ni; Erections are Coming, and the Baraku Art workshop,” said Anikulapo.

In explaining the rationale behind Songs for the Weaverbirds… the curator Ikwuemesi says in his curatorial note titled: Remembering Chris Okigbo:

“Christopher Okigbo was an electric personality. Although he had a tragically short life, within that short period he had ensured, unwittingly, that he achieve creative immortality. Along with Achebe, Soyinka, Clark, and a few others, he was part of God’s gift to colonial and post-colonial, even post-war, Nigeria. He was a poet – a ‘weaverbird’ – which further endeared him to many more, including those who never knew him personally.

“As a writer, Okigbo was well aware of the powers of the printed word. But somehow, he also believed that the printed word had its limitations; he believed, like Nkrumah, that revolution and change could be brought about by those who thought like men of action and acted like men of thought. Little wonder he forsook his pen in favour of the gun in the bloom of the so-called civil war in Nigeria. But in doing so he forgot, as Azikiwe would put it, that revolution could also devour its children. So, he died at Opi’ in a war, which has been variously described as ‘useless’, ‘sanguinary’, ‘genocidal’, ‘costly’, and even ‘justified’.

“Had Christopher Okigbo lived on, I do not know what would be his response to post-war Nigeria, especially for its legacies, if any. Perhaps the dashing bard would have been disappointed and disillusioned. Perhaps he would have returned to the pen as a legitimate weapon of war. I don’t know. But the present collection of writing and art seems to provide some clues. Of course, it draws on the Nigeria, which Okigbo left behind. The entity, we must admit, has simultaneously progressed and retrogressed in the last few decades years, like the hand of an enchanted clock in a lonely dream. It is not the Nigeria of Christopher’s dream; the prevalent values are certainly not the ones for which he and many others made the supreme sacrifice over 50 years ago.

“Perhaps these are the facts which inform the many strands of thought running through the present collection in honour of Okigbo. The project, while saluting Okigbo’s creative industry and life, is also a reminder of the transience of life, the contradictions of the Nigerian project and the futility of all the vanity that now defines it.

“It is, perhaps, a cleansing metaphor and a challenge for the morass in which we are now mired. Yet it promises to kindle further interest in the person and work of Christopher Okigbo, at least in the younger generation and thus is a pointer to a time when the ‘prodigal’ – ‘the moonman’– shall emerge from ‘under the sea’ and the ‘singer’ appear from ‘under the shade’, willing and ripe, to ride on the waves of ‘Mother Idoto’, through the sacred groves, to a place where we can all begin again.”

BORN August 16 1932, in the town of Ojoto, about 10 miles (16 km) from the city of Onitsha in Anambra State, Okigbo died fighting for the independence of Biafra in September 1967. His father was a teacher in Catholic missionary schools during the heyday of British colonial rule in Nigeria, and he spent his early years moving from station to station.

Despite his father’s devout Christianity, Okigbo had an affinity and came to believe later in his life, that in him was reincarnated the soul of his maternal grandfather, a priest of Idoto, an Igbo deity.

Idoto is personified in the river of the same name that flows through Okigbo’s village, and the “water goddess” figures prominently in his work.

SAME Tuesday, November 15 that the Okigbo exhibition will open, the six other projects will also be formally opened, according to the Programme Directorate at the LABAF, in a release, which reads:

“At 12 noon, the Onabrakpeya @90 fiesta will kick off, with the first event beginning with the “Onobrakpeya showcase in the Park”, an exhibition of a few of Onobrakpeya’s metal and found objects exhibitions around the park, produced with Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation.

“These are conceptual installations by the iconic printmakers that are hardly seen in public. The works are being exhibited to serve as models of mentorship to younger artists, who usually lament their frustration of lack of resources to realise their vision and projects, that they could think out of the box, and use and adapt materials found in their environment to create works of enduring quality,” said Anikulapo.

“By 1:00pm, the second event in celebration of the Festival 2022 Honouree, Onobrakpeya is a symposium – an intergenerational conversation on the theme ‘Our Inheritance: What I took from Bruce Onobrakpeya.’ To be held inside the Kongi’s Harvest Art Gallery, it will feature renowned artists like Dr. Kunle Adeyemi, Barret Akpokabayen, Juliet Ezenwa, Nse Abasi Inyang, and Ogochukwu Ejiofor. Closely following this is ‘Conversation of the Grandpas’ that has as theme: ‘When we were young…. Dreams and Destinations,’ a conversation between Pa Timothy Banjo Fasuyi and Onobrakpeya. It’s co-curated with Tim and Carol Art Gallery.

“Another exhibition opens at 3:00 pm, tagged, Erections are Coming, but virtually. Curated by the architect-writer, Ayo Arigbabu and the experimental photo and art-documentarist Aderemi Adegbite, the show is described as a creative art space for artists to comment, introspect or engage in satirical fun as catharsis on the concept of elections, especially in view of the ego-driven antics that typically add spectacle to the campaign trail.

At 4:00pm, an art performance by Yusuf Durodola with the theme Eja ni, will hold, as a testimonial prediction of what is to be experienced in the next four years of Nigerian political life, a statement on the show says, continuing, “What we need is not what we are chasing! We embrace the mundane where our collective evolution is being discerned by some set of us. Is it not worrisome how our poor livelihood is being rebranded to assume a new look? How did we get to this dehumanizing situation, and for how long will it last? The answer is for us all to figure out.”

The performance is produced by Yusuf Durodola Studio.

“At 5:00pm, the exhibition, Timeless Memories: Elastic Effects. Connecting the Lines between Soyinka and Fagunwa, will open in the ground floor of Kongi’s Harvest. It’s in celebration of Wole Soyinka @88. A traditional Yoruba-themed installation exhibition and literary discourse, it is based on the book, Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter’s Saga, with translation by Soyinka.

“This Fifth episode of the Timeless Memories: Elastic Effects series will examine the acclaimed book of one of Nigeria’s foremost Yorùbá fantasy writers, D.O Fagunwa.

The book, titled originally in Yoruba, Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irumole (1938), is a fantastic story about a hunter who was caught in a mystical forest filled with a thousand demons.

The Exhibition will feature an Installation and will entail the re-creating of an enchanted forest with recyclable materials. A variety of indigenous masks representing a thousand demons will be deployed to symbolise the essence of Yoruba spiritualism and the mythical depths of Fagunwa’s literary brilliance.

The installation will be complete with a 6ft figurine of the embattled hunter in the middle. Ambiance will be provided by audio readings of different excerpts from the book; the voice-over excerpts will be taken from both the original Yoruba text and the English Translation by Wole Soyinka.

This session is produced by Asiri magazine & Culture Advocates Caucus, CAC.

“At 5.30pm, another performance art with Jelili Atiku will take place at Freedom Park arena with the theme ‘Don’t Eat Garlic Near The Queen.’ The internationally renowned Performance artist, Jelili Atiku explains the show thus: “Did you Know? Choosing the right synonym for power is not limited to AUTHORITY, JURISDICTION, or CONTROL; it also stretches to COMMAND and implies the power to make arbitrary decisions and compel obedience. Did you Know? The death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth have brought up critical reflections and realistic stories about the queen’s legacy and British imperialism, colonialism and its horrors, its lies of white supremacy, and more complicated acceptance of democracy and ejections of indigenous political systems and values. Did you Know? Queen Elizabeth’s duties were largely portrayed as ceremonial, but the flamboyant ceremonies of her burial highlighted the British deep respect for their indigenous values and rituals. But back here! Fela Kuti has sung, Colo-mentality.

FROM 6pm, there will be a presentation of Pa Demas Nwoko’s Concrete Thinking (New Culture Publications). Nwoko’s artistic practice, philosophy, and architecture have remained a critical influence in Nigeria’s creative and cultural space for all seven decades. His new book, Concrete Thinking, which was released in October 2022, documents his thoughts and philosophical leanings in the spheres of art and culture, as contained in various essays, both previously published and unpublished, written over the duration of his eventful multi-disciplinary career as a fine artist, lecturer in theatre arts, stage designer, architect, sculptor and builder.

Concrete Thinking will be presented alongside his also newly published autobiography, The Happy Little African Prince. The book presentation is produced by Dreams Art and Design Agency while special guest of honour is Nwoko.

At 8:00pm, Poetry in Motion, will kick off at the FoodCourt. The event is ‘Word Slam… Feast of Artistic Flights,’ with ‘Dance for OBOMEYOMA’ as theme. This is a session of spoken words, drama skits, dance and music in celebration of the Artistic Bard of Agbarah Otor. This session is produced by Culture Caucus Advocates (CAC) and CORA.