By Prince (Engr) Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon
In
presenting my comments on the general ineptitude to creativity in our country,
I must start by thanking the entire members of the council of the Society of
Nigerian Artists led by Uwah USEN for recognizing my fellow art connoisseurs
and I, for our roles as collectors in the symbiotic sustenance and growth of
Nigerian visual art. According to Abraham Maslow, this obviously serves not
only as an important motivator but also puts us in the significant position of
doing more. This is because recognition is an important desire in man's
hierarchy of needs.
However,
I would like to seize this opportunity to draw our attention to some disturbing
cases of disregard and devaluation of the creative values in our national
development and wealth. To start with, Tajudeen Sowole of The Guardian drew
our attention since July 13th, 2012 to the ongoing renovation of the
Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos where the works of some of our present and
past heroes are being desecrated. These our artistic heroes include such living
legends as Prof Yusuf Grillo and Bruce Onobrakpeya whose works gave commendable
value and aesthetics to the airport but are being destroyed without any
consultation with, involvement or information to the artists. Other artists,
whose works are open to being desecrated at the renovation of the Murtala
Mohammed Airport, are the works of late Professor Agbo Folarin, the late Isiaka
Osunde and Demas Nwoko. This kind of disregard to creativity is heartbreaking
and I am forced to ask in this circumstance; what the collective mission of the
SNA is? What has the SNA done since this anomaly was brought to public
attention by Tajudeen Sowole inThe Guardian?
It
appears that Nigeria is made up of people, who live in a country where artists
are sentenced to marginalization and at which, visual art is at best seen as a
feature of mere fancy. In Nigeria, everything points to the fact that our
leaders are generally ambivalent towards visual art. Our attitude to art is
unfortunately part and parcel a product of our colonial mentality.
An
important case of ineptitude demonstrated by us as a people is typified by our
contribution and complacency to the recent insult at our intelligence by the
British Museum. The British Museum in avoiding the consistent and increasing
pressure for the return of our looted artworks have of recent past,
strategically arranged some assisted, cheap and insulting trips to England for
some low and middle level civil servants of the National Commission for Museum
and Monuments to carry out some curatorial works for private and public
collections in England in exchange for some payment of mere pittance to the
Nigerians, when compared to what they would have paid if they had used their
own citizens. Meanwhile, the Nigerian art works in the collection of the
British Museum are mostly the looted works carted away from our country by
imperialists from 1897 and during our period of colonisation. Our collective
intelligence has of recent been insulted by a spokesman of the British Museum,
when he was asked about what his country was doing about returning the looted
works. In reply, he told us to rather concentrate more on the benefits accruing
to us from the on-going human-capacity development programme of the British
Museum by their assisted training program in England, of civil servants instead
of calling for the return of the looted works. The reality is that, our civil
servants are just unconsciously being made to serve as curatorial semi-slaves
of the British Museum and as pawns by the British in their strategic
positioning of retaining their looted Nigerian artworks.
One
other recent noticeable insult at our intelligence, is that by the Museum of
Art in Vienna through its funding of a widely publicised exhibition of lace
textile materials in the Lagos Museum under the pretext of helping us to
celebrate lace textiles, as part of our collective heritage. In reality, the
whole essence of the funding of that exhibition by the Austrians is to
reactivate their dying Austrian lace export trade to Nigeria. This being
necessary because Austria has since lost its domineering market of lace cloth
materials in Nigeria to China.
A
painful disturbing experience of recent, is the behaviour of a Vice Chancellor
of one of the first five universities in Nigeria. This Vice Chancellor had an
“Anyanwu” (a bronze work of about ten feet) by Ben Enwowu uprooted from the
living-room of his official residence. He also removed works of such great
renowned master artists as Akinola Lashekan, Bruce Onobrakpeya and Ben Enwonwu
from the walls of the Vice Chancellor’s official quarters as well as a door
carved by the late Lamidi Fakeye. The Vice Chancellor has since sent all these
great works to the storage section of the institution’s Museum of National
History. This was done under his unenlightened presumption that artworks are
demonic. He must have imagined how ghosts would haunt him as a result of the
presence of these artworks in his official residence. All this is happening in
this university that boasts of a solid department of fine arts, staffed with
members of SNA without efforts being made to preserve the artworks by them.
Also
disturbing is our fast-declining heritage as a great sculptural nation. If you
recall, our forebears were more celebrated and acclaimed as sculptors than
painters. This is more with particular reference to the situation observable at
the Yaba College of Technology, which happens to be the first creative art
institution in Nigeria. In that school, the 2011/ 2012 graduation class has
only one sculptor as potential graduate being trained by eight to 10 lecturers,
while there are 18 painters being trained by the same number of lecturers. The
situation in YABATECH is not particularly different from what is happening in
other art institutions in Nigeria. What is the Society of Nigerian Artists
doing to arrest this decline in sculptural art practice in Nigeria? The SNA
needs to address this problem, which effect is evident at most galleries in
Nigeria and even at exhibitions organised by the Art Galleries Association of
Nigeria which all feature an overwhelming preponderance of paintings as against
the near absence of sculptural artworks. What is the society of Nigerian
artists doing with respect to addressing the problems affecting the growth and
development of visual art in Nigeria? What is it doing to draw the attention of
the government of Nigeria to some of these observations? There is a need to
restructure the Society of Nigerian Artists to position it as a strong
spokesman and vanguard of protecting the interest of Nigeria artists and the
creative works of our great creative minds.
Making
an impact when it comes to protecting the historical, cultural and artistic
legacy of Nigeria’s heritage will only be successful if all of us commit
ourselves to their protection. As artists, art lovers, collectors and
Nigerians, it is our responsibility to communicate the importance of art
resource to the general public in a way that would invoke pride and passion. It
is our responsibility to create a Nigeria in which such acts of desecrating our
artistic heritage would, in no way be tolerated. In the meantime, we must do
everything to protect our collective artistic creativity which is currently
under great threat.
If
this fight is not led by the Society of Nigerian Artists, The National Gallery
of Art , The Association Of Gallery Owners Of Nigeria and The Visual Art Society
Of Nigeria, then who will lead it? If we do not take a stand now our future
generations will only have us to blame.
This paper was delivered at
the 2012 AGM of The Society of Nigerian Artists, held at The Meridien Hotel in
UYO, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria on the 24th of August 2012 by Prince
(Engr) Yemisi Shyllon
Prince (Engr) Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon is the Chairman/CEO Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art
Foundation (OYASAF).
