Pushing steadily for Global appreciation, OYASAF's mission

 By Tajudeen Sowole
(First published in The Guardian, Lagos Nigeria
 Friday, 26 August 2011 00:00)

Angyeman (right) and Shyllon in Lagos PHOTO: ARIYO OGUNTIMEHIN

Supporting foreign art scholars’ research on Nigerian art – a private initiative of Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation (OYASAF) – is expanding the scope of interest in the country’s art as more foreigners embrace the project.

  THROUGH scholarship, OYASAF, in the last two years, has hosted eight scholars from the U.S., Europe and South Africa. With this project, Yemisi Shyllon, the engineer-founder is sowing the seeds of deep appreciation of Nigerian Art.
Shyllon, who is reputed to have largest private collections in the country, stressed that the project is a major creative force in the study, collection, preservation and exhibition of Nigerian art. The OYASAF Graduate Fellowship is awarded, yearly to two non-Nigerian applicants from the disciplines of Art History and Cultural Anthropology.
For each of the scholars, however, the areas of interest differ as these cut across native and contemporary contents as well as the value of Nigerian art as tools in globalization. For example, Erica Angyeman, the eighth of these visitors, who just had an interactive session with artists in Lagos researched on cosmopolitanism and the relevance of art, particularly within the global context.
When the first beneficiary, William Ian Bourland of the University of Chicago, U.S. came to Nigeria, Shyllon stated that the fellowship was intended to give the visitors opportunity to conduct research in Nigeria, especially around the OYASAF collection. Preference, he stressed “is given to young or mid-career scholars who have not recently had the opportunity to spend time in Nigeria.”
Angyeman, who, during her stay in Lagos few weeks ago was exposed to several works as well as artists’ essays, warned that art should not be restricted to the status of mouthpiece for the society. She urged artists to be futuristic by being visionary.
A student at Columbia University in New York, pursuing a graduate degree in Modern Art History, Critical and Curatorial Studies, she was the second beneficiary of the 2011 OYASAF fellowship scholar. She was exposed to the OYASAF vast collections and visited more than 20 Nigerian artists and collectors.  She noted that over the past three decades, contemporary African art has earned increasing attention beyond the continent.
In performance artist, Jelili Atiku’s 2009 work, Agbo Rago; Peju Alatise’s sculptural collage, One Side of the Story; Ogbemi Heymann’s Royal Suite; Bruce Onobrakpeya’s series entitled, Nomadic Masquerade; Olu Amoda’s sculpture, Wuraola, Angyeman saw the boldness of artists in using art to evoke strong dialogue.
Earlier, the seventh visitor, Kathleen Coates, a South African, after her research noted that the line between Nigerian art and others from Africa, particularly, South Africa, was becoming less visible. Coates conducts the Art Education Programme at the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town.
In Lagos, Coates met several artists, either at studios or during exhibitions. She explained that meeting with Onobrakpeya at his studio / residence, she saw in the master printmaker, an artist who has evidence of resilient experimentation with materials and techniques. The print master, Coates stated, “summarised his source of inspiration as gleaning from the past whilst learning from young people in the present. He expressed amazement at how the ‘primitives’ were ahead of their time.”
In the work of another veteran and master, David Dale, whose studio is located in Ajuwon, a border town between Ogun and Lagos State, Coates saw an artist “creating a tropical oasis within the concrete jungle of his Lagosian suburb.”

Master print maker, Bruce Onobrakpeya (left), visiting South African art scholar, Kathleen Coates, founder of OYASAF Yemisi Shyllon in Lagos. PHOTO: ARIYO OGUNTIMEHIN

 Globalisation content part of the OYASAF Fellowship award was more pronounced in the research of Rachel Ama Assa Engmann who did a study on Nigerian Islamic talisman and writing systems with particular reference to Insibidi motif in art. Her exposure was expected to contribute to dissertation for a PhD programme in Stanford University U.S. on the topic, Nineteenth Century Islamic Talisman in Asante, Ghana.
Engmann said her PhD project places material practice at the center of historical and contemporary analysis of West African Islam, by way of archaeological ethnography and textual analysis. Islamic talisman, she explained, “is seen as part of a living tradition, which is a local social phenomenon where artifacts containing texts, and manuscripts circulated in the past and at present.”
For University of Vienna, Austria’s Andrea Bauer, art and the Yoruba traditional institution was her interest. During her research, last year, she visited Obas’ palaces and priests of indigenous Yoruba religions in Lagos and Oyo states.
Bauer, the second beneficiary of the scheme works in the Museum of Anthropology in Vienna and in a community based organization called “Edirisa” in Uganda.
First South African on the OYASAF initiative, Ms. Nomusa Makhubu explored the link between Nigerian art and popular culture.
The scholar who is an art teacher from the Department of Fine Art, Rhodes University, had argued that the methodology of what is currently referred to as The Arts makes commonality of these genres unavoidable.
William Ian Bourland of the University of Chicago; Janine Sytsma, University of Wisconsin and Carmen De Michele of Ludwigs-Maximilians University of Munich were the other beneficiaries of the OYASAF Research Fellowships awards.
One of these earlier scholars, Sytsma, seems to have proven, subconsciously, that, indeed, the OYASAF initiative is already yielding results. She returned to Nigeria after her first visit. In fact, she seemed to have been more involved in Nigerian art, beyond the OYASAF scope: she was the curator of Return of Our Mother, a joint art exhibition of Tola Wewe and Moyo Okediji organised by African Artists’ Foundation (AAF). Sytsma is currently in Nigeria, conducting research on the ongoing surge in the local art market.
She said her interest in Return of Our Mother has a link to Onaism, on which her doctoral research in Nigeria was based. “I’ve known Okediji since 2003, when I joined the faculty at the University of Colorado at Denver (where he was Associate Professor of African Art History), and I’ve been working closely with Wewe since meeting him in Nigeria in 2009.”
OYASAF is a non-profit organisation established in 2007 to promote the appreciation and study of Nigerian arts and artists, making the collection available to museums, educational institutions and scholars.  OYASAF’s goal is to be a hub of the Nigerian art world, a point of contact for scholars, critics, artists and art enthusiasts.