Chike C. Aniakor
The Community and a Congregation
of Figural Elements
Okechukwu Nwafor
all photos by Chike Aniakor, except where otherwise noted
Chike C. Aniakor (乙. 1934) is one of the great-
est artists and scholars to emerge from the
Art Department of the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka otherwise known as the Nsukka
学校. Educated at the Nigerian College of
艺术, 科学, and Technology (NCAST) 之后
named Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from 1960–1964 and at
Indiana State University from 1973 到 1978, Aniakor sojourned
in the United States as an art historian and artist in different in-
机构, including Southern University in New Orleans, 在哪里
he taught art from 1979 到 1980; at the University of California,
天使们, where he was a research associate and a student of
Roy Sieber in 1984; and the Metropolitan Museum in New York,
where he served as a senior fellow from 1994 到 1995. His eventual
return to the University of Nigeria at various periods in the 1970s,
1980s, 和来自 1995 till his retirement in 2005 contributed to the
conscious search and eventual founding of a compelling artistic
ideology of the Nsukka Art School launched through the creative
idiom of uli experiments in the 1970s and 1980s.
Along with Chuka Amaefuna, Uche Okeke, Obiora Udechukwu,
Ola Oloidi, El Anatsui, 和别的, Aniakor pushed for a particu-
lar intellectual orientation focused on analysis of indigenous Igbo/
African art and incorporation of motifs from these as a basis for
contemporary practice that would eventually influence genera-
tions of artists of the Nsukka Art School. It is unfortunate that no
text has articulated Aniakor’s efforts at crystallizing this intellectual
turn despite the fact that Aniakor taught some of the most vibrant
intellectuals of the Nsukka School such as Obiora Udechukwu,
Okechukwo Nwafor is a Forsyth Postdoctoral Fellow at the History of
Art Department of the University of Michigan, where he taught two courses
in the Winter of 2019. His first book is under production with the University
密歇根出版社. His articles have appeared in many journals, 包括
Postcolonial Studies, African Studies, Nka, Journal of Contemporary
African Arts, Critical Interventions, African Arts, Cultural Critique,
and Fashion Theory, 除其他外. He is also a professor at the Nnamdi
Azikiwe University, Awka, 尼日利亚. charles21007@gmail.com
58 | african arts WINTER 2020 VOL. 53, NO.4
Olu Oguibe, Sylvester Ogbechie, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Krydz
Ikwuemesi, this author, Nnenna Okore, and Ugochukwu Smooth
Nzewi, 除其他外. No studies have been able to critically dis-
cuss or argue Aniakor’s huge scholarly contributions with convinc-
ing endorsement or counter criticisms, or engaged, in precise in-
tellectual terms, the debates Aniakor has raised in his writings, 或者
even reviewed the general formal and textual characteristics of his
huge creative oeuvre. 全面的, this is a disservice to one of the great
intellectuals, artists, and art historians of Nigerian and African art.
在本文中, I take a holistic view of Aniakor’s artistic and
scholarly engagements for the obvious modernistic persuasions
they hold in Nigerian and African art scholarship. I evaluate his
works for their thematic interests and stylistic renditions, 哪个
remain relevant to contemporary Nigerian society and Igbo no-
tions of art and community in particular. His seminal book Igbo
艺术: Community and Cosmos, coauthored with Herbert Cole, 是
still the only significant overview of Igbo art to date (Cole and
Aniakor 1984). His works offer an artistic style and an overarching
intellectual reach that has remained foundational in Igbo studies.
The paintings and drawings offer a traditional approach rather
than the hyperconceptual and there is a tendency to populate the
surface of his picture plane with numerous figures suggestive of his
belief in the congregational, communitarian existence of human-
性, especially in his Igbo region of Nigeria. 再次, 这种方法
suggests a unified, collective struggle against societal forces and
draconian laws imposed by a common enemy, defined in this in-
stance as either a political gladiator or dictator against the masses.
Aniakor’s figural enemy can also be interpreted in terms of cultural
enemies drawn from ethnic interpretations by communities or
cultural groups in Nigeria and elsewhere (For how Nsukka artists
tackled ethnicity, see Ogbechie 2016).
CHIKE ANIAKOR: EARLY LIFE
Aniakor was born in Abatete, Anambra State in Eastern Nigeria
on August 21, 1939. World War II broke out in 1939 while Nigeria
was still under British colonization. Despite the war’s overarching
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1 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Descent of the Falcon (1993)
Line etching on paper; 70 cm x 50 厘米
2 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
The Descent of the Falcon (Falcon Descent on the People) (1992)
Pen, ink and water color on paper; 70 cm x 50 厘米
effect on the African continent, Nigeria witnessed rapid urbaniza-
tion significant enough to alter her economic as well as political
历史. 经过 1945, when the war ended, Aniakor was just six years
老的. 然而, his mother did not find her career as an uli artist
an impediment to nurturing the infant Aniakor through the war
period until he entered primary school in the 1950s. 的确, 一
can infer that Aniakor’s mother, being an uli artist, must have had
an influence on the development of Aniakor’s precocious artis-
tic talent. 之间 1955 和 1959 Aniakor attended New Bethel
Primary School, where his teacher, Emmanuel A.J. Ulasi, encour-
aged him to pursue art as a career. It is important to note here that
Ulasi himself was associated with the K.C. Murray School, 哪个
marked an important genealogy in the discourse of postcolonial
modernism in Nigerian art (see Okeke-Agulu 2016). Ottenberg
(1997: 85) writes that “Under Ulasi’s guidance, with art classes
almost every year, Aniakor created landscapes, still life drawings
and watercolors. During this unusually intensive art training for
his age, and at the time in Nigeria, he determined to make art a
career.” Aniakor himself has noted that during his days at New
Bethel, “oftentimes, I saw that my works were always displayed and
also at one point, they took us to Festival of the Arts in Enugu,
where I won some prizes” (2005: 135).
Aniakor attended the Nigerian College of Arts, 科学, 和
技术, Zaria (NCAST) 从 1960 到 1964. He graduated with
a BA in painting. His period at NCAST coincided with, and placed
him in, a period of great artistic and intellectual ferment around
the time of the Zaria Art Society’s (ZAS) (1958–1962) agitation for
the nativization of art teaching. 然而, while Aniakor’s activities
during this time has not been adequately attended to by scholars,
Aniakor confirms that he attended some of the meetings of the
ZAS and could not gain the confidence of either their set goals or
ideology (Ottenberg 1997). Ottenberg seems to perceive the ZAS
as insular, “self-protective,” and self-serving, making it impossible
for students such as Aniakor to become members. After gradu-
ation he took up a teaching career at the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka in 1970 as an assistant lecturer. 他, along with Uche Okeke
and Chuka Amaefuna, was among the formative staff who injected
a new vigor into the methodology of the Nsukka Art Department
in the 1970s after the Nigerian/Biafran civil war (1967–1970).
Informed by his characteristic quest for creative references de-
rived from the Igbo culture, Aniakor’s scholarship, along with those
of Uche Okeke and others, contributed to the incipient ideological
grounding of the department on uli revivalist experiments. Uli is
the Igbo traditional wall- and body-painting tradition championed
mostly by women in traditional Igbo society. Its materials were de-
rived from plants and earth and used to decorate walls and bodies
of men and women during important ceremonies. Uli designs
were inspired by mundane visual iconographies and other ritual-
istic imageries. Uli eventually became an expressive, experimental
device deployed by educated male pioneer artists of the Nsukka
Art School, among them Aniakor, who reinvented uli aesthetics to
grasp the psychic, intellectual, as well as the spiritual component
of Igbo art and community. 实际上, Aniakor himself has described
uli as, “That linear idiom of artistic expression reinvented from
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of rhythmic lines and in some instances depicting frantic crowds
and restless people engulfed by the looming embrace of a singular
figure. A striking quality of Aniakor’s style rests in the profuse con-
gregation of massive figural elements to either suggest an embat-
tled social landscape or to invoke the Igbo concept of community
and cosmos. 在 1997, Ottenberg argued that “since the Biafran war
[Aniakor] has increasingly been making visual social and political
statements” (1997: 89). 例如, the work titled Descent of the
Falcon (如图. 1) metaphorically represents an emergent beast-prey
relationship between the government and the masses in Nigeria
during the heydays of the military junta—exactly the period when
Aniakor produced this work, 1993.
On June 12, 1993, the military junta of Ibrahim Babangida an-
nulled the supposedly freest and fairest election in Nigeria, bring-
ing the inglorious rascality of the junta to an all-time low. 可以
this now be a valid explanation for Aniakor’s conscious, visual
incongruities in his linear interpretations of the falcon? Aniakor’s
swooping falcon, when scrutinized close-up, surrenders its iden-
tity as mere absurdity, clearly inconsistent with the prowess of the
falcon. The military junta may look like a government but they
always, savagely and relentlessly, swoop upon the hapless masses
of Nigeria as their prey. They lack vision although they claim to
3 Chike Aniakor, (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Our Stories (1988)
Pen, ink, and water color on paper; 70 cm x
50 厘米
4 Chike Aniakor, (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
The Political Oppressor (1988)
Pen and ink; 70 cm x 50 厘米
tradition and now adapted as modernist creative tool for scouring
the inner and outer boundaries of art and life” (2005: 58).
THE NIGERIAN MILITARY REGIME AND A
CONGREGATION OF OPPOSING FIGURES
Aniakor’s works, produced mainly from 1970 到 2000, resonate
between two primary interests: Igbo sense of community and the
socioeconomic predicament engendered by persecution under
Nigerian military regimes. There is need to invoke the thematic
and formalistic attributes of these works in the present, 埃斯佩-
cially since they seem to capture the prevailing ambience of the
Nigerian state at the time. Most of his themes revolve around the
concept of aggregation, visually accentuated by a dynamic move-
ment that achieves a formal balance with a central figural element.
Sometimes a spatial design is interposed with an imposing form
that stands in constant conflict with crowded images, which them-
selves conjure a sense of collective endeavor.
Ottenberg sees Aniakor’s career as divided into two periods: 这
1970s, when he drew heavily on Igbo tales, myths, and ritual, 和
the late 1980s, when the degeneration in Nigeria’s sociopolitical
landscape prompted the creation of “an image of a powerful leader
or leaders, in human forms or metaphorically” (Ottenberg 1997:
89) who had a negative impact on the body politic. 的确, 自从
the 1970s Aniakor’s works have witnessed a gradual progression
from a search for an enduring creative signature rooted in Igbo cos-
mology to a time in his career when his drawings, oils, water colors
are defined by a vertical, linear quality with elongated human fig-
乌雷斯, sometimes punctuated by interwoven textures and patterns
60 | african arts WINTER 2020 VOL. 53, NO.4
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painting students to look at forms beyond conventional painterly
styles. The visits, in addition to Aniakor’s excellent tutelage, 在-
abled many students to articulate their direction during those for-
mative periods as painting majors.
When references are made to the poetic linearity and the at-
tendant inventive spontaneity of lines by artists of the Nsukka
art department, one recalls Aniakor’s experimental dialogue
with the visual and the verbal. A combination of experimental
lyricism interposed with interpenetrating color patches have fea-
tured prominently in most of his paintings and drawings. 他有
a number of poetry collections, which were juxtaposed with de-
scriptive illustrations.
There is no doubt that Aniakor found special beauty and sig-
nificance in the lines and textures of copious things inserted into
familiar experiences. In the Descent of the Falcon there is a subtle
interplay of linear contours around the aerial form of the bird that
achieves an organic unity with the numerous human figures below.
The falcon’s descent is a puzzling presence, difficult to interpret in
relation to the human figures below. 然而, considering that fal-
cons have exceptional visual acuity, several times that of humans,
it is then a visual conundrum that Aniakor interprets the falcon
here as a bird with a seemingly difficult vision, given the manner
in which it stares at the humans below. Falcons are reputed among
the fastest-moving creatures on Earth, so one also wonders why its
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5 Obiora Udechukwu (乙. 1946, Nigerian)
Portrait, The Politician Is Up (1993)
Ink on paper; 40 cm x 30 厘米
照片: Obiora Udechukwu
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possess the greatest visual acuity. They claim knowledge of leader-
ship yet stifle the transition processes to democratic governance. 在
也就是说, the falcon is an apt metaphor to illustrate the vices of
the Nigerian military junta, whose excesses could be likened to a
vast desert landscape where neither vision nor knowledge existed.
Aniakor claims that his social and political works attempt to con-
nect with the suppressed masses of Nigeria while at the same time
deploying Igbo cultural motifs (Ottenberg 1997: 90).
There has always been a tendency in Nigerian art historical
scholarship to cast into insignificance Aniakor’s efforts at spear-
heading the uli experiment at Nsukka. A keen examination of his
singular efforts at Nsukka would suggest that he was among those
who spearheaded a decolonial turn in the curriculum through his
pioneering exertions in uli style. This decolonial turn centered
around a pedagogical approach that appropriated the uli idiom
through what Aniakor (2005) has described as “an art historical re-
construction” derived from local sources. His teachings at Nsukka,
所以, relied more on a combination of ethnography and visual
ideas that derived from Igbo uli. Regarding his teachings at Nsukka
with his pioneer students, Aniakor remarks, “if you look at all the
projects done, they were all reflecting this experience gained from
the field and, 所以, invariably each time we were doing any
studio work we always chose themes on indigenization of artis-
tic expression” (2005: 137). There is a manifestation of his stylistic
legacy, and influence, in the works of some of his early students
such as Obiora Udechukwu, Bons Nwabiani, Paul Igboanugo, 和
Osita Njelita, among others. 实际上, in a more specific example
Aniakor (2005: 138) affirms:
If you want, you can interview Bons Nwabiani and he will show you
the exhibition he held immediately he graduated in 1972 and you
are going to see jigida and all of them. These are the things we used
in the studio practice in Mixed Media Painting. I think I have strong
conviction that the motivation came not only from the intellectual
but also practical level from African art fieldwork and seminars
presented by students.
Few of his students, like Obiora Udechukwu, eventually ex-
tended the poetic significance of uli as initiated by Aniakor and
Uche Okeke. 例如, while Udechukwu’s style further at-
tenuated the spatial interconnectedness with linear shapes,
Aniakor maintains a massive clutter of struggling lines with
空间. While lines have become further thinned and less copious
in Udechukwu’s works, they increasingly grew in multitudinous
expansion in Aniakor’s (for more on Udechukwu’s drawings, 看
Okeke-Agulu 2016; Ene-Orji 2019). Oloidi (2016: 5) notes that
“there is no doubt that Chike Aniakor has trained students, 两个都
in painting and art history, and he joined in advancing the uli art
ideology immediately he came. He also influenced many of his
painting and art history students, particularly from the 1980s.”
之后, in the mid-1990s, Aniakor continued his fieldwork exper-
iment with his painting students, this time to El Anatsui’s studio.
As one of his former students I participated in one of the visits
to Anatsui’s studio. During those visits, which happened at the
inception of most academic semesters, Aniakor advised students
to take sketches of Anatsui’s burnt woods and reconceptualize
them in line with their own formal ideas. Aniakor believed that
Anatsui’s studio, then located at Ibagwa Nsukka, was an inspira-
tional space that could galvanize inert formal ideas and challenge
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VOL. 53, NO. 4 WINTER 2020 african arts | 61
6 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Rhythms of New Life (2001)
Pen, ink and water color on paper; 70 cm x 50 厘米
prices of goods in the larger market econ-
奥米, whereby transportation alone rose
by 50–100%. The result was civil unrest,
especially by students, who went on strike.
The military government was forced to
lower the prices of fuel again, and Nigeria
成为, once more, a route for black-mar-
ket trafficking of petroleum products into
neighboring countries.
Aniakor’s crowded figures are narratives
of collective despair, misery, and depriva-
tion that encapsulate the suffering of the
people under atrocious military decrees
and their attendant aftermath. It is as-
sumed here, in each of the segments, 那
different elemental arrangements prefig-
ure shades of individual or collective ex-
经历. One constant feature in all the
segments is the looming imposition of a
sizeable figure with capricious movement suggestive of irregular
系统, civil confrontation and carnage that engulfed Nigeria from
1988, and eventually, marking a decisive turning point with the
annulment of June 12, 1993 election by the military.
The visual style of Our Stories can also be seen in The Political
Oppressor (如图. 4), also produced in 1988. Here the rapacious es-
sence of the political figure is laid bare. The concreteness of col-
lective social trauma is divested in the very substance of a brutal
figure. What constitutes oppression here is not an all-encompass-
ing amplification of the masses’ disturbing narrative but a meta-
physical reduction of national hazard to the singular form of the
oppressive politician in whose towering form we encounter frag-
ments of individual worlds of the people. Once the Nigerian state
is defined by oppression, Aniakor renders the contrasting inequali-
ties of the citizens’ daily lives with somewhat baroque lines. In such
方式, linearized silhouettes meander inside the gigantic belly
of the oppressor. Where the oppressor is represented as singular,
immovable, voluminous, unperturbed and static, the oppressed
inside its belly are presented as multitudinous, congregating, 和-
settled, precarious, miniaturized, and insignificant. This is often
the case in many of Aniakor’s works that deal with the political:
the crowd often congregates and constitutes the fallen while an op-
pressor is singularized and looms over the multitude.
One wonders why the metaphor of the politician would consti-
tute a dominant visual iconography for not just Aniakor but other
visual artists in Nigeria during the height of military dictatorship.
例如, Obiora Udechukwu dwelled on the concept of the
politician in his 1993 work Portrait, The Politician Is Up (如图. 5).
然而, it is possible that these artists see in the figure of the
politician a reprehensible officeholder who must be visually ap-
propriated to offer a critique of the civil misfortune in Nigeria en-
gendered by the misadventure of the elite. This politician concept
is pushed even further by Udechukwu through the widening of
the mouth and eyes of the figure of the politician in his artwork.
His deliberate decision to leave the mouth agape suggests that the
speed in this work seems attenuated. Its descent, as Aniakor may
建议, seems interrupted by its need to scrutinize the prey un-
derneath. Falcons also kill with their beaks. 这解释了, 也许,
why Aniakor concealed the feet and emphasized the beak. Does
it mean that its descent will scatter the seeming quietude of the
human kingdom beneath its fold?
Ottenberg (1997: 93) has suggested that the falcon flying over-
head is “typical Aniakor, a common metaphor, representing a
government that has the freedom to do what it wants, 而
people are tightly packed together, as if in a container, controlled
by the leader.” Otterberg’s statement is directed on another version
of the Descent of the Falcon produced in 1992 and here titled Falcon
Descent on the People (如图. 2). This seems to herald the second de-
scent of the falcon in Figure 1. This is because the falcon in Figure 2
seems to maintain a meaningful distance from the people beneath,
while the falcon in Figure 1 has almost swooped on the helpless
猎物, two versions highly evocative of the gradual descent to an-
archy in Nigeria from 1992 到 1993, when the draconian military
decree finally descended on the masses. A noticeable difference be-
tween Figures 1 和 2 is the blood on the falcon’s beak in Figure 2.
The blood could have heralded the bloody encounter that followed
the annulment of the June 12, 1993, election in Nigeria, whereby
ethnic violence rocked the city of Lagos and resulted in loss of
lives and property.
Our Stories (如图. 3) is not unconnected with Aniakor’s numer-
ous engagements with the social conditions in Nigeria during
the military era. This work is reminiscent of Aniakor’s 1988 坳-
lections, where crowded figures accompany segmented planes or
where strands of images accumulate to suggest the dispossessed
citizenry of the military junta. By the time Aniakor produced this
工作, Nigeria was already at the height of the dictatorial regime
of Ibrahim Babangida, whose drastic economic policies under the
neoliberal requirements of austerity measures manifested as exis-
tential insecurity for otherwise meaningful livelihoods. The mili-
tary’s 1988 subsidy removal in fuel price occasioned sharp rise in
62 | african arts WINTER 2020 VOL. 53, NO.4
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political figure is loud-mouthed and unable to deliver or that the
promises of the politicians are as deafening as their preposterous
pronouncements and inability to deliver on their promises.
IGBO CONCEPTS OF COMMUNITY IN
ANIAKOR’S WORKS
Aniakor’s sense of community seems to have evolved early
during his academic sojourns in the United States. 之间 1960
和 1970 Aniakor had already come under the influence of Igbo
ethnoaesthetic tradition that was transforming rapidly under the
impact of colonialism. In the immediate postindependence period
(1960–70), such traditions were evolving into vibrant contempo-
rary forms. 全面的, Igbo ritual dance, 音乐, 艺术, and architec-
ture were instrumental in shaping Aniakor’s burgeoning artistic
psyche. Aniakor completed his secondary school education and
taught briefly at Community Secondary School Nnobi in Eastern
尼日利亚, where he taught students the rudiments of art and encour-
aged them to derive inspiration from the traditional repertoire and
other extraneous local factors that would concretize their under-
standing of Igbo community life. Aniakor affirms that before he
came to Nsukka he was already doing the same fieldwork that de-
rived from Igbo culture at Community Secondary School Nnobi.
7 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Ritual of Oblation (1990)
Pen, ink and gouache; 70 cm x 50 厘米
8 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Seasonal Ritual (1990)
Pen, ink, and water color on paper; 70 cm x 50 厘米
He states, “I have samples of works by students based on wall
paintings” (2005: 137).
Aniakor joined the academic staff of the art department at
Nsukka in November 1970. 在 1973 he left Nigeria for Indiana
州立大学, where he obtained an MA in 1974. He came back
to Nigeria for a brief period and then went back after about a year
to study for his doctorate. He eventually wrote a pioneer disser-
tation on Igbo architecture to receive his PhD in art history at
Indiana State University in 1978. Aniakor taught for a brief period
at Southern University, New Orleans, before returning to Nsukka
在 1980. 在 1984 he became a consultant and research associate at
the UCLA, where his research on Igbo arts culminated in the cele-
brated book Igbo Arts, Community and Cosmos (Cole and Aniakor
1984) coauthored with Herbert M. Cole. Aniakor’s numerous aca-
demic experiences help us understand why his scholarship is pred-
icated on this sound footing in Igbo Weltanschauung. His BA thesis
at NCAST was on Igbo door carving, in which he used the vari-
ous images on carved doors to comprehend the deeper religious,
经济的, and political conditions that informed the Igbo life and
communities in the early twentieth century. Igbo Arts extended
this initial study of a singular form of Igbo art into a broader anal-
ysis of Igbo visual culture.
The concept of community and art was, at the time, a central
research device that complicated an understanding of art as an in-
dependent discipline from anthropology (Biebuyck, 1969; Adams,
1989; Drewal, 1990). Aniakor’s study addressed how Igbo art was
defined by the complex modernism of Nigeria in the early twen-
tieth century. In his forward to Igbo Arts, Chinua Achebe decried
the destruction of Igbo masquerades practices in the colonial era
as a dismantling of “an entire eschatology” and the “glue that held
us together” (1984: 十二). Achebe’s reference to masquerades was in
tandem with Aniakor’s own belief in the masquerade as a central
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VOL. 53, NO. 4 WINTER 2020 african arts | 63
While many Nigerian diaspora artists ponder “how the condi-
tion of diasporicity has remapped the global terrain of contem-
porary culture by questioning hegemonic concepts of ethnicity,
nationality, and authenticity, of center and periphery” (Oguibe
1999: 32), Aniakor never allowed his sojourn abroad to affect his
deep grip on his Igbo identity and ethnicity, and thus for him, 这
question of alienation that trailed the works of African artists who
migrated to the West never arose. Perhaps in realization of the fact
that he did not belong to these groups of diaspora Nigerian artists,
having returned to Nsukka after the Howard fellowship, he sus-
tained his curiosity in local creative idioms to advance the idea of
community as a binding force of Igbo society (see Ogbechie 2016
for more on ethnicity, alienation, and identity in art). Aniakor’s
reliance on Igbo cultural forms explains the congregated figures
in many of his artworks. The image of massed crowds constitute
the archetypal visual image of his ourvre for many years: the very
belief in the community life of the Igbo. In this belief system the in-
dividual is not isolated in struggle but belongs to a community and
a congregation of endeavours that is defined by “the demand for
what is described as ‘beneficial reciprocity’—the realization that
no individual is an ‘island’ unto himself ” (Agulanna 2010: 292).
This belief has enabled Aniakor to narrate a community of strug-
gling individuals who share a collective despair under the subjuga-
tion imposed by a singular tyrant. In Aniakor’s terms, the concept
of the “evil few” against the “good masses” suggests the awkward
practice of democracy in Nigeria. In his words, “change is driven
by communal forces.”1
Many Igbo people perceive the Nigerian government as prej-
udiced and designed to disinherit the Igbo community. The pre-
ponderance of oppressors, from a minority ethnic group who
dominate the Nigerian political space to the deprivation of other
majority ethnic groups, is seen by some Igbo as defeating the logic
of good governance, which all should expect as dividend of de-
民主. In Aniakor’s artworks, evil is always represented by the
singular towering figure, while suffering is personified in the hud-
dled masses. This style metaphorically x-rays the prevailing prac-
tice in contemporary Nigerian political space where minorities,
either among the few ruling class or a powerful ethnic minority,
have largely subdued the entire nation.
In a similar rendition, festivals or social celebrations are also a
matter of collective participation, which in Igbo belief systems is a
mark of social existence. 的确, Agulanna (2010) has argued that
for the Igbo, “No individual (or spirit), no matter how strong, 是
self-sufficient.” Uchendu (1965: 11–13) also notes that the notion
of “human interdependence” is a constant theme in Igbo folklore
and proverbs. Kinship bonds and affiliations find appropriate ref-
erence in such sayings as ikwu na ibe (person and community).
有效, ikwu na ibe “refers to the entire community of kinsmen,
孩子们, women and all other relations” (Agulanna 2010). In ear-
lier Igbo societies, ostracism or banishment from one’s commu-
nity was considered one of the greatest punishments, for which, 在
some instances, the ostracized preferred death to such severance
of bonds of kin and community. T.U. Nwala reminds us that “the
being of the community is larger than, and prior to, that of any
of its individual members since the being of the community as a
whole is identical with the being of the total personality of the an-
cestors” (Nwala 1985: 46, in Agulanna 2010).
Aniakor seems to have treasured this notion of communal
9 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Exodus I, The Refugees (1977)
Pen and ink; 70 cm x 50 厘米
element of communitarian sociability in Igbo society. Aniakor’s
book needs to be read in the context of community life in early
twentieth century Igbo society, where the conjunction of art and
community was a driving force, and masquerades were still con-
sidered important aspects of community life. When viewed in the
context of the compelling ideological influence of indigenous cul-
tures on African societies during and after colonization, Aniakor’s
book serves as a historical reference on Igbo cosmology and
concepts of community.
Appeals to the Igbo sense of community have resurfaced in
contemporary Nigerian politics, necessitated by the struggle for
control of power by various ethnic groups who invoke communi-
tarian struggle to advance their demands for tribal unity. Aniakor’s
paintings and poetry were informed by his grounding in Igbo cul-
特雷斯, and he retained these influences even during his sojourn
国外. 例如, 之间 1994 和 1995 he was a research
fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, 但即使
then the drawings he produced there strongly reflected his Igbo
根. 在 1996 Aniakor held a fellowship in oral literature at the
African Studies Centre of Howard University in Washington DC.
Otternberg (1997: 87) argues that “despite his years in the United
状态, the content of his art is firmly rooted in Nigeria.” One may
argue that Aniakor subscribed to a problematic notion of cultural
authenticity that prevented his art from developing in relation to
influences from other sources. 在这方面, while other Nsukka
Art School graduates appropriated a wide range of sources for
their art, ranging from Igbo cultures to other African cultures and
even Chinese calligraphy, Aniakor’s art remains fundamentally in-
formed by Igbo symbolism and imaginaries.
64 | african arts WINTER 2020 VOL. 53, NO.4
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10 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
A Celebration (1990)
Pen and ink on paper; 70 cm x 50 厘米
bonds in his flickering lines and sensuous
textures. 例如, in Rhythms of Life
(如图. 6), a mass of textured lines dominates
other design elements. In this work, 前任-
posing the unsteady grandeur and anxious
flurry of daily life, the restless images are
scrawled with fierce and loving artistry of
a master painter. Rhythms of Life vibrates
with colorful vivacity and a sequence of
tiny units that creates its visual form and
establishes between the flowery curves and
the colorful patches. When viewed in terms
of lines and flat, tiny shapes, the primary
and secondary elements would be easily
integrated as linear textures in the overall
作品. Oloidi (1990: 13) 描述
Aniakor’s composition as constituting
“numerous, painstaking and microscopic
flamy expressions,” which aptly recognizes
the massing of figures and features in Aniakor’s art. Whether in
their depiction of certain nonrepresentational concepts or in the
adept exploration of the plastic possibilities of unconventional
styles, Aniakor’s surfaces remain maelstroms of mass convoluted
movements, of colors and tones that suggest a special attachment
to his Igbo sense of community. 的确, Aniakor displays evident
ingenuity in combining linear inscriptions with representation of
massed forms to achieve a rhythm to the endless crowds in his
drawings and paintings. 例如, in Ritual of Oblation (如图. 7)
the center seems to drive the surrounding images, much as it does
in Seasonal Ritual (如图. 8). In fact the center, for Aniakor, plays a
critical role in the life of every society, much as it plays a crucial
role in his own creativity. His contention that the center unifies
the various key components that make up the community2 enables
the center to enjoy that consistent significance seen in most of his
作品. This idea about the center in the Igbo community also re-
flects Aniakor’s position in artworks that bear political messages.
In this case the center drives the surrounding movements either
towards mass mobilization against a common enemy or towards
an uncoordinated movement that is driven by contingencies.
In Igbo society oblation is performed to invoke the gods and
to seek their intercession and blessings, which ensures mainte-
nance of social order. In Ritual of Oblation and Seasonal Ritual, 这
images at the center are the forces that either subordinate or are
subordinated by the massing of numerous forces. It suggests that
sacrifices are not just personal actions, they are also communal
活动. Even in cases where sacrifices are seen as an individual
活动, the belief in the numerous unseen forces for which the
sacrifices are made also allows for a link between the individual
and the community. Ritual of Oblation and Seasonal Ritual also
point to the role of ancestors for their influence on the living, 甚至
as they depend “on the living to feed them with sacrifices” (Shelton
1972). This explains the connecting strands in Seasonal Ritual.
Aniakor affirms that “ancestors in African cosmology remain in-
numerable and thus constitute uncountable figures in his works.”
While the surrounding figures could also stand for the numerous
good things such as “many children and wives”3 which a sacrifice is
expected to bring in the Igbo cosmology, they may also suggest the
numerous devotees that have come to pay homage.
The importance and impact of the center is therefore very vis-
ible in Seasonal Ritual. The work depicts the interconnectedness
of the human, natural, and metaphysical worlds. In earlier times,
when most Igbo communities were dependent on agriculture,
rituals were observed at the beginning of the planting season to
pay homage to the gods of the land in supplication for a bounti-
ful harvest. Such rituals are usually accompanied by big celebra-
系统蒸发散. Chief priests make sacrifices to the gods while, in certain
情况, many communities stage masquerades and other
performances. Even as Igbo societies change in the contempo-
rary era, seasonal rituals are still an important link between Igbos
in urban areas and their communities of origin. Each year, 大的
numbers of Igbo return to their hometowns to celebrate import-
ant community rituals.
THE CROWD: A SYMBOL OF SUBJUGATION,
CELEBRATION, AND RESISTANCE
Aniakor’s depiction of the forced displacement of the Igbo during
the Nigerian-Biafran war of 1967–1970 is a most powerful depic-
tions of the impact of civil strife, aptly captured in the work Exodus
我, The Refugees (如图. 9). In this artwork, panic-stricken human fig-
ures with huge pieces of luggage on their heads move en masse
away from a troubled zone. The work creates a powerful illusion of
movement: the vitality of lines and shapes, the sprouting contours
produced by the negative spaces, the rhythmic grace of anxious
humanity all indicate Aniakor’s deep understanding of movement
as an essential element in the design-structure of war images. 它
is important to mention here that one of Aniakor’s potent tools is
repetitive linear contours: such accents create underlying rhyth-
mic action that translates to an optical illusion of writhing bodies
reminiscent of El Greco’s Agony in the Garden or Pablo Picasso’s
VOL. 53, NO. 4 WINTER 2020 african arts | 65
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Aniakor’s contribution to the crystallization of the uli experiment
at Nsukka has not yet been adequately theorized or recognized.
When he arrived at Nsukka in November 1970, Aniakor remarks:
I introduced African art to the curriculum and my own idea then
was that I wanted to take the students back to the field. In fact the
courses we taught in African art were based on fieldwork. What we
did was that we went out with the students and I remembered that I
went to Agulu with Obiora Udechukwu at one point. I followed Paul
Igboanugo to Oraifite. We stayed for two days at Oraifite (2005: 136).
He recollects that his teaching methodology involved interview-
ing the artists and he further advised the students to go to their
villages and conduct interviews, assemble data and then present
papers on their field findings. 这, according to Aniakor, enabled
a “more theoretical attitude to culture and its impact, in teaching
and learning in the university system and by that people began to
return to their roots” (2005: 136). This focus on indigenous cul-
ture provided him and his students with a productive space for
deeper inquiry in Igbo concepts of community as a creative theme
that was framed through an exploration of mixed media. 的确,
mixed media has materialized as Aniakor’s creative forte of pen
and ink medium. He acknowledges further: “I continued to work
with pen and ink in order to energise my works with the usual
essays of lines for multiple viewpoints, creative spontaneity and
directness of execution” (Aniakor 1986: 8).
We need to understand the role of space in Aniakor’s art and cre-
ative enterprise. While space is the vital tool of the Igbo uli adepts,
Aniakor’s is legendary for how he deploys space in his drawings
and paintings. 例如, in Our Stories (如图. 6) a succession of
negative spaces emerge from the tapestries of interweaving lines
and shapes. These spaces are interwoven into the edges and cen-
ters of his pictorial forms. One can call them negative shapes since
they are the areas that separate one positive image from another on
the pictorial plane. It is necessary to mention here that in ordinary
life humans see the shapes of things but do not notice the gaps
and intervals between things as definite shapes at all. But Aniakor
reminds us in this painting of a basic characteristic of drawing in
一般的: that the shapes of negative spaces are as important to the
artistic composition as the shapes of positive images. Far from
being regarded by the artist as areas of nonaligned terrain or sub-
jective surplus gaps in the pattern—as it were a pictorial no-man’s-
land—these negative shapes are used in this work as active tools in
the general design and within each section of the pictures they are
used to enhance the action and character of the very images whose
delineations have defined them.
That a negative shape can exist as an expressive area in its own
right may help us appreciate the work titled A Celebration (如图. 10).
By itself it is a stirring, exuberant agglomeration of creepy figures.
Negative shapes run continuously across the entire picture plane
with cascading contours and descending curves thus initiating a
substantial flow with the vertical edge of the picture plane. 这
figures maintain equal levels of significance and dominating pres-
ence and their expressive action are never in doubt. The theme of
celebration conjures the typical ritualized living of contemporary
African communities. In the drawing, several figures raise their
hands in jubilation. The same elements seen in this work (its mass-
ing of figures and reliance on the interplay between positive and
negative shapes) exemplify Igbo systems of communal sociability
11 Chike Aniakor (乙. 1934, Nigerian)
Diviner (1997)
Pen and ink on paper; 70 cm x 50 厘米
Horrors of War. Perhaps this understanding suggests that Aniakor
was struck by the victimhood and horrendous memories of the
Nigeria/Biafra civil war, with its devastating impact on Igbo peo-
ples and villages. Memories of the war subsequently define a large
part of his work in the decade between 1970, when the war ended,
和 1980. One may argue that his recollection of the travails of war
brings an organic vitality and pathos to his work.
The refugee is constituted by kinetic movement and hazards
of every kind, as is evident in the spate of refugee deaths in the
current global migration across the Mediterranean into Europe.
Aniakor’s art visualizes the calamitous movement of refugees in
一般的, but specifically in relation to the refugee crisis spiked by
the civil war and its effects on Igbo peoples. We can read this from
the arrangements of lines and shapes in his artworks, especially in
Exodus I, The Refugees. All the narrative incidents of the Biafran
war are combined in this singular composition: the plight of chil-
德伦, 女性, 和老人; the anguish, pathos, and anxiety of
the displaced populace; the total blockade on the Biafran enclave
that led to terrible diseases such as kwashiorkor and the failure of
the international community to provide aid. The wider global dis-
course of refugee intersects with Exodus I, The Refugees and could
aptly fit into what Agamben (1998) refers to as Homo Sacer and
Malkki (1995: 499) describes as “a specific social category and legal
problem of global dimensions.”
66 | african arts WINTER 2020 VOL. 53, NO.4
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that Aniakor has consistently referenced in his oeuvre. 在本质上,
there are hardly any single, independent figures in Aniakor’s work;
rather his figures are groups of massed figures that could be seen
as “subjects of a major plot” (Ikwuemesi 1992: 45). The peopling
of his pictorial surface is also an indication of the movement and
connectivity that define societal life in Igboland, in which case his
“human figures are like narrative characters, like a visual theater
in which each player depends on the others” (Ottenberg 1997: 96).
The Igbo concept of “Igwebuike” (there is strength in crowds) 还
underscores this interpretation: “The inter-connectedness of the
individual and the community in Igboland where the extended
family system serves as the framework on which the community is
built” (Ufearoh 2010: 100).
Aniakor’s interconnected masses speak to Igbo ontology “where
humans are not isolated beings but beings in constant dialogue
with other human beings including the gods, 祖先, 和别的
visible and invisible beings” (Ufearoh 2010:101). 也许, the link
has visually impacted Aniakor’s works such that either in mas-
querading, ritual performance, or dance, the concept of congre-
gation is strongly reinforced. Aniakor himself has observed that
“when you place a figure in it on its own it becomes static, it doesn’t
move” (cited in Ottenberg 1997: 94). When people celebrate they
exude cheerfulness, suggesting why the facial contours in this
work reflect cheery souls. Aniakor seems to believe that lines and
shapes are as important in the representation of emotion as the
symbolic significance of the theme of “celebration.” He once noted
that his works “are characterised … by a symbolic and expressive
language and defined by firm boundaries which activate interior
surfaces for the interplay of mythopoeic forces of plastic experi-
ence” (Aniakor 1986: 8).
有可能的, following Aniakor’s submission, that symbolic im-
agery plays a key role in his creativity, and yet he does not seem
to confuse us with his personal symbology. This is because Owen
(1970: 18) has noted that “we can appreciate any great painting
without recourse to a dictionary of symbolic codes.” One may
submit that Aniakor’s style is a deep voyage of intellectual curious-
性; one that confronts the viewer with a great visual force. 甚至
the incongruous linear compositions that unfold as a shoal of sil-
houettes between one figure and another are activated not only by
their conscious association with the dynamic, physical action of
movement itself (just like that of striving streams of roots and bi-
furcating nerves), but by their psychological association with an
energy evocative of festivals.
结论
Aniakor’s lines are sharp, 强的, and assertive, much as his
words are. Indeed his words and lines have a touch of the magical
that promises a depth of insight into his life as a great artist and ac-
ademic. Most of his artworks border on depicting humanity with
connecting strands of movement strongly evocative of communal-
ism in the Igbo context. In this essay I highlight the gap that exists
in studies of the Nsukka School and the uli revivalist movement in
general that has failed to recognise his epochal place in Nigerian
art history. Through his numerous exploits, ranging from champi-
oning the intellectual aspect of Nigerian art history to the corpus
of his masterly creative output, from his fantastic mentoring and
tutelage in art institutions of Nigeria to his erudite dialogues at aca-
demic forums, one may say that Aniakor is a revolutionary scholar,
teacher and artist par excellence who deserves serious scholarly
调查. The few of his artworks described here hint at his
vast creative repertoire in an effort toward greater understanding
of Aniakor’s creativity, which speaks directly to the Igbo sense of
community and to the fraught sociopolitical history of Nigeria.
Notes
1 Chike Aniakor, interview with author, 2013.
2 Chike Aniakor, interview with author, 2018.
3 Chike Aniakor, interview with author, 2018.
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Adams, Monni. 1989. “African Visual Arts from an Art
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Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power
and Bare Lives. Standford, CA: Standford University
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Agulanna, Christopher. 2010. “Community and Human
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282–298.
Aniakor, Chike. 2005. Reflective Essays on Art and Art
历史. Enugu: The Pan African Circle of Artists Press.
Aniakor, Chike. 1986. “Introduction.” AKA 86. 一个
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Enugu: AKA Circle of Exhibiting Artists.
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