Okeke

Uche Okeke is the founder of the Nsukka art movement. He received his formal art training at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology (later to become Ahmadu Bello University) at Zaria in northern Nigeria. His teachers were expatriates and he was one of the students who originated the Zaria Art Society, also known as the "Zaria Rebels". Outside of class, he and other students put aside the western artistic styles they were being taught and chose to draw directly from the art forms of their various cultural backgrounds. They called it Natural Synthesis. It was a marriage of the best of African and Western aesthetics and forms. For Okeke it meant returning to the art forms of the Igbo and this included the folktales and uli.

Okuku's Chicken-1958 Line Drawing

The birds are rendered with lines creating fluid and exaggerated forms that appear to move in a circular motion. More lines are used to form rhythmic texture inside the bodies.

Fabled Brute-1954 Line Drawing

Okeke has given this creature a fairytale appearance. Using only line he has given it weight and texture.

For Okeke, as an artist, he was able to find his artistic freedom in his Igbo heritage. He began by investigating and illustrating the Igbo folktales told by his mother and his sister when he was a child. His images are of grotesque and fantastic creatures, the eyes, mouths, and noses are exaggerated, outlined and filled with patterns.

He also learned about uli and evolved his drawing technique until he had developed a lyrical and organic form of drawing based upon the uli tradition. Both of these were a direct attempt to return to his roots and bring them into the present in a contemporary way while retaining their design integrity.

Uli was practiced by the Igbo women, his mother included, as a way of decorating homes and shrines as well as their bodies. It is a purely decorative art form with a wide variety of abstract motifs based on things from everyday life. Uli painting on the exteriors of buildings were done in reddish brown, yellow, black, and white. It was painted on women's bodies with juice from local plants. In former times, uli designs could be seen on the bodies of women on major market days. It was their way of dressing up to go out.

Each design has a name, usually the same as the object it depicts. Motifs represent man made objects such as the hoe or metal gong. as well as animals, birds, and plants such as the python, the lizard, the kola nut, and the cassava leaf. Even the sun and moon are depicted. Some of the designs are strictly abstract such as dots and lines. Modern motifs include the airplane and the automobile. These motifs were arranged in such a way as to create an appealing aesthetic composition with the negative space being as important as the design space, creating lyrical works of art.

Until recent times, uli was largely ignored by anthropologists in favor of the more exotic masks and figures made by the Igbo men. Today it has largely died out among the women as they dress in a more western fashion and building styles change. So uli survives in the work of contemporary Nsukka artists, most of whom are men.

Refugee Family-1966 Linocut on Paper

The shapes of color are defined by calligraphic lines. There is an economy of form designed to make a strong statement about what the individuals depicted have experienced and represent.

As conditions worsened for the Igbo in Nigeria, Okeke depicted the refugees that moved in steady streams to the south in his work. The progressively worsening violence against Igbo lead to serious problems of suffering, displacement, and ethnic tension. At the beginning of the Biafran War he participated with other artists in the war effort. He was directly involved with refugees, propaganda production, and artistic exhibitions. But he spent the last year in Germany where he was able to exhibit Igbo arts and crafts as well as contemporary art at exhibitions held to benefit the Biafran cause.

Osondu-1968 Pen and Ink Wash on Paper

Osondu was created during the war and shows refugees drawn with agitated lines. The figures lean to the right, moving in a compact group across the page. By the time this work was created, Okeke himself had been required to move several times. This could be an expression of his own experience as well as that of his fellow Igbo.

"The dreamer must turn activist in order to rescue our civilization from destruction and death. He must speak out with all the forces at his command, fight if he must and die in order to safeguard our liberty and survival." 1968

After the civil war, he went to Nsukka where he was appointed as a lecturer and head of the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was a mature artist and individual before the war started and he came out of it with the resolve that Nigeria's survival lay in the revival and growth of indigenous culture and art forms. He took this idea into his work at Nsukka by taking the curriculum away from the western tradition to one which drew its inspiration from the Igbo tradition of uli. His ideas about uli along with those of his colleagues were not taught as a specific course but were such an integral part of the program that it was easily picked up by the students. He wanted an art program that was rooted in the Nigerian aesthetic. This was very different from his own formal training at Zaria. He focused on teaching his students, regardless of their emphasis, to be competent in drawing and design, the foundation of uli.

Mma-Nwa-Uli-1972 Celotex Board Cut print on Paper

This woodblock print is one of his most explicitly uli works. The positive and negative space are reversed. The uli lines (positive space) are cut and therefore white. The background (negative space) is left uncut, so it printed blue.

In 1978, he helped to establish the Ana Gallery, named for the Igbo earth deity. It is used to exhibit the work of students, faculty, and visiting artists. That same year he also organized an International Symposium on Contemporary Nigerian Art at Nsukka. Nigerian artists, art historians, and art students as well as scholars from abroad, presented papers.

Procession of Mmuo-1981 Pen and Ink on Paper

The negative space of the background is shaped by spare, lyrical lines used to create the figures in the same way that uli is used to shape the background in the woodcut above. This drawing was done while he was at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for the academic year of 1981-1982.

Ana, Asele, and Badunka-1982 Etching on Paper

Ana is considered the source of beauty and the keeper of moral law. Asele is the spirit of design. Badunka is the male counterpart to Asele, master of handicrafts and technology. The drawing was scraped into brittle ground to create lines with ragged edges and gray centers.

Eri, the Morning of Creation-1983 Gouache

Eri is believed, by Igbo, to have been the first man in the Anambra River area, coming to earth from the home of Chukwu, the god of the heavens. This painting is a little different from his other imagery with its emphasis on the landscape.

He established a cultural center, the Asele Institute, in his home town of Nimo. Since his retirement from the university in 1986, he has thrown himself into his work at the Institute full-time, organizing workshops, shows, and seminars.

Owelle of Owa-1993 Gouache

This painting was created for a retrospective of his work. The brows are weighted down and shade the eyes to give the face a brooding, serious appearance.

For Uche Okeke his art has been about reclaiming his Igbo heritage and using it to try and help Nigeria to move forward. He sees the development of contemporary art in Nigeria as being tied to the country's condition and has continually striven to call attention to this.