Synopsis
In the face of rising authoritarianism, what is the role of the painter? In his Spring 2025 Lecture in Criticism for the Center for the Humanities, Chika Okeke-Agulu answered: To record the truth.
Dr. Okeke-Agulu’s prodigious publications center modern and contemporary art from Africa and its diasporas. Previous generations of art historians often analyzed modernism as an exclusively Western movement; Dr. Okeke-Agulu’s insistence on integrating African histories has pushed the field forward. The researcher has continued this work as Princeton University’s Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies and Director of its interdisciplinary Africa World Initiative, as well as through curation and public scholarship.
In his talk, “Art in the Shadow of Military Dictatorships in 1980s Nigeria,” Dr. Okeke-Agulu examined the politics in our art and the art in our politics. The lecture, based on a larger book project, spotlighted Nigerian artist Obiora Udechukwu (b. 1946) as a bridge from modern to contemporary art. Udechukwu, like Dr. Okeke-Agulu, received his education at the famed University of Nigeria, Nsukka. There, Udechukwu joined a dynamic scholarly community drawing, writing, and theorizing a distinctly Nigerian modernism. Dr. Okeke-Agulu argued that Udechukwu and peers built on this legacy while also differentiating themselves from their modernist mentors through a shifting understanding of art’s function. Whereas that earlier generation optimistically employed the formal language of modernism to further the nationalist goals of newly independent Nigeria, Udechukwu and others responded to increasing corruption by wielding art as a tool of political criticism. Dr. Okeke-Agulu proposed that—more than diverging formal considerations—it is this change in content that distinguishes the modern from the contemporary in African art history.
At Nsukka, artist Uche Okeke (1933–2016) took Udechukwu on as advisee. Okeke introduced Udechukwu to his ideas about how uli, decorative linework indigenous to southeastern Nigeria, could be synthesized with other stylistic lineages to create a new modernist aesthetic. Uli was widely practiced among the majority Igbo population in the southeast to adorn both bodies and shrine walls. (It is far less common to see uli today beyond select aging artists.) In the past, uli art was made by women who collectively and spontaneously designed compositions of elegant, organic lines. The results often prioritized asymmetry and negative space, sometimes gesturing toward figuration while at other times remaining wholly abstract. Growing up among his ethnically Igbo family, Udechukwu would have regularly seen uli body art and murals. Okeke’s theories of defining modernist aesthetics through vernacular artforms inspired Udechukwu to incorporate uli into his own practice.
Udechukwu’s education, however, would be disrupted by the Biafran War (1967–1970). The devastating civil war, prompted by eastern Nigeria’s attempted succession after a series of violent anti-Igbo riots, fundamentally altered many Nigerians’ relationships to their burgeoning national identity. Dr. Okeke-Agulu pinpointed the conflict as the turning point after which Udechukwu began more thoroughly utilizing uli motifs and more overtly referencing political themes, as seen in drawings like The Road to Abuja (1982). Observing the horrors of war, the displacement that resulted, and the corruption boosted by chaos, the scholar suggested, changed Udechukwu’s relationship to “the aesthetics and ethics of line.”
The lecture visually rooted these ideas in Udechukwu’s painting Tycoons and Stevedores (1980). Its two protagonists emerge out of swirling organic lines and sharp contrasts between warm and cool colors. Dr. Okeke-Agulu explained that we can identify the man whose face bisects the horizon as the tycoon because he is shown in a hat, sunglasses, wristwatch, and voluminous agbada with delicate lace on the sleeves. These details signify a type, rather than a specific person—the “big man” as theorized by cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins. These outward displays of luxury would have been immediately recognizable to Nigerian viewers as a uniform of Lagos-based big men (and women) who profited from the country’s first oil boom in the 1970s. Meanwhile, in the murky lower half, the wizened face of a working-class stevedore is subsumed within the folds of the big man’s agbada.
As a representation, Tycoons and Stevedores wavers between figuration and abstraction, never quite resolving. Its structure is unstable, resisting easy elucidation—not unlike the hierarchy created by big men and women pursuing personal wealth over the good of the nation-state. Dr. Okeke-Agulu suggested this unsettled formal technique was adopted by Udechukwu from Nigerian poets like Christopher Okigbo (1932–1967), who died in the Biafran War. A refusal to be proscriptive set contemporary poets apart from prose writers also in Udechukwu’s circle, like Chinua Achebe (1930–2013), who published explicit critiques like The Trouble with Nigeria (1983). It was within this conceptual space, then, that Udechukwu located his role as a contemporary visual artist: not as a royal advisor, but as a bard. Dr. Okeke-Agulu argued that, as the Nigerian government descended into corruption-fueled authoritarianism, Udechukwu acted as the conscious of a court rapidly losing its way.
Nigeria would be ruled by dictatorships in various guises throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, and Udechukwu continued to record the follies and vanity projects of its leaders. However, the artist never encountered political pressure as acute as that faced by many Nigerian writers. Dr. Okeke-Agulu posited that variations in audiences for each medium contributed to this difference. Unlike poems, articles, and novels that could be mass-reproduced and distributed, visual artists’ output often circulated in the same circles it sought to critique. Nonetheless, the artworks of Udechukwu and fellows like Olu Oguibe (b. 1964) remain vibrant, vital records of that period. They testify to the fact that the artists outlasted the dictators.
A question-and-answer session concluded the evening. In his responses to queries around display and reception of Udechukwu’s work, Dr. Okeke-Agulu underscored why the artist needs to be considered within the specific context of Nigerian aesthetics and politics. He emphasized that all art history needs to be situated in its specific historical, regional, and cultural contexts to avoid mis-readings.
The next morning, Dr. Okeke-Agulu moderated an intimate workshop with graduate students from the History of Art & Architecture department as well from Earth & Environment. The scholar expressed the need to make research more relevant and accessible for twenty-first-century audiences by publishing in blogs and on social media alongside standard academic annals. To this end, Dr. Okeke-Agulu encouraged early-career scholars to sharpen their writing skills as critics as well as historians. Careful and robust visual analysis is what distinguishes art history as a discipline, and Dr. Okeke-Agulu issued a clarion call to art historians not to overlook it. Faithfully recording the missives from our bards will reveal the truth of our politics—and ensure those truths are remembered by the next generation.
-Colleen Foran, History of Art & Architecture, April 2025
