Browsing by Subject "African art"
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Item Alafia(2009-12-01) Nyaphaga, Issa; Okediji, Moyo; Willmann, Travis (photographer)On December 1, 2009 the Fine Arts Library hosted Alafia, a performance and installation in honor of World Aids Day. The performance and installation of African art was presented by Issa Nyaphaga and UT Art History professor Moyo Okediji. Alafia – which means “health” in Yoruba – focused on health matters (art and healing go hand-in-hand in African and African diasporic arts), in particular the scourge of epidemic and pandemic ailments such as AIDS, swine flu, tuberculosis and Ebola. A procession of masks was to start from the “Igbale” (or shrine) at the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and lead to the Fine Arts Library, where the grand performance and installation took place. Although the procession did not take place due to rain, the masks were on display on the third floor of the FAL through December 8. Photos by Travis Willman. Design by Mark Doroba.Item Eko o ni baje (may Lagos be indestructible) : lens-based representations of transformation in Lagos, Nigeria, 1990-2001(2017-05) Gant, Kimberli; Smith, Cherise, 1969-; Chambers, Eddie; Okediji, Moyo; Flaherty, George; Clarke, ChristaThis study investigates lens-based depictions of transformations in Lagos, Nigeria. Using archival research, interviews and close visual analysis I examine photographic and filmic narratives of change and evolution throughout the city in 1990-2002. The decade ending the twentieth century and beginning the twenty-first saw scholars and curators interested in Lagos as part of a growing body of research on the physical and demographic expansion of cities in the “Global South.” Nigerian and non-Nigerian artists during this same period were also focusing on Lagos as a muse for representing the specificities of working class, daily life in African urban centers. My project highlights a singular image or scene by three such artists, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Otobong Nkanga, and Rem Koolhaas, who each created a lens-based series of images about Lagos’ continual transition. I argue that Akinbiyi’s Untitled [Woman in a striped dress walking across the sidewalk] (1995), Nkanga’s Tollgate to Ibadan #10 (2001), and Koolhaas’ Lagos/Koolhaas (2001) show Lagos as in a state of constant flux, depicting older spiritual practices adapted for a contemporary setting, citizens modifying the landscape for economic uplift, and historical architecture as physical markers of previous colonial shifts.Item Reconstructing the body : the textile forms of Peju Alatise and Grace Ndiritu(2013-05) Ringle, Hallie Ruth; Okediji, Moyosore B. (Moyosore Benjamin)Nigerian sculptor Peju Alatise and British/Kenyan video artist Grace Ndiritu create works centered on the female form. In these works the artists turn to flesh, their own and representations of, in order to expose prevailing notions of the black female body. Peju Alatise’s mixed-media sculpture, 9 Year Old Bride (2010), depicts the hollow bodies of seven small female figures created from fabric and frozen in motion by resin and white paint. Ndiritu’s video paintings, Still Life: Lying Down Textiles (2007)and Still Life: White Textiles (2005-2007) similarly employs cloths as means of covering and creating the body. In Still Life: Lying Down Textiles, Ndiritu reclines on the floor amongst a rich array of fabrics. Completely covered by cloth, except for her right arm, Ndiritu breathes heavily and twitches for entirety of the five-minute film. In her second film, Still Life: White Textiles, Ndiritu manipulates a large piece of fabric between her bare legs and arms which hints at, but never grants nudity. This thesis argues that both Alatise and Ndiritu incorporate wax-printed fabrics to conceal/reveal and construct/deconstruct the female form. Both artists do so as means of destabilizing dominant essentialized notions of black womanhood rooted in colonial visual practices. The paper draws similarities between Alatise and Ndiritu’s works to colonial photographic practices and historical figures of curiosity, such as Sara Baartman, which both inform contemporary understandings of the black female body. Rather than simply repeat—and therefore perpetuate—Western imagined qualities of deviant sexualities and sexual availability, this thesis asserts that Alatise and Ndiritu allude to and ultimately undermine these notions through a careful control of nudity. The last section of the thesis distinguishes the artistic practices of Ndiritu and Alatise from artists working in similar mediums. Though artists like Yinka Shonibare and Lalla Essaydi incorporate textiles into their works, Ndiritu and Alatise are unique for their use of textiles as extensions of the body rather than simply coverings for the figure. Lastly, the thesis argues that Alatise and Ndiritu straddle both Orientalist and Occidentalist understandings of African culture, incorporating elements of both, seemingly inverse, theories into their artistic practices.