ANNOTATING ART'S H ISTORI ES 28

h
28

, -::rer tts story

is delivered as a metanarrative
infrequent insertion of the artwork of
:'=. : splintered, fragmented series of ancient
Benin," notwithstanding that these
_ '::oosed histories, the idea of migration, Nigerians in
diaspora were nevertheless each in puisuit
:-= .
= and diaspora has girded both art historical of
different and varied artistÌc
: - :: -nts of 2Oth_century art and Aoals.. The migration of
architecture objects, and with them often the parallelÃigration
. - : -useological displays exploring
the same of identity and subjectivity, has traversed
:=' :C, This has been especiallyso where such tÀe
often only vaguely policed, relatively permeable
: _::Jnts have been inclusive, that
is, where they borders of national Ìdentities that weie
- , at least themselves
= = implied that it is possible to tell more
in flux, that were, in other words,
:- =^ :be art history of North America simultaneously
and of what in formation and contested.6
, :s 3nce called
Western Europe. These recent
Focused and sustained narratives that
. -: ^ stories generally deploy
an interest in the ncorporatesueh de-centred and u nsta
- ;'ation of artists, sometimes over more than a seem, however,
i
ble f ux,
I

: - J e generation, during the turmoil to reveal an interesting structural

of emerging characteristic of the geography
-:,strialism and of consolidated through which
colonialism modernity unfolded. As we have op"*O
:' :arly post-coloniality). Recent narratives up our
art historical enquiries to the migrant
.=:'r to confirm these framings when, within identities
a and objects that, for instance, seeure
. ^ g e publication or research project, they the
have, migrant, displaced or diasporic artist
':' rstance, addressed pablo picasso in his or
,', 'redo Lam, or lndian artists Amrita "nJ her estrangement or exile (but sometimes
also
Sher_Gil, comfortable integration or assimilation),
S.. ed Haider Raza and
Maqbool Fida Husain both
- :rerr global itineraries, the nature of the imagined maps on
or Nigerian artist whictr we
::r Enwonwu during his sojourn have tracked such movements as wellas
the
in England., intellectual
- org with this, we have tracked the mávements trajectories topologies through which these
: ' :.vo of their accompaniments. have been understood take an
First are the unexpected form. They are not the graphs
-:vements of the actual objects, and by this of
chaos we
-ean both the work of the artists and the objects 'maps'do might have anticipated, since these
I

:: 'ryhich their artworks refer or by which they not present the apparenily hapl-razard
spatial dispersals and movements
inspired. whose
"egrations Secondly, we have tracked the progressively more frequent
- of the identity and subjectivity of the changes
would challenge our ability to percLive
in direction
their
=aists themselves. The narrative of lndian possible logic. Instead, such
-odern art constructed by yashodhara Dalmiar maps take on a form
that is conservative, and architectural,.
:culd, if taken to an Africanist context, soÁeihing
easily Àe whose geometry, often linear ano
^,lagined for the different but no less trigonoÀãlric,
modern is easily apprehended.n
-ilieux Ben Enwonu, Uzo Egonu or Rotimi
of
:ani-Kayode. The recently complicated historiography
Where lndian artists in diaspora had . of a
long 2Oth-century modernity in art
r their modernity referred to aspects <in"th".ãnr"
of traditional of a counterpart to
-'1indu and Buddhist the more familiar notion of the
imagery, we notice in some 'long 18th century,) that chooses
cf the work of the Nigerian_born to be attentive
artists the not to the mutual presences both of yinka
ShoniLare

::::**;'al$
 UNMAPPED TRAJECTORIES
30

and of Andy Warhol, of pablo picasso and of have to recognise that the flow of ideas (and of
-.3 :
Wosene Wosreff would, perhaps invariably, objects, identities and bodies) moved in multiple 3J='.sì
follow the trajectories of practitioners - a good
number of whom are darker,o- and would entail
directions simultaneously, and that a mapping of r r= 3,3C
such itineraries on a global scale would, indeed, '?ú-:^€ l
plotting their movement from places whose resemble a diagram of chaos. The visual character r€r S]--Ê:
populations are largely constituted by darker of such a map of chaos would probably appear Eãc-E
skinned people in upstream migrations along highly disorganised as it is not subject to the
lines that radiate towards destinations whose
-Cr-f':.
strictures of geometry and of symmetrical Êt{= <g
populations are largely of lighter skinned people. architecture with its cores and peripheries and É
^f-Ê?
-
Such'maps'would, in significant ways, be about its movements from suspect margins to assumed --€.€
non-white artists headed into the West. centres. lndeed, for one of the instances I will -ê.€ - "
I hope you have noticed that my emphasis
explore in this chapter, the iqportant point is
implicates a production of centrality, that is, of to initiate a critique of the spaìrel idea of centre f-i=5-,3.:
movement towards a core. lts logic is centrifugal and periphery itself, for such a critique not only ^-g
-fr-
and centripetal. What I am getting at is the indicates that our idea of 'flow, must be regarded - d- c.='
rhetoric we deploy in constructing a global as shorthand for the reality of movement that rg=:-'8.
art history of the modern era in which, almost was frequently spasmodic and multidirectional
-:: tr-ì€:
unwittingly, our thinking, research interests and but also that the unrecognised practitioners of -.r,-
curatorial choices have preferred - perhaps modernity in art and architecture in the African
because of the anxiety brought to the fore by site were as equally engaged by the rhetorics of
==r:;:-
de-centring as a scholarly possibility - to anchor
themselves on the heavy stability of that world
technology, or as afflicted by spatial anxlety and --*^
:L::-s_ ê r
the desire for its expression, as were their peers
with which we were already familiar.
To take the idea of diaspora as one instance
in the West.
':" e.:-r- t
--2.
(albeit quite minor for the art that I will pursue An Altered View Close Up
-
:-êri:3. g,iÍ
here): many art historians and critics have The way in which the apparent disarray of 'chaos,
produced adm rably critical, su itably com p lex, l-acc,-. :
i
is altered by close-up viewing is exemplified in rrr€Ë S-C-
and noteworthy narratives that nevertheless the lay of a small cultural space at the turn of the
prefer not to see the danger, even the erro[ of
19th century in West Africa, specifically the lower
=rc Ssso-
underpinning diaspora by notions of originarity.', -frocl-1, :r
Niger Delta region from port Harcourt upriver S-r= S-.:
*-cs= :aft
lnstead, such accounts have gone for diaspora to Onicha in the period between lg95 and ,l919.
as a movement outwards (even if phased), from The alignr:nents and dispersals of future-seeking r <: ã< v:,
a specific and comparailvely stable homeland artists and architects in this location call to mind 3cf€--s ên
to one of the western metropolitan destinations, some of the logics of western modernity as we í::,€.
A-ê:
as if the related transactional movements of have come to call it, even if the two modernities _
ideas would correspond even remotely to such
:r= o,êc(sr
that is the European and the African - are not !-€.€Õ. ,
centrif uga I trajectories.', direct outcomes of one another as is more usually ^.x< i^r:-
It seems to me that a more productive thought. By approaching this historical location
exploration of the 2Oth century would ultimately
rêgË ot-
with alternative methods of mapping in mind, -r< ^^r^:r
 .)\J

of -_. 3 m isto ask whether we need to change What if the radical idea of such an African
:iple : -' :cnstruction of the history of modernity sculptor, like Duchamp's moreover, also came
9'of
- :s global dimension (by which I mean the later to a rather unexpected currency in the sense
t.]
-:,,' : ng of modernity in such a way that the that what once seemed a transgression soon was
lcter " =.. ssue of simultaneity becomes more visible, seen as normal artistic procedure?
-=: :cing the idea of the singular birth of
)ar
- ::ernity in a few western locations, from Architecture
- :^ like a virus it spread slowly but surely The history of modern architecture in the West
ìd :: ::.ler more distant places). often presents Le Corbusier and Mies van der
lrned
-re recent ancestors of the kind of argument Rohe as its most visible exponents.r4 Both are
-: . e in mind have been produced, if minimally, depicted as highly engaged with technology,'s
;
- .:-clarship on painting.r3 I will now explore the and with its rhetorical deployment.'u Thus their
.re : -:ì: on of modern global historicity through work can be spoken oi today, in the critical
ìl\/ : :ther arenas (architecture and sculpture) language more typically reserved for art.
rded :- i: ^ave not been paid as much attention in the However, from the late 196Os onwards, critical
It :=-::Jre. I will challenge you with the question histories of rpodernity began to agree that the
nal, .. :: .';hetherwe now need to change our ideas that pËced these two practitioners at
: : -.:.uction of the history of modernity if we the forefront of architectural innovation were
^f
:an :::':'.cm the premise that for every avant-garde explored to a sìgnlficant degree by others (some
sof '':^ :ect of the West such as Adolf Loos it turns preceding them, others their contemporaries)
ônd : -::-ere was, for instance, a comparable whose buildings experimented with many of
ers .- ,:-east Nigerian such as James Onwudinjo; the same concepts, although the visual and
-: - :. ery Marcel Duchamp, a Nwauzu Oka, just stylistic character of the work of these other
:: - :^e arena of painting we have come to see architects often masked their radicality for
-- -=:'a, every Paul Gauguin there was an Aina many contemporary viewers. Although now fully
naos' I -::: u, and that for every African artist in the integrated into the histories, Adolf Loos (Austrian
in =.: s,rch as Uzo Egonu (an artist from Onicha architect of artist Tristan Tzara's house, but also
'the : lssomari who worked his career mainly
'- -::r) in the dreamer of a house for Josephine Baker)
cwer -- there was a European artìst in the South was one such figure, although in more popular
3r : - -- :s Suzanne Wenger (a Viennese artist contexts he is remembered mostly, and unfairly,
)'19
- ::: career evolved at Oshogbo in Nigeria). for his 19O8 essay'Ornament and crime', which
king - -.: -s \4arcel Duchamp discovered his found, has become reduced to the de-contextualised
rind .: :::s and questioned the very category'art', utterance,'ornament is crime'.''
- 'child' of the forge,
9/e =: ':bere was an African When a history of 2Oth-century architecture
ties - :' = : :cksmith who, in ways never before in its global dimension comes to be written in
)t - -; ^ed, was similarly questioning what could such a way as to include Africa, I expect that it will
sualìy :=-: 'l'art (in terms of representations and include the work of James Onwudinjo, born in the
tion - rl=s cf a traditional deity, for instance) in lgbo-speaking town of Asaba in about 1878. lt will
- . ::
d -caratively non-industrialised locale? likely place Onwudinjo in a similar historiographic
UNMAPPED TRAJECTORIES 32

q
h

. li:,ffi

'ff}*+
r
- *.*r
*riEr
.-ff,â
ffii
:tr#, ï Ì*'rçÌr
trJi.*., -

3-srfi -+---"" -- 4*
!*\ F; -F
 - - :: unrike Loos' intensery
r 'rthough activity in the Eurcpean country
!rnese mirreu, onwudinl0 wrll house) to the
middle wrrite exptoãhs
tl_.," uses of the ,middle,
.''l -l ì:J:ilÌ.*,:1;ff:ï::,,ïl - mars,ns rn tr, s.ens", onwudinlo's
rt-ç
distin-ive
to
-" ,:'ai coionial governnrents. The
architecture rs aimost a spatial
crpher of the
- contestatron of Etrr:pean
-' ocs anci o-nwudinjo would
seem
metropolitanrsm, anci
. = .- â,.ì e beca use thous h,
' - - :r110's architecture mrght appear
"d.;;;";r'u,ïi?,:ï::ï :i:ì
Also unrque
iff :ï::[ :ï: :l:Í: l"u
' ' - : r:'l to Loos'if one adopted a populrst p.,otogruph
iu u of the house.
which in itrurilrrouËs evidence for
.. :.";iliii:,15i:ï:ff iïS ;;;;; roie or tecnnoioeicaJ-,Áeto,ic
architectural practice
rhe cruciar
ror onwudinjo s
r - ::rrians of 2oth_celtr;;:'; To access tn , rnotoi,".-
";
: _ .^i,"."ver
-r-ge
heard orJames onwudinlo,
structure he burrt in the rower
ï: il:,ïfi:ï.ìru,,",..li,.ii::?rii,,:ï:ï"
--: 'I lown of okrika which is perhaps archrtecture of ok;;;. auroo"u,-,
coÍonral cullure
'-cortant exampre markecl its oirference and
'' of hÌs work Howeve( in this rancJsc"o" Áu *"
.uop,rr". superiority
'
= -''-derstands the very fact of superÌmposrtion
his vagr,rery neoclassiál Ár,,oinn, procrucec
of
' = :rd the nature of his architecture'
then brck ancr ,portrs JJinant pitched r red
t-='ì,'J:t"l;:[,ï[[t century
. the 2oth
àntrast anci in oóposition to both roofs. By
architecrures,
- proposeci an architectur"
-,Jrnlo's
builcJing, a large domestic orr"iÀiorJ"o
:- _= , as commiss .onwudinlo
oned bya wearth, ,;.,,ïïïï1ï:"?J[i;,x.[ï::ï:]:ru;5i:.:,
lL'rce trader'
- I have alreadv urr'Jncr
' .' ltr
which the house was completely
àoooruo to the historic or nationararchitectures
. -:r i-ì'r'' an ornamental scheme However, of coronral o.*".rJ. l"ã .ou"ring
the house with a
roof that i,
' ' --cst important about the house and "rr".liíuü rËì thr, n-.urk,ng a contrast
'' ,à oo,n inoig"nor,
bv actuarrv clven the
*áïoion,ut architecture.
r. ìljlJn"i ï:ï]:Lt:llf
'"'u o-u'unúri,À otthe house,s rustic
r,:i1rxi;ix:tïtï::ïï:r,,,,ru^|l{=!j;.ï#i:tii::g:i::;,ï':"""1ï'
. - :alion of spaces. ancl
an
. ,. ristributions we *.,,0
i

rf"i::i:i#l!,ï:ffi;:ffi:,ï:,]:ï:,ï1y,,
"?l?,.,i";;ú;"
::'abie European ur.r.itu.iJ".
Ëv drvicli,.,.
(concrete insteacl of
the coloniat ruropea'

i -
-: sconnectins *s own,.óáì,nì.-ií;:,:r"' :::ïfï:ï::::ïi.:',il:i3.ï'"ï-:,ii"",,,",,
I not only rejects the vast grand
rrS€
and ui.rur perception, .,À.à,,r"
=' entially impressive crrculatory centre same reinforced
.o"n.r"t" surface is simultaneously hard
'':uropeancountryhouseslabel as'hallway' and yet
' ; :uch like' but it also moves
the peripherv
Jiexpecteotvmalleabreas
atrompe-r.erlmedium.
- -
= rarginal sDaces of servants and their
*re phoiogr"oÀ buirding further reveals
r,iooen something urrit ,.," "riÃ"
pro.-"rru, that generated

----
UN N4APPED TRAJECTORI ES 34

Architectural plans of the

Adinembo House

en y'crandoh 32'x to' Q Fen y'erot,dqh

/ 2'r to'

,d/"'"
/t"n. r'l:t,'^,,,r.
t 5 '' 6' r tt:le'

\ .ì \\
li
ilv'
f t",.
15-'5'a tt:lÍ- t5'-i'x rt:6' !
ìJ

".,,2;rlr

y'
"1,, a n d a h

G,<ountD FLooR,
 :- : -,lding's ultimate appearance moreoveí
= ln effect a series of mirrored reflections
: - :: n contrast to the extensive decoration seen
-
- : =-. the drawings for the house indicated
- -.- ^g of thissubsequentornamental
profusion.
: - ,:: g.sp6y here was more than merely
a design
- : --e urgent scratches on the photograph,s
-
- - -: -. suggest that its framing of the house,s
:. . -^.rarked surfaces generated debates
:;:, , :3r architect and client during the ongoing
, - -. -'-ction of the building. The outcome was
-' ' :'= marking of the house,s
= entire surface,
: - : ::,.aps this aspect of ornamentation can be
: r -- --i -n ironic Aesture towards traditional body period in which Adolf Loos,
- -..- s-: on and body painting.
: -: ^]uch more than this procedural use of
: - : :: ;,aphy as a technique for imagining
: : - -:::-tre in progress, is the way in which this
: - ::: ;'aph also seems to have been used to
-'- --: :^: ouilding as a particular
klnd of portrait
: -: :- -: : became the building,s task, by its
, ..: :: on. to live up to. Very briefly put, the
--,
- ;':ch made it possible to measure the
- - - f r progress against the work of memory in reality stalled the widespread implementation
. . :-:iitionally achieved by a particular kind of of modern architecture in both North America
-:. : _
- :=::': =^cestry - theNduen fogbaraorso_called
screen',"a distant variant of which was
-: - . ril at Okrika - that was itself the product,
- = ..-! future-seeking one atthat, of
-
- : - ;.aphic vrsron. Schola rs of Nduen
rvvv,,,vJvsrr fogbara his building raises, theref ore,is can a history of
= - cther words, understood that the ,three
-'=. :gainst a screen'iconography too was a
- _ --:'ì nventlon inspired by photographic
: : :-- :Jre, and that it replaced a more symbolic
=: '=:entation constituted by a hanging white
:^ :: the bottom of which were placed specific
: : =::s signifying ancestry and lineage. The house
=^ - ì'ìs in part to be an architectural image of
--
: : - - cture that was ltself an image of portrait
: - :::graphy Nigerian style
on imaging, the building itself intends, it can be
claimed, to be as if a photograph - that seeing the
house invokes the chain of reflected associations
that produces the structure's own .development,
as a stable and still recognisable object. This is
precisely the kind of technologrcal rhetoric, often
involving photography and photographic vision,
with which modern western architecture actively
engaged. lwould ar9ue, however, especially
given that this in sifu exploration occurred some
time between1924 and ,l926 (that is, in the same
Frank Lloyd Wright
and Le Corbusier were exploring their own
architectural imaginations of the future), that in
Okrika, James Onwudinjo had moved beyond the
goals of these European architects. He deploys
familiar modernist tactics (familiar to scholars of
2Oth-century architectural modernism in Europe
and No+th America), but does so in a way both
more consciously critical of the fledgling state
and without succumbing to the utopianism that
and Europe for at least a further decade.
Onwudinjo is, especially if one were to insert
Okrika history within a global frame, at the cutting
edge of modern imagination. The critical question
modernity, speakÌng globally, include a narrative
such as thÌs one, and how?
Sculpture
My second example is one I have addressed in
a previous publication.,. While working with
the colonial photographic archive, I had been
struck by a particular object said to have been
once located in the town of Oka (also Awka),
northwest from Okrika. Approximately 130 miles
 UN IVAPPED TRAJECTORIES 36

Archival photograph of
shrine dedicated to the sun
god Anyanwu, Oka (Awka),
Nigeria, c.1913

(2O9 kilometres) from the coast, Oka is certainly

an inland location, or part of the 'interior' during
the colonial era of the 189Os, in comparison to
the coastal, and perhaps more cosmopolitan,
location of Okrika.'s
The object at Oka was described in its earliest
photographic caption as an altar dedicated to
Anyanwu. Once the most important deity of the
pantheon in the Oka area (for being the primary
route of dialogue with Chukwu, or God,6),
Anyanwu, as concept, was also significantly
abstracted and ethereal. lts symbolic manifestation
was understood as light itsell as it was the bright
white orb imagined as light's producing eye.,'
A subject of a more generalised and public
veneration (in contrast to the restricted, almost
private, remit of assemblies such as the 'screen'
mentioned earlier), what struck me about this
photograph was how unusual this particular
image of Anyanwu is, as compared to other
familiar images of the deity and its altars.
Typically, Anyanwu, or at least the altar at
which the deity is propitiated, is always located
outside, in the open, where sunlight may wash
over it and over the gifts offered by petitioners.
Not for this deity the secrecy or cool shade of the
sacred grove. Anyanwu was always conceived in
a form that was vaguely suggestive of a mound
and had once come in two major kinds: it was
either a clay structure, or it was a structure built
up from vegetal material;'?" in any case it was
made from elements close to the earth and the
constituent parts of such 'natural' materials each
resonated with additional meaning.rn
Altars to Anyanwu were therefore at the
heart of a religious milieu (and its set of practices)
and were typically judged to be ancient.
Surrounding these practices, socially, were all *
kinds of organisation that can be regarded as

h
37

ì-_-qË{1ì,_í,*

\+ t\
 UNMAPPED TRAJECTORIES
having been once at the core of Oka-l9bo
identity. Anyanwu thus operated in cultural
arenas more likely to be resistant to rapid change
and transformation than other forms of local
cultural practice. Unlike the ever-changing
competitive oracles of which Oka had its fair
share, Anyanwu altars were the last place one
would have expected to encounter artistic
experimentation and the possibility of new
expressive forms for representing deity.
Notwithstanding the material history that
underlies the transformation, from the initial
invention by one particular sculptor of an altar
assembled from bottles to the spread of
identifiable versions of this new idea throughout
the region for a brief moment in time, the fact is,
nevertheless, that someone imagined the
physical focus of the shrine in an unprecedented
way. The assembly of glass bottles - obviously
industrial and mass-produced - was even more
estranged from its locale by virtue of the fact
that its constitutive units were only available via
the exchanges of trade with foreigners (often
indirectly through itinerant traders). Assembling
gleaming, green Dutch gin and schnapps bottles,
drained of their contents (9in had been the
preferred ancestor libational liquor for at least
2OO years), as a kind of installation appropriate
to representing Anyanwu was in many ways a
brilliant modernist artistic invention, as the bottles
replicate the colour of all things vegetal in
reference to'nature'as the most important
source of fertility.'o
The way in which the bottles are arranged,
with their necks radiating outward, connotes
fertility and nourishment by evoking the
replications of the mammarian or testicular
plenitude that is more familiar from Hittite and
ancient Roman images of the goddess Artemis.
&
38
The bottles, placed at a slight slope, are arranged
in circles of slowly diminishing radii that give
them the appearance of a clay mound. Moreover,
in the often-bright sunlight of the tropics, the
assembly of glass bottles would have shimmered:
such scintillating and dazzling qualities are indeed
highly apt as visual metaphors for the animation
of light in the personified being of a deity.
Perhaps more remarkable is that this radically
different representation of Anyanwu works its
replacement at the heart of an Ìnstitution that
we might have imagined to be unwelcoming to
newfangled notions of experiment and innovation.
The import and gravity of this transformation
become clearer when we put forward a speculative
hypothesis and try to imagine a western avant-
garde artist being commissioned to design a
votive altar complete with its crucified Christ,
for an existing Catholic church in'19O5. At Oka,
not only did thel/sk of deploying subversive art
within an established social institution come to
be actualised, but the continued risk-taking ::.' :
also spread. At Ieast three other altar installers
borrowed the idea and erected Anyanwu
altars based on the one recorded in the archival
photograph. We may speculate that this
tendency unfolded because in the settings of -J''C,rSÊ
their own subsequent commissioning the artists
influenced by the pioneer at Oka were also able
to persuade local audiences that this new object
was in its own way an appropriate image for the
deity. Moreover it is highly probable that such
artists also persuaded their patrons that the new
Anyanwu actually did work (in other words that
offerings proffered there in sacrifice led to an
outcome hoped for by devotees). Pursuing this
speculative hypothesis a bit further to reconstruct
the transformation of the public imagination,
reception and politics that made such innovation
39
3 cssible, I would suggest that such developments
culd not have occurred if this society's artists
.'.
: C not also propose and produce new ways
:' thinking ômon9 significant sectors of the
: :oulation. ln otherwords, the ability of Oka
.', sts to seek out a future-imagining vision of the
,. :.id was not unlike the social and intellectual
. : cns accompanying sculptural modernity in
,-: West, replete with initial rejections, slow
- -:eptance, penultimate enthusiasm and finally
'=. Cual incorporation (even if only partial) by
t : : ety at large as the radicality of an innovative
:=: not only loses its aura, but later fades
-:: cblivion.
-he historical dynamic at Oka may even
' . : been more radical since, during the l9lOs,
: . ^ard to imagine an avant-garde installation
- :^e manner of Duchamp's large double-paned
--= Brlde Strippecl Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
'
:'a-23) being absorbed into a contemporary
= -'cpean institution to the extent that a stained
; -ss window for a church would have taken on
,- = stylistic and logical qualities of Duchamp's
- - , assifiable object.3' Within their own contexts,
: ì:ems that Africans were sometimes more
, rg than Europeans to be modern.
3onclusion
: s .onic then that, in the late 2Oth and early
-'.: centuries, we still resist viewing the non-
: -'cpean worlds through the significance of
. -:. objects as the Anyanwu installation made
:' : cttles. This is surely an outcome of the fact
'- l: no one at the time would have thought to
: ect them for European museums, but also
= :ause ephemeral structures typically exist only
:re form of photographs. lt may be that such
^:tographic evidence of global modernity palls
=,,t to the fictions that continue to define African
art in this period as'traditional'; especially when
such mythologies are reinforced by the apparent
facticity of the ubiquitous masks and ancestor
figures that populate the African sections of
contemporary museums of art, as they also do
museums of ethnography.
As an example of the surprising form this
resistance may take, I recall a personal experience
in 1998 involving an exchange I had with French
curator Jean-Hubert Martin, whose 1989 Magr'ciens
de la Terre exhibition had received accolades as
a conceptually progressive intervention that
opened new posslbilities for regarding art and
its history outside the western narrative... At issue
in l998 was the Lyon Biennale of 2OOO in whose
planning Martin was then involved, and for which
he sought from me references and a photographic
source for the image of Anyanwu.3. r suggested
that the Oka Anyanwu should have an actual
physicqlpresence in the exhibition and that this
could be easily achieved by commissioning a
replica. Martin did not seem to find that possibility
attractive,s' perhaps on account of the issues of
authenticity that a replica would inevitably raise.
My argument, in response, that Duchamp's
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
has been exhibited as a replica in museums from
Berlin to New York and that the original survives
only as a photograph, did not win the day..s
Martin's response, rn resisting the Anyanwu
reinstallation, is not so distant from the reactions
of those he might be critical ol because it
forecloses the full historical significance of such
objects. Even his uneasiness with the idea of
utilising a replica to represent the historical truth
of a modern Africa at the turn of the lgth century
(9iven the dearth of surviving objects of this kind)
ignores that the factual explanation for this
museological lack is that it is the outcome of the
UNMAPPED TRAJECTORIES
history of collecting by others. More ironic, of
course, is the fact that the object at issue itself
eschews such fetishisation of origin. ln its way,
the gin bottle Anyanwu too proposes new
conceptualisations of the relationship between
diaspora and art.
By way of conclusion, I suggest that the
movement of objects, or of ideas about objects,
images and representations both within and from
some African locations, actively desecrates the
boundaries to which art historical narration is
still beholden (and within which it confines its
thinking). Such art and architecture raises doubts
about our accepted narratives of the modern in
the 2Oth century, particularly in relation to the
intractable flows framing such accounts in terms
only of a movement to the metropole. Despite
the overarching images through which our art
histories map such movements, and in spite of
the now canonical exhibition strategies that have
claimed (with rather troubling effect) to define
African art and architecture of the early 2Oth
century precisely by excluding such examples,
all manner of African artists in Africa - including
those with no direct connection to European
artistic controversies and pedagogies - were as
much involved with representational strategies
of modernity as were their peers in Europe..u
They were, in other words, as attentive to
experimentation, to technological poetics and to
exploring new possibilities for artistic expression
as they were to the traditionalist focus on the
formal, significational and cultural importance
of producing masks and ancestor figures.
The trajectories of the transformationsI
have followed have an interesting implication if
viewed over longer periods than the decades that
enclose them directly. The ideas that underwrite
the Anyanwu altar and the house at Okrika held
T
40
sway only for a time. They were shortly replaced
by more conservative approaches to art and
architecture in colonial Nigeria, and it was
precisely their difference or'strangeness' as
compared to other photographs of objects from
the colonialera that first stirred my own interest.
The innovative trajectories exemplified by the
building and sculpture I have examined here
were only taken up again in their locales about
half a century later, and by artists and architects
(by now professionalised) who approached
their work with an almost completely altered
subjectivity.3'The flows of modern thinking here
have, in other words, been quite spasmodic
when viewed from our present, and perhaps this
also marks them even more clearly as modern.
More important, howeve[ is that such movements
may not always have been simply about migration,
exile or estrangement into the western metropole.
Artists in locations such as Oka and Okrika
navigated and operated within their own currents,
eddies and dangerous rapids. Furthermore,
every such location represents larger universes
of 'modern' action whose artistic achievements
are still wanting for scholarly narration.
 :_. i:-ï : . - : -.- :::^ thediasporÌcimpulsesof the
-*f",ii* :.-. ::.-,= . ackârtistsseeking refugein Europe)
itr'-'r: *,r . -l -.::: abstraction(kick-startedbythe
1*,;-n--,: :- :. s:sfrom NaziGermany).Accountsof
t'c- Ì":.Ír - - - --' -a- :. ndìan art also involve comparable
s
.= r :'a ^sactions(t he motor of the colonial
#ffi:l+ *- :: -:.: j s: rìg of equivalent exhibitions ìnvolving
- Bronze Head,1987.
ilt:: ::'
:-'* -::- BothWays:Art
-=-L: ri *' , : --:-:= -'':,.2úm.2OO3);Looking
-=-,, -;ricatn Diaspora(LaurieAnn Farrell,
ü-r*-'- -- --' _:- :a. NewYork,2OO4);Transformingthe
c- -.-,,' - -* :.- --: :- and CaríbbeanArtists in Britain,
- ::,- - =' ::=:^ Cü tural Center, New York and other
-:,-*-* -= l= -: ,'.^:techapel ArtGallery,London, 1995);
--- :-i- :^. :1.'ìasheed Araeen, Hayward Gallery,
lfn"::
: 115
=,
: ' --:: --:-I :ôlttaSher-Gil,NewDelhi: National
..:e -'" : _::" :-: 1989; Elzaf4iles,Lifelineoutof Africa:
rq* .: . i=_, : - :ne Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait
- tt>, =
=
: MaterÌal Culture, and Popular lmagìnatìon ìn Late Victorìan
- :: - :.e l4lest, London: Kala Pregs,1995;
J'SES . - :: : . oìcasso and the Span6h Tradìtìon
\ - ^tê s\ - : -- .: " , ^ ,/ersity Press,1996; Nkiru Nzegwu
Flr - - :_ - -'-. .'the AfrÌcan World,1,2,2OOO,
.-':-. - :-=- ..,.,...,e e.com; LoweryStokesSims,Wìfredo
:r- : - r -. -::-^êïional Avant-Garde, 1923-1982, Auslin,
- - :,r: :.. :' ì<as Press, 2OO2; A6oka VãjapeyÌ,Seven.
;,- -- - : :- :.'tanadhan, Akhilesh, Sujata, Seema, Manish
. hierarchy and authority as inevitably tied, in reality and
: -Í- -:--: :='. ìâv Kumar,2OO3; SylvesterOgbechle,Ben
j-, : - - --:'/z<rng of an African Modernlsf, Rochester,
- - :-: :,. :'ìochester Press, forthcoming,2OOS.
.i:-: l:- : _^ ^c anandWestAfricanartÌstsof the2Oth
:'.: 'ì both the mostaccomplished and the
j -r: :- - :':-:se constructions of the modern, one still
a : :- :;: :-=:-ematicimportanceofsomeÍdeaof
- :-È-: = :^e.of personsorofìdeas, inphenomena
-": - : ,-: - l.âtionanddisplacementtoartists'aesthetic
:: ::: :-: :^:.interpretatíonsbycritics.
I :- - : : - :': )a)mia, Makìng of Modern lndian Art
-'- :- _r'=:j . es. Oxford: Oxford Uníversity Press, 2OOl;
ir - : : -
=-: la mia and Salima Hashmi, Memory Metaphof
Mutations: The Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2OOZ
4. Ben Enwonwu, Chiefs ât Oba's lOth Anniversary, c.1942/43,
Harmon Foundation Archives, reproduced in Sylvester
Ogbechie, PhD dissertãtion, Northwestern University, 2OOO,
567 : Uzo Egonu, African Masks, 1963; Rotimi Fani-Kayode,
5. lf Enwonwu was in search of a wider arena for
representing the culturâl hìstory of Onitsha lgbo, whìle Egonu
brìefly flirted with a kind of nostalgia, Fani-Kayode's glancing
reference (especially as Benín is the universe of the Yoruba lfa
to which some of the work refers) is more focused in fact on
the politics of the body, specifìcally the black gay body, in the
space of late modern British photographic representation.
See Sylvester Ogbechie, ibid.,214-15; Olu Oguibe, op. cit.,51
and 54; Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 'Traces of Ecstasy',Ten.8,28.
1992,36-43; Kobena Mercer,'Mortal Coil: Eros and Diaspora
in the Photographs of Rotim Fani-Kayode', in Carol Squiers
ed., Over Exposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography.
New York: New Press, 1999,183-210.
6. In stating this, I refer not only to transformation of identity
in the places from which such artists may hêve come, but also
to the fact that identity in the imperial homeland itself was
barely more stable for her established citizens. See, for
of instance, Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa; Museums,
and Edwardìan England, New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1994.
7. For instance Salah Hassan and lftikhar Dadi, Unpacking
Europe: Towards a Critìcal Readìng, Museum Boijmans Vân
Beuningen, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2OO1.
8. My reference is to Dennis Holller's critìcalaccount of
George Bataille's writing, in particular where the lêtter's
subversive narrative of history understands the fact of social
metaphorically, to architecture's spectacular, non-panoptic
representation (and later imposition) of societal order and
control (including the production, as social superego, of our
Ìndivldualised psychologies). See Hollier, Agansf
Architecture: The Wrìtings of Georges Batatlle,trans.
Betsy Wing, CambrÌdge, MA: MIT Press,1989.
9. lt seems to me that there are two possibìlities for
describing such movement and its effects. One might be
based on a mechanical model that imagines actors, even
as they move, as nodes occupying particular locations êt
specific tìmes (in geometry, such description involves
measurable lines and angles and the trìgonometric
methods of their representation); the other is spectrà1,
 UNMAPPED TRAJECTORIES
something derived from the representations of quantum
mechanics, and assumes its actors are capable of occupying
several locatìons simultaneously, or at least assumes that
our reconstructions never completely locate the indivÌdual
continually in time and through space. To the degree one
can, in this other system, specify the actual location of an
actor in time, this is a probabilistic'calculation'that cannot
assert certainty. Of course our art historical instinct would
tend to reject a juxtaposition of historical reality with a pure
science, but I have been tempted by Arthur Miller towards
its possible relevance for sorting our historiographies (or at
least our scriptural representations in art historical writing).
See Arthur l. Míller, Aesthetlcs, RepresentatÌon and Creativity
in Art and Science', Leona rd o, 28, 3,1995,185-92.
10. By invoking darkness here, I am referring to more than
merely skin colour, to denote the darkness of hair or of eyes
or even of perception of a subject's culture by others whose
self-constructedness as'whlte' (and empowered) we have
only more recently come to acknowledge, In this sense, all
four artists to whom I refer illustratively are'dark'.
11. Any ìdea of dlaspora thât is anchored in an origÌn is by
nature already centred. The best examples may appear
easy targets today, but must of course be understood in the
context of their authors' attempts to grapple with rapldly
transforming worlds that needed some epistemological
fixing - at least ìnìtially. Nìcholas l.lirzoeff ed., Diaspora and
Vìsual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews, London
/
and New York: Routledge,2OOO; Moyo Okediji, 'TransatlantÉ
Renaissance', chapter 6 in Moyosore Okediji,African
Renarssance. New Forms, Old lmages in Yoruba Art, Boulder,
Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 2O02; Laurie Ann
Farrell ed., Looking Both Ways; Art of the Contemporary
African Diaspora, New York: Museum for African Art, and
Gent: Snoeck, 2OO3. Jean-Loup Amselle brilliantly identlfies
and portrays the error of assuming a certain stabilíty for
nationality or ethnicity (as it happens in his case also in a
largely Afrícan arena) through his plotting of the historical
movements of Africans on the continent. The section on
the Fula (or Fulani) peoples is especially admirable for its
challenges to the idea of diaspora as necessarily based
on movement out from a singular identifiable original
homeland, notwithstanding the claims of hìstorical subjects.
See Jean-Loup Amselle, Mesfr2o Logìcs: Anthropotogy
of ldentìty ìn Afrìca and Elsewhere, trans. Claudia Royal,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,1998 (paris, France:
Payot,199O).
&
42
12. Before migration, artists are already subject to a
circulation of ideas from afar. Furthermore, even though
Amselle plotted histories over vaster periods than so far can
be claimed by the histories of modernity, he does suggest
that even a diaspora of supposedly marked bodies is no
more reliable - for being culturally identifiable in their places
of ultimate destination - than is a diaspora of ideas based on
an orìginary place of invention.
'13.
Ola Oloidì, 'Defender of African Creativity: Aina Onabolu, a-
Pioneer of Western Art in West Africa', Africana Research
Bu lletin (F reetown, Síerra Leone),17, 2, 21-49; Ola Oloidi,
Art and Colonialism in Nigerìa', in Clémentine Delisse and
Jane Havell eds, Seyen Stoíes about Modern Art in Afríca,
París and New York: Flammarion,1995; Olu Oguibe, Uzo
Egonu: An African Artist ìn the Wesf, London: Kala Press,
1995; Everlyn Nicodemus,'Bourdieu out of Europe', in
Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor eds, Reading the
Contemporaryr: African Art From Theory to the Marketplace,
London: lniva and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1999,74-82
see especially 81 and 82; and Nkiru Nzegwu,'lntroduction:
Contemporary Nigerian Art', in Nkìru Nzegwu ed.,
Contemporary Textu res: M ultìd i mensionalìty i n Nigerran Art,
Bingampton: ISSA, 1999, 8-11.
14. For instance, the 1961 Columbia University symposium
on modern architecture made them both literally central to
the event, surrounding a focus on them with ân interest in
two others - i.e. German émigre Walter Gropius who in the
United States bêcame even more the teacher and theorlst
than he was when he lived in Germâny, and American Frank
Lloyd Wright whose work is often seen as idiosyncratic
(see Four Great Makers of Modern Architecture: Gropius,
Le Corbusìe6 Mies van der Rohe, Wright. The verbatim record
of a symposìum held at the Schoolof Architecture, Columbia
University, March-May,1961, New York: De Capo Press, 1970).
A more recent index of the iconic status of these two
architects next to others of their era is Richard Padovan,
Towards Universality: Le Corbusiet Mìes and De Sfil London
and New York: Routledge,2OO2.
15. Le Corbusier is seen as having attained a kind of spatial
freedom encased in a lyrical use of concrete, resulting in
experiences that rival the archÌtecture of gothic, clêssical
and neoclassical buildings. Mies van der Rohe was a kÌnd
of opposite, working in glass and steel, beholden at least
rhetorically to regularity, sleekness, simplicity, the carefully
crafted line and the virtually seamless juncture.
16. ln other words, with making architecture articulate,
represent and even play with the opportunities and
dilemmas offered by new technologies.
 Ll

- l+- -- 322and1966therewasnothingsignificant of travelling artists often abroad. See Nancy Neaher, Awka
: -.: - -+: - - _lcs. ndicating his near slippage into obscurìty Who Travel: ltlnerant f4etalsmiths of Southern Nigeria', África.
-' --:'::: - ^ s'rrorkwas revíved afterthel9S3exhibition Journa I of the I nternatìona I Africa n I nstìtute, 49, 4,1979,
^ l= - '-' .,. - .h an important catalogue monograph 352-66. See also her Bronzes ofsouthern Nigeria and lgbo
, -i : , -, _:t I etnch Worbs, Barabara Volkmann ând metalsm ithing tradrtlons, PhD dissertation, Stanford University,
) . --' "-=- := = :adatz, Adolf Loos, 1870-1933: Raumplan, 1976, Ann Arbor, Ml: University Microfilms International,1979.
: --
- - _--::.:, Austellungder Akademie der Künste, 26. Emefie Metuh,'The Supreme God in lgbo Life and
:-- - -=--::emÌe, 1983. Worship', Journal of Religion ìn Africa,5,1,1973, 5 and 11.
E -, - - -,:. Crnamentandcrime'.The'crime'of the 2T.Anyawnu may be translated literally as'eye of the sun',
t.. : i - . =.:: Ìed,forLoos,totheEuropeanwhosecivility although,Anyanwu (when used simply to mean the sun)
:"-- - :- :rat more be expected of him than of the may be translated as'the undying'. Thus Anywanu may imply
i:.:: - :-==.^
.. .n t ve of Loos'essay). Loos'full meaning is
-: the eye of the eternally living, the eye of the sun ês God.
.^ :-',- -- : :- _, w th a recall of theessay'sstatementthat See Metuh, ibid., B for its connection to things white.
1" : , :':-: s:andard of a people, the more lavish its 28. Metuh, ibid., 6. Although the clay altars with which Metuh
* :-=-:: l.'ìament und Verbrechen'[19O8] ('Ornament
engages honour delties with other names that broadly refer
.' : :' -= -^g shtrans.1913),Trotzdem (Nevertheless), to Chukwu (or God), he argues persuasively that those altars
: I - . - .., :'<ed wìth a more recent English translation in and their deities are what in Oka were instead the complex of
. :- ----:: .,ogramsand Manifestoeson2Oth Century mediational altars to Anynanwu.
-. a-
-':.- -=-:-'= :.ans. Jane O. Newman and John H, Smith, 29. Clay and soilevoke the additional deity Ala, or Ani, the
-:-:- :;. !'A MIT Press,197O,19-24. Earth lvlother and consort to other deitìes (Metuh, ibid., 9);
E - ' - =. - - :: cefore my essay of a few years ago in the vegetal material evokes farmìng, agriculture and nature,
:"-- - - _:,. :.:.itecture and the Visual Arts; see lkem Stanley although one specific element of nature rhat always
- : : I -':::^ing the membrane: photography, sculpture,
- appeared in the mounds (and interestingly reappeared in
: - : -; ^ early twentieth-century southeastern Nigeria', the 197Os and'8Os) were young palm fronds, known as ornu,
:'-- - :=^ er and Christy Anderson eds, in Oka, and these have the additional meaning of symbolising
--= : - : i- Vol. 2: Architecture and the Visual Arts both sacredness in general and fertility in particular.
: -- -ce. - -^: cism to the Twenty-first Century, Alderghof. 3O. For the processes that brought gìn to such locations
. - . :- : 3J. "ìgton, VT. USA: Ashgate.2OO2, l55. as Oka, see Walter Ofonagoro, Trade and lmperidism ìn
, : .-: :ast because Onwudinjo'scareeras a buìlder Southern Nìgerìa:1881-1929, New York, London and Lagos:
-:l :: :oogee in the 19'lOs,2Os, and 3Os - the period in Nok Press,1979,95-97
- - -:^ -e Corbusier and Adolf Loos too were producing 31.For Bachelors, Duchamp of course worked with glass
- - ì: :. ginêl architecture. and lead, and so my reference to this artÌst is intentional for
--c a : - : .'.. ,Õ or idzon, varlant transcriptions of the label its obvious connection to stained glass windows.
':ro) : ,- -:-:3st Nigerian language group that adjoins (to the 32. Jeremy Lewison described Magr'cêns as '[...] one of
-- ,:::<ers of lgbo and Edo. the most thought-provoking of the decade because it
I : - ' . :::a ed exploration of this plan, see Okoye,2OO2, demonstrates the shallowness of our knowledge of art and
l-loì - -- :-.âlso lkem StanleyOkoye,Hrdeous Architecture, our arrogant occidental êttitud es' (The Burlìngton Magazìne,
-- :*- = - 3r llAcademic Publishers, forthcoming,2OOS. 131, 1031 August 1989, 587).
- -' :thurLeonardC96et19O6l), The LowerNiger 33. MartÍn had heard my paper presented at the
='
:- r r: -- 33s. London: Frank Cass (Macmillan,'1906); Nigel 'Repercussions of Modernism' symposium (13 Februôry 1997)
l,- =, - :,=heads of the Dead: Ka laba rì Ancestra I Screens, organised by Africanists and anthropologists of the Free
:.: - -::3'ì. DC: Smlthsonian Institutíon Press,'1988; and Univeristy, at the Haus der Kukturen der Welt, Berlin. ln my
,-, = iJ32.op.cit. paper, I had shown an image of Anyanwu, t4artin had also
:r . =- S:anley Okoye,'Tribe and Art Hislory', The Art read the article I had published earlier in The Art Bulletin,
i- =. - lecember1996,61O-i5. in which I had used the Anyanwu altar as illustratlon.
:5 --= ::ation of cosmopolitan life shìftsthrough hìstory,so 34. lt was unclear whether this was from the perspective
-: - 3^ earlier period Okrika would have been a backwater of ideas, or whether the Biennale's budget precluded the
:- .- l. : rhat wasatthe heart of a highlyconnected network possibility of such commissions.
 UNMAPPED TRAJECTORIES 44 t=

35. Martin had just been appointed Director ât Lyon.

We had talked about the possibility of including Anyanwu in
the 5th Biennale'Partage d'Exotismes' (Sharing Exoticisms).
Martin saw the practice of exoticism as a key part of all art
production, art and culture being already hybridised. Lyon
offered westerners a view of their culture as subjectible to
exoticisation by others, exposing the unstable ground of the
idea of purity. The Anyanwu assembly revealed, by its
absence from historical narratives of sculpture in early 2Oth-
century southern Nigeria, the constructedness of 'purity'.
The Biennale's theme, as I understood it, was in part an
exposure of such historiographic occultatíon. Moreover,
the Anyanwu assembly could be viewed as an early example
of African artists exoticising things European. lt seemed a
perfect candidate for Lyon.
36. The same likely holds for some non-African artists who
came to reside there too, although this other cohort has not
been my concern here.
37. Ìhe fathers of both Bên Enwownu and Uche Okeke, and
in Okeke's case his mother too, were traditional artists in their
own right even though these parents also worked as wage
earners. We can therefore point to instances in which modern
metropolitan African artists êmerged from a familial or other
apprentice-based context led by practitioners whose careers
unfolded within a more tradítional cosmopolitanism -
'cosmopolitan'only by way of crossíng African linguistic or
ethnic spheres. Nevertheless, how an artist Iike Enwonwu
thought, imagined, constructed and projected himself as
artist was acutely different from how even the pro-modern
blacksmith from Oka would have.