The Green Summary @ Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos

Nigeria Mon 14-02-2011

The Green Summary @ Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos
By Obidike Okafor | AfricanColours.com

The venue was green. Not with envy but with art.

The new body of work showning at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), an art space popular for supporting media that is under represented in Nigeria, put anniversary celebrations on its front burner with Nigeria’s 50th and CCA’s third as the main focus.

^{Green Webs by Jelili Atiku’s video installation}

Using green, a color that represents Nigerian pride the nine artists; made up of three females and six males created works in CCA’s latest offering titled Green Summary an artistic summary of Nigeria’s realities and the hopes of its citizen’s with a spot record of the centers three year journey through the corridors of contemporary art.

The artists, who in the past have been part of CCA’s story, were given the opportunity to experiment with new media apart from using ones familiar to them to produce one piece that defines their interactions with CCA and their impressions about their country in the last 50 years.

The exhibition which had three young curators featured the works of Ndidi Dike, Emeka Ogboh, Jude Anogwih, Richardson Oviebo, Taiye Idahor, Uchay Chima Joel, Victoria Udondian, Karo Akpofiere and Jelili Atiku.

The Center for Contemporary Art, run by Bisi Silva was set up in November 2007 to provide a platform for the development and presentation and discussion of contemporary visual arts and to create new audiences especially for media like photography, video and performance art that the centre feels has been under prioritized in Nigeria, which explains the domination of installations in the space, from sound to video installations, to installations made from green boots to transparent cuboids suspended from the ceiling, the body of works was a true reflection of the center’s vision of promoting art outside the comfort zone of paintings.

Welcome to greenland

Follow the boot steps and climb up the wall. A request that will be humanly impossible, but when you’re an artist your imagination takes flight. Carbon polytricks by Ndidi Dike welcomes the viewer into the venue with foot prints that morph into boots that go across the floor then up the wall till it reaches the ceiling.

Green Boots by Ndidi Dike The artist whose works were part of the opening exhibition for CCA at its inauguration uses the installation to ask a very important question, “Is Nigeria really an independent democratic state where there is a strong persistent dictatorial political undercurrent of military rule, influential politicians have removed their military garb and put on a civilian one?”

The green military boots according to Dike who over the years has made installation art her preferred means of artistic endeavor said the boots symbolize authority and power from 1960 to date, marching furiously on the floor and up the wall to the ceiling indicating that although free we still remain under siege.

Interludes a sound installation by Emeka Ogboh gives a sound scape cut from different scenes of Nigeria on Independence Day. Capturing speeches, songs and the excitement of the people on October 1, 1960, the sound installation which plays 50 seconds of sound before an interlude of 50 seconds of silence, examines 50 years of Nigerian independence and shows how the realities of time has silenced the utopian dreams and hopes that were born on independence day. The sound process is also portrayed in a time line placed on the wall.

A few steps away, tucked in a corner of the space are long strands of green threads that crisscross the walls in a green web which provides the backdrop for Jelili Atiku’s video installation titled who knows who cares.

The video which was shot in the same green entanglement from where it is projected shows the performer covered in green paint struggling inside the green threads; falling standing up and being pulled on every side by the green twines. He uses the performance to address the problems caused by industrialization which includes environmental degradation, climate change, deforestation and depletion in resources.

Second hand clothes dealers will have a score to settle with Victoria Udondian, because her installation of green second hand clothes hanging from green lines tells the whole story of her fight to make local fabric popular again.

^{Green Clothes by Victoria Udondian}

Titled Lost and Found the artist feels the Nigerian identity is threatened because of a craze for western clothes, and since second hand clothing are easily accessible than the ones bought in boutiques, its popularity is undeniable. In the light of the recent dearth of a textile industry in Nigeria, Udondian believes that Nigerian culture has a lot to lose because of this invasion.

Viewers are welcomed to Taiye Idahor’s world in Welcome to my world, another installation of transparent cuboids with different sizes of green strings suspended inside. Her work looks at the varying circle of influences harnessed by the average Nigerian, she shows how some people have grown their area of influence through class or power, while others have not been able to take advantage of the infinite possibilities around them and have remained content in their claustrophobia inducing spheres.

Unconventional green

Conventionality was completely thrown out the window as artists whose works hung on the wall had nothing painterly to offer. Green Nectar which comprises of dark green slashes across a fluorescent green cardboard spotted with green cylinders is Jude Anogwih’s way of providing a road map for positive transformation in Nigeria, with the slashes representing the interconnectivity of pipes across regions of the nation and the cylinders dripping green paint representing the green nectar of change from reliance on crude oil for development to other resources-natural and manmade.

Jute is his specialty and jute was the main stay for his work, Where we are coming from…what we ought to do…and where we ought to be, the mouthful title of Uche Joel Chima’s was also handful as it was the most interactive of the lot, with viewers allowed to write on the jute sacks arranged in human shapes which resembled masquerade costumes hung on the wall.

According to the artist each of the five shapes represents ten years in Nigerian history with the work asking the viewer to decide if Nigeria is better off after 50 years of independence. In trying to get the viewer answer the question he allows them share their thought by writing what they remember about Nigeria, turning the work into a canvass for graffiti with words like “SAP”, “Coup Plotters”, “Survival”, “FESTAC 77”, “Ken Saro Wiwa” and “Fuel Scarcity” running across the works surface..

Karo Akpofiere contributes to the artistic discuss with his work Independence were he puts together simple symbols to create a framed digital production that gives a formula to derive independence. He believes that true independence is an internal state that is borne out of personal discovery and exploration and uses a green question mark, a plus sign a book, an equal sign and the word independence to show it.

“Knowledge is represented by the book and curiosity is represented by the question mark, which shows the process of attaining independence” Akpofiere said.

Richardson Ovbiebo’s dreams big with Green Dreams. His work which was done on the ceiling of the art space was inspired by Bisi Silva’s welcome address on the fourth quarter of the 2010 edition of CCA’s newsletter. The painting itself done with charcoal and green acrylic shows a building with and open door way and people walking through the door, he explained that Nigerians have been neglected like the independence building in his literal head raiser and pointed out the blue print of how the nation can celebrate the true meaning of independence in the next 50 years from the last paragraph of Silva’s address.

Inspiration for all

The exhibition touched a lot on Nigeria but CCA, a celebrant alongside the country barely made it into the concepts of any of the works except in Oviebo’s Green Dreams, also the brochure was a far cry from the standard which CCA has set in terms of quality as some of the pictures did not come out clearly, add these to these minor snags a low turnout at the opening and you get an indicator that new media art still has not gotten due recognition in Nigeria, but long after the show ends in Feb 27th, it would be remembered that Green Summary did what it set out to do. Inspire its viewers.

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