Sources and themes in the art of Obiora Udechukwu

African Arts, Summer, 2002 by Simon Ottenberg

Udechukwu has also been active as an art critic. There are few skilled professionals in this area in Nigeria. Those who write reviews in the country's newspapers and magazines are often ill-prepared to do so, a fact that he has lamented (Udechukwu 1978, 1995). Consequently artists often review and evaluate one another's work; they are some of Nigeria's best art critics. Udechukwu shows skill at this, and the activity has provided him opportunities to reflect on the work of others in terms of his own.

Increasing connections with Germany in the 1980s and 1990s gave the artist time to create away from Nigerian distractions. (18) During the resulting bursts of activity, he experimented with acrylics, played with sgraffito and language, and painted on larger canvases. His art became increasingly abstract and philosophical (Aas 1994; C. Okeke 1998, 1999:276), and less directly political, less absorbed in Nigerian life and problems. In his acrylic In the Beginning (Fig. 16), we see him using strong and sharply delineated colors. Some might say that this painting could have been created by a number of European painters, but Udechukwu does not appear, on the surface, to have been much influenced by German art of any era as a result of his trips there. Except for his more abstract work, he has largely concentrated on images from his Nigerian background and experience. In fact, over time he has given this same title to a number of works, created in different media and different styles, without giving specific meaning to them. It could refer, in the case of this painting, to the beginning of the world and time, the beginning of a new phase in his own career, a sense of hope for a new beginning for his country, or some deeply philosophical and poetic idea.

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

Ugulu (Harmattan) (Fig. 17) is one of a series of three paintings, each representing a Nigerian season. During the harmattan, a cool, dusty wind from the Sahara grays the skies. This work conveys a sense of elements whirling about with the wind, much as in his In the Beginning; the artist makes good use of sgraffito to create additional designs. Unusual for his acrylic paintings, this work has little color contrast.

[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]

Udechukwu is not specific about art influences from Europe or America, though he has written me that "the artist is influenced by the totality of sense impressions he has been exposed to. Detective criticism is an onerous task ..." (personal communication, 1994). My impression is that contemporary Nigerian artists rarely claim to have been affected by Western art influences, perhaps not wishing their work to be criticized as derivative. They stress its stylistic and thematic originality within the Nigerian scene, while conceding that the media employed are generally Western.

Although not postmodern in the usual meaning of this term, Udechukwu's art, like that of many other artists, displays multiculturalism and hybridity, and he has made a few moves toward postmodernism. For the Configura 2 workshop in Erfurt, Germany, in 1995, he chose to create House of Four Trees--a replica, with innovations, of an Igbo meeting-house (Fig. 18). At Dartmouth College in 1998, Udechukwu, Chika Okeke, and five Dartmouth students developed another three-dimensional structure, The House of Truth. (18) In 1989 at Iwalewa-Haus he created three innovative uli panels for an exhibition (Fig. 19).