Modern & Contemporary African Art | and CCA Lagos Benefit Auction

Modern & Contemporary African Art | and CCA Lagos Benefit Auction

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 34. Untitled .

Lot Closed

March 22, 03:42 PM GMT

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

El Anatsui

Ghanaian

b.1944

Untitled


incised wood panels (10 panels)

each panel: 88 by 29cm., 34½ by 11½in. (approximately)

Collection of Uche Okeke (1933–2016), acquired directly from the artist

Thence by direct descent

In 1975, the Nigerian artist Uche Okeke (1933–2016) invited El Anatsui to leave Ghana and join the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where Anatsui taught until his retirement in 2008 and maintained his studio until recently. The following year, in February 1976, Okeke organised an exhibition, Wooden Wall Plaques by El Anatsui, at his Asele Nimo Galleries at Nsukka. Standing at the beginning of his chainsaw explorations, the present lot was conceived in the early 1980s as part of a large-scale installation for the Asele Institute Nimo. It is an important example of Anatsui’s dialogue with traditional and local media in his earlier works, and bears the distinct hallmarks of Okeke’s teaching and influence.


Okeke’s practice was deeply influenced by his Igbo culture, particularly by the folklore shared with him by his mother and sister, as well as by Uli, an aesthetic tradition from south-eastern Nigeria focusing on the Igbo female form. The artist learned this technique from his mother who was a celebrated Uli draughtswoman. Okeke would later become the father of the revival of Uli technique in contemporary Nigerian art. His time as a professor at the University of Nigeria would be a tenure branded by the rise of the Uli Revivalist Movement. Developing in the wake of the Nigerian Civil war (1967-1970), members sought to achieve a radical reassertion of Igbo ethnicity.


Okeke urged his students and peers at Nsukka to seek inspiration from the region surrounding the university, the Igbo and Cross River areas of Nigeria, an idea cultivated as part of the ‘Zaria Rebels’ philosophy as an attempt to decolonize the visual arts in post-colonial Nigeria. The linear patterns prevalent here are inspired originally by Uli drawings, traditional wall mural and temporary tattoo designs practiced amongst Igbo women in South-eastern Nigeria. Uli designs were particularly relevant in the practice of the Nsukka group, of which Anatsui was an active member, and became emblematic of their group style, Ulism.


Anatsui incorporated Uli and Nsibidi of southeastern Nigeria into his work alongside his indigenous Adinkra symbols, elements of Ewe sculptural traditions and other Ghanaian motifs and ideographic and logographic symbolism, thus establishing a completely identifiable substyle in Nsukka School art.


From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the artist also experimented with a wide variety of materials and processes, creating everything from paintings to prints to performance work. Eventually, Anatsui found himself gravitating towards the manipulation of various woods using tempera and chain saw, a technique he would become very comfortable with, and would continue to focus on in the years that followed.


“I discovered that the chain saw was a very evocative sculpture tool, and I started using it.”


For Anatsui, the carefully selected wood tones within his sculptural works represent the diversity of the people of Africa, whilst the aggressive chain saw cuts represent the uncontrollable violence that has gripped the continent for years. The strong linear cuts of the saw also remind the artist of the colonial division of the African continent during the Berlin Conference in 1880. Throughout his work, he seeks to promote the connectivity between Africa, America and Europe while simultaneously recalling the continent’s history of colonialism and Westernization. Anatsui describes his work as constantly evolving, mirroring the progressive journey of a human life: perpetually in flux.