The E.C has landed

2009 Caine Prize winner E.C Osondu is in Lagos for a series of readings for his book, Voice of America, a collection of short stories published locally by Farafina. Here he is photographed earlier today by Femi Adebesin-Kuti. Artist/writer Victor Ehikhamenor and I were on hand to join in series of fun photographs with E.C and his friend, Emeka.

The real business starts Friday when Osondu kicks off his book tour with a reading event at The Life House. He will have 2 more readings in Lagos and one in Port Harcourt with Koko Kalango's Rainbow Book Club. Details below.

Friday July 22: Abule Book Club, The Life House, 33 Sinari Daranijo Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. 6pm.
Saturday July 23: Patabah Bookshop, Shoprite Mall, Surulere, Lagos. 3pm.
Sunday July 24: Rainbow Book Club, Le Meridien, Ogeyi Place, Port Harcourt. 4pm.
Saturday July 30: Terra Kulture, Tiamiyu Savage, Victoria Island, Lagos. 3pm.

Photos by Femi Adebesin-Kuti

Ehikhamenor's 'Entrances & Exits' exhibition

Artist Statement by Victor Ehikhamenor on his new solo exhibition 'Entrances & Exits: In Search of Not Forgetting' - opening at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos on Saturday:

Entrances and exits: A personal journey

In December of 2010, I left Lagos for a week to go back to my village, the scenes of my childhood and my ‘primary colours’, with the sole purpose of discovering what has influenced my art over the years. Some things I could pull from memory, but there were many I had forgotten or never really experienced. With a keen eye and a camera, I set to work; and what I discovered about my heritage and ancestral home was shocking to me. Until then, I did not realise that, over the decades of my art practice, I have unconsciously been feeding off of what was always there as part of my everyday life when I was growing up, which I never paid much attention to. The numerous shrine walls in neighbouring villages, the painted mud walls of my grandmothers, my uncles’ decorated rooms and other villagers’ walls were all beaming with different kinds of art. I photographed as many as possible, because it was obvious that many people no longer care about these ‘primitive and pagan’ arts.

With some of the walls and art already gone, and a very few left, I set to work on what remained. Some of the bold use of earth tone colours on walls reminded me of Mark Rothko’s large canvases. The valour with which colours, patterns and designs were engraved or drawn on walls, doors and other surfaces, fueled my drawings with chalks on the bare, dilapidated walls. Because I considered the chalk on wall drawings temporary, I decided to photograph them for posterity; and perhaps in so doing, I could show the world things that may not ordinarily be seen in their natural state.

I thought I would stop at the drawings on walls and doorways. However, I found myself thinking about the history behind the walls and the doors I drew on in the village, and so I decided to extend the experience to my studio in Lagos. People that have come and gone in my life over time through the passageways kept playing in my memory. My grandmothers, my father and many of my uncles that have left, came alive again. The doors I rejuvenated through art, were the same ones they traversed while alive. I began to look at the duality of the doorway, a passageway for entry and exit, life and death, night and day. Life itself is full of doors, whether real or imagined. I am yet to see any human that hasn’t gone through a door. Whatever we do when we enter or exit from any door in life is what shapes our lives as human on earth.

It is also pertinent to say that the works in Entrances and Exits go beyond physical doors; they signify transitions in life. In between the comings and goings, memories are built constantly. Memories of how we move from one phase of life to another, from childhood to adulthood, boy to man, girl to woman, life to death etc. The events that orchestrate these transitions are mystical, not physical and sometimes invisible, yet they manifest as some kind of doors.

All materials used in producing these paintings and drawings are physically cut in the shape of doors, in order to reveal another side of the same work. This is symbolic of the openings and closings that are associated with doors. Birth and death have doorways, be it a woman’s birth canal or the gaping grave on the earth.

Victor Ehikhamenor
Lagos, May 2011

It's been 2 years since Ehikhamenor's first exhibition on return to Nigeria. Here below is a video of my interview with him on Mirrors & Mirages which opened at Terra Kulture in Lagos on May 24, 2009.

• Entrances & Exits: In Search of Not Forgetting is at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos from Saturday May 7 to May 28.

African Time, an exhibition

Victor Ehikhamenor and I are recent returnees into the ever churning vortex that is the metropolis of Lagos. How he manages to stay so prolific as a visual artist, is a neat trick that I as a fiction writer have not mastered. Ehikhamenor's last exhibition, 'Roforofo Fight', held as recently as October, as part of Felabration. Now he's back with another exhibition, this time exploring Nigerians' complicated grasp of time, their invention of 'African Time', which necessitates a perpetual lateness.

African Time opens at 6pm on December 11 and runs till Christmas Day. It's at The Life House, 33 Sinari Daranijo Street, Off Ligali Ayorinde, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Unoma Azuah interview

Unoma Azuah, Molara Wood and Victor Ehikhamenor - photographed May 2009 in Lagos

Here's a picture that would have qualified for a 'While Wordsbody was sleeping' slot... US based writer Unoma Azuah with two of her constituency - myself and Victor Ehikhamenor - both of whom were not long returned from the UK and the US respectively. Azuah was around for the summer last year; it's a year on and she's in Nigeria for the summer again, doing writing workshops up and down. Here's a recently published interview of mine with her.

• Writing as a way of relating to others

Sozaboy @ 40

Victor Ehikhamenor - writer, visual artist and newspaper creative director - celebrated his 40th birthday in Lagos today. Music was jumping and spirits were high, so of course the birthday boy had to do a few jigs.








With Ehikhamenor in the image on the right is another image maker, photographer Kelechi Amadi Obi.

• Photos: MW.

Agary wins the NLNG

11 October: The MUSON Centre, Lagos - Debut novelist, Kaine Agary emerged the winner of this year's NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature for her book, 'Yellow Yellow'.

*
See Victor Ehikhamenor's images from the award night, attended by a slew of dignitaries. 'Dignitary' in the Nigerian sense almost always means the movers and shakers of the political class; and so in this case we had former President of Nigeria's 2nd Republic, Alhaji Shehu Shagari - who has the decency after all these years to look exactly as he did back then, only greyer. Senate President David Mark - who kept a straight face when the comperes of the occasion read out his biography for tediously long minutes, right down to his hobbies - ahead of his speech - as he perfectly expected them to. No one told the Senate President he was coming to a literary award presumably, for he gave the same old speech, about the Senate's deliberations on constitutional reform - not a mention of a book. Senator Chris Anyanwu - who despite being a famed broadcaster and author not to mention a statuesque beauty over 50, might have gone unmentioned - thankfully for her, she had the good sense to have become a politician in the interim; and so in time honoured Nigerian tradition, she got mentioned in full observance of the so called 'protocols'. Ndubuisi Kanu - who didn't like his seat and left within 5 minutes (who do they think I am? he must have asked himself). King of Bonny, Transport Minister Diezani Allison-Madueke (who I might have actually liked to see in the flesh, but who was lost in the throng of dignitaries, Nigeria's once Interim leader (of the oft derided 'Fidihe' government in Yoruba popular lore) Chief Ernest Shonekan.... etcetera etcetera.

A true literary great, octogenarian Gabriel Okara, author of the classic 'The Voice' was in the audience - and went unmentioned. A crime, surely. At least Okara got to have his day when the winner was announced (Agary had been in the running with Jude Dibia, shortlisted for his second novel, 'Unbridled') and the old man, himself a Niger Deltan, got to embrace and do an impromtu lap of honour with Agary, who won for a Niger Delta novel. Some might have noted that she won for a story on the Niger Delta experience (an experience not unconnected with environmental degradation) from an energy company. The rest, quite frankly, is literature.

Kaine Agary won $50,000 - and vowed to visit Cuba before Castro dies. Easy enough, with all that cash.

• Images © Victor Ehikhamenor - more of his photos - here.

Shooting Adesuwa

5 Sept '08: A normal afternoon in a Lagos office block, until Victor Ehikhamenor grabbed his camera and spirited this dark beauty, Adesuwa, to the construction site next door and started to shoot. She, it turned out, was a natural. And MW was on hand to catch the behind-the-camera images, and even lent a hand as pretend stylist.

Conversation with Victor

Was at the the last day of the Art Expo Nigeria, held at the National Museum, Onikan in Lagos on Sunday. It ran from 27th August to the 31st and featured over 700 pieces from about 30 art galleries (members of the Arts Galleries Association of Nigeria - AGAN).

Getting there, I touched an artist who had come ahead of me to the Expo and left his imprint. Victor Ehikhamenor wrote on the white Scrawl Wall on one end of the expo exhibition, to say he was here. So I followed suit, and left my own scribble next to Victor's. A conversation of sorts.

• Image taken by MW at Art Expo Nigeria 2008, Lagos, 31st August 2008
• Click on image for larger view.

New Read

Victor Ehikhamenor's story, Riding Monkey With Pako, is published in the new summer issue of Per Contra.

Deboy is a village boy who begins to yearn for the city after the arrival of the headmaster's son, nicknamed Fedra Gorment. The no-nonsence Pako, Deboy's best friend, is unimpressed by Fedra Gorment's tales of the city. In Pako's company, Deboy takes part in all manners of exciting activities. All goes well, until they decide to ride 'monkey'.

Excerpt
We became suspicious of Fedra Gorment’s city tales when one day he started telling us stories from his books without pictures. Every storybook we had came with pictures. Primary Two Reader had David and Mr. Dauda driving a lorry from Ibadan to Lagos. Primary Three Reader had Mr. Giwa the trader standing in front of his store, and our own Primary Six Reader had the dubious Mr. Ali selling ashes instead of sugar to strangers. So where did Fedra Gorment get his two small books called Eze Goes To School and Chike And The River?

Fedra Gorment spun story after story from the books, claiming that his elder brother in St. John Bosco College, where white men and Indians were teachers, told him these stories. Though we did not believe him, the tales were interesting. That was until the day the albino stepped on a sore by narrating to us the story of a boy whose father was killed by a leopard in a thick forest. The story sounded similar to how a snake killed Pako’s father. From then on, Pako warned me to avoid the headmaster’s son for good.

“Very soon he will tell us he eats rice everyday and plays football with white children,” Pako grabbed my hand and dragged me away from Fedra Gorment’s court.

• Read Riding Monkey With Pako

New Read 2

Here's another new/ish read. Newly published in Farafina volume 13 guest-edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A version of Victor Ehikhamenor's story, 'Passport to Heaven' is available online as earlier published by Eclectica.

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Excerpt

"You greet everyone with a toothy, cauliflower smile. Even your shylock landlord gets a good greeting from you. Your co-tenants in the Face-Me-I-Face-You house know your expression has lightened. They are suspicious. Something is fishy. Christopher is a tight-ass-son-of-a-bitch who does not laugh. Christopher is a yam head who wears the Nigeria misery look of no-petrol or food on his face. Christopher is spokesperson of the downtrodden masses of the earth who curses the Obasanjo administration at any given time. "Maybe he has a new girlfriend," they whisper to each other. You keep smiling. You cannot risk telling them the source of your joy. Someone might come calling in the night with a machine gun, demanding your passport to heaven. You have to keep your secret like an un-hatched egg. Even Fatima, your off-today and on-tomorrow girlfriend, cannot hear this. You will tell her a day before your departure, or maybe not at all. Femi has sworn an oath of silence, and except for the mechanic and panel beater who will contribute to the ticket fund, no one else will know.
The days go by slowly. You call Pius, your friend in Washington, D.C., to tell him the good news. He will be your host till you find your feet in an unknown land. He is happy for you and at the same time cursing the consular officer in Kaduna for the extra burden added to his already debilitating American load. But he will not tell you that. You will see for yourself.

~

Read Passport to Heaven. And subscribe to Farafina.

• Farafina magazine is available by subscription for direct delivery all over the world for $79.99 for 6 issues a year. Email Farafina (subscriptions@farafinamagazine.com) for more information.

Labyrinth of Memory II

Visit Victor Ehikhamenor's website

Events

Ehikhamenor's Labyrinth of Memory

Victor Ehikhamenor 's first exhibition in Nigeria opened today in Lagos.

The show runs until Tuesday 16th January @

Didi Museum

Akin Adesola Street

Victoria Island, Lagos

• Related Post

Kowry Kreations Media …

shell of creativity

Presents

Poetry Potter

Venue: National Library Hall (beside NITEL office)

Opposite Casino Cinema

Alagomeji, Yaba, Lagos.

Date: Every last Saturday of the month (27th January, 2007)

Time: 3 p.m. prompt.

Admission: Free, Free; Free!

Guest Artiste: Dr. Ahmed Yerima

Playwright & Director General: National Theatre & National Troupe of Nigeria.

Highlights: drama: Oníléagbón Troupe, music: Àre, Àwòko, Cornerstone & others.

Dress Code: Endeavour to come in your Native Attire.

R.S.V.P: Aderemi Adegbite 08035149337 /

Ropo Ewenla 08032311574, Lekan Balogun 08027727751

Exhibitions

It's all happening stateside when it comes to visual arts shows, from what I can see on my radar right now...

Above: El Anatsui's exhibition, ASI, opened on November 1st in New York and displays until December 22nd... see info

Left: Beyond the River is an exhibition of artworks by the artist Victor Ehikhamenor. It opens on November 30 @ The Embassy of Grenada, 1701 New Hampshire Ave, NW, Washington DC. The exhibition is on display till December 29. For more information on the artist, visit: Sozaboy.


Right: Look away from the illustration now... or jokes apart, visit this vital show if you're in Brooklyn NY. Ghariokwu Lemi provided the visual images to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's epoch making records, designing 26 of his album covers. It is political art at its most uncompromising and thought-provoking. In this exhibition, Political Cartoons from Nigeria, Lemi headlines a display of his works, as well as others by Comfort Jacobs and Lordwealth Ololade. The show opened on November 10 and is on until December 17. It's @ SOUTHFIRST, 60 N6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.