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

African Arts, Autumn, 2003 by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

Other galleries focused on life-cycle rituals and how art is used to construct individual and ethnic identity among Niger Delta peoples. The curators selected objects that illustrate masculine virility and artworks that speak to female interests, which emphasize the transition to adulthood. Five strategically placed video monitors spooled documentaries of various ceremonies, war canoes, regatta displays, and masquerade performances. The documentary on an Iwopin or Ijebu regatta ensemble was notable, as was the one showing a Shark or Python masquerade whose textile armature faintly recalled Chinese dragon displays. Pictures mounted at intervals provided explanations of the artworks on display.

Notable pieces included the monumental sculpture of an Ijo multiheaded bush spirit, Kalabari duein fubara ancestral screens, and a very impressive collection of Isoko ivri sculptures, ritual objects used by their owner to control assertiveness. Ivri echoes similar ritual objects found among the Igbo (ikenga), Edo (ikegobo), and Igala (ikega) and points to local interpretations of common ideas among these ethnic groups. Other memorable artworks included a pangolin masquerade headdress used by Ekpeye peoples and a re-creation of an Isoko shrine ensemble. A section on contemporary Niger Delta arts rounded out the exhibition with a prominent installation by Brace Onobrakpeya (Akporode) that echoed the accumulative principle of the Isoko shrine in its function as an archive of memory.

The exhibition thus introduced us to a wide array of art objects from the Niger Delta. Similarly, its catalogue provides a dense exegesis of the objects as they are used and interpreted within the indigenous contexts of their production. An examination of the catalogue is important to any analysis of the exhibition itself, since the artworks depended on the publication to enunciate the finer details of their use in distinctive cultural spaces.

Exhibition catalogues are a principal means of inscribing knowledge about African cultures, and their capacity for explication is used to good effect in Ways of the Rivers. In their introduction, Anderson and Peek, who are also the catalogue's editors, suggest that the "... Niger Delta ... is perhaps best conceived as a conceptual framework ... whose inhabitants exist within a unique fabric of cultural resemblances and cultural differences" (p. 30). The viewer reader thus benefits from an interpretation of not only the wide range of artworks presented but also the discursive structures underlying the exhibition and its publication. The curators were judicious in their selection of authors for the exhibition catalogue. These include Lisa Aronson, Henry Drewal, E. J. Alagoa, Keith Nicklin, Sonpie Kpone-Towne, Kay Williamson, E. E. Efere, Joanne Either, Kathy Curnow, Jill Salmons, Joseph Eboreime, and Philip E. Leis.

The catalogue is divided into three parts. The first deals with the early history of trade and contact in the Niger Delta. Part two addresses the environmental and cultural confluence arising from the relationship between environment and culture. The third part focuses on how art objects support local ethnic and cultural identities. In their conclusion, Anderson and Peek argue that although great ethnic and linguistic diversity mark the region, local populations have managed to maintain distinct identities and diverse cultural traditions. They also suggest that the area's history of fusion and fission present a microcosm of the ethnic and political tensions of the Nigerian nation since independence.