Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta

African Arts, Autumn, 2003 by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Los Angeles, California May 19-November 17, 2002

The exhibition "Ways of the Rivers" and its accompanying publication of the same title (reviewed on p. 10) are important additions to existing knowledge about the Niger Delta, a unique geographical environment and definitely one of the most interesting culture areas in the world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the exhibition provided us with an opportunity to evaluate an emerging crisis of representation in African art history. I refer to the growing dichotomy between art exhibitions purporting to represent distinctive ethnic forms of material production through historically dated art objects and the emergence of contemporary forms of art in those contexts that bear little formal resemblance to canonical cultural artifacts. In other words, it appears we no longer have a clear idea of what art objects are appropriate to representations of African cultures. Contemporary exhibitions of African art need to specify the historical nature of their artifacts in order to distinguish between their canonical forms and new productions that may not be based on those prototypes that are created with different intentions and directed to different uses.

These exhibitions also need to deconstruct the re emergence of "tribal" identification in African art history. We can agree, without being facetious, that we have found all the "tribes." The important question today is how to transcend theoretical paradigms that conceptualize African cultures mainly in terms of tribal (ethnic, societal, ancestral, etc.; insert your word of choice here) identification. Given the increasing awareness that ethnic identities are relatively recent formations indebted to Africa's colonial history in the past century and a half, new paradigms that provide a better assessment of African cultural practice are needed. (1)

The Niger Delta region and culture area is a prime locale for engaging the above questions. It is a geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse environment marked by centuries of interaction among its different indigenous societies and with Europe since the fifteenth century. Prominent ethnic groups in this area include the Ijo, Itsekiri, Isoko, Urhobo, Delta, Yoruba, Igbo, Ekpeye, Abua, and Ogoni, many of whom share masquerade traditions and forms of social organization. As Kenneth Onwuka Dike noted in his seminal work on Niger Delta economics (1956), the entire region is linked by navigable waterways that have served as migration routes for people, goods, and ideas over the centuries. The Niger Delta is also the second largest--and the largest inhabited--delta system in the world.

"Ways of the Rivers" was the first exhibition "dedicated to the complex cultural matrix of the Niger Delta." Its catalogue is also "one of the few studies of African art to examine the relationship of culture to environment and to explore the expression of an entire region as opposed to a single ethnic group" (p. 11). (2) By now, the protocols for presenting exhibitions of this kind are fairly evident, and no institution does a better job of relating African artworks to their original cultures and tracking their reception in international spaces than the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. "Ways of the Rivers" continued the Fowler's tradition of calling attention to important cultural paradigms, aided in this instance by a politically charged environment in which the insidious corporate exploitation of Niger Delta resources has made the area internationally notorious.

The curators, Martha G. Anderson and Philip M. Peek, showed great insight in their selection of the objects for the exhibition. These included a remarkable body of artworks spanning many centuries, from the still-mysterious products of the Lower Niger Bronze Industry (some dated to the mid-seventeenth century) to the contemporary installations of Bruce Onobrakpeya and Sokari Douglas Camp, arguably the most famous contemporary artists from the Niger Delta. Anderson and Peek also pursued a greater objective for this exhibition through their decision to interrogate the relationship between Niger Delta cultures and their environment. This decision required them to navigate the minefields of environmental determinism and the quagmire of essentialized ethnic identities represented by monolithic "styles," what Sidney Kasfir famously criticized as the "one-tribe, one-style" paradigm. They were largely successful in these objectives.

The exhibition was divided into several sections, and the installation provided viewers with a clear and uninterrupted view of each object. The first gallery was anchored by a spectacular display of three masked headdresses that revealed the shared veneration of water spirits among Niger Delta peoples. In the same display, there were also a group of life-size ancestral figures and a selection of intricate bronze objects from the Lower Niger Bronze Industry. The focal point of this effective entrance display was an elegant sawfish (Oki) mask headdress whose sleek shape pointed to the dangerous power of both the animal and the water spirit it represents. This section of the exhibition subsequently explored a range of art objects designed to illustrate the long history of Niger Delta art and cultures.