GEORGE OSODI'S NIGERIAN MONARCHS: UNITY IN SUPREMACY

George Osodi. HRM Solomon Akenzua, Oba Erediauwa of Benin Kingdom. (2012)

George Osodi’s Nigerian Monarchs is a long-term body of work starting from 2012 up until 2017 in which Osodi aimed to display a unity in the diversity of Nigerian Monarchs. But what unifies them?

In January, 7 images out of the many were featured in Tafeta Gallery in London, in an exhibition entitled Royalty. Upon my first examination of Osodi’s sundry collection of Nigerian royalty from our multitudinous ethnicities is a rich exploration and presentation of Nigerian culture within our traditional forms of governance. But my second look finds something darker. A quite overt flex and showcase of wealth and power. Each image but a few holds in it a buff-chested exhibition of sovereignty, which I don’t believe comes from Osodi’s capturing of them but from the subject themselves, the kings and queens. Osodi’s goal was to document these images for posterity; where in the past there has been a lack of documentation and therefore a loss of identity or a documentation from the colonial perspective which coincided with moments where the traditional leaders were rendered powerless by the colonial masters. But now in a post-colonial, corruption-ridiculed Nigeria where the bourgeoisie has sub-alternated for the colonial masters to be the exploitative governing body these images of these ornamented extravagant leaders is almost like a slap in the face.

5 ILLUSTRATORS FROM AN ILLUSTRATOR

So this week we thought it would be interesting to get a creative to list 5 people they like/ admire in their field. It's a nice way to introduce you (and us) to some artists we might not have been aware of- and who knows it might turn into an interesting segment on the blog?

I sat down with illustrator Subqulture aka Desola Kazeem who recently has taken to instagram to showcase her digital illustrations. Since the last time we interviewed her, her style has evolved immensely and although her following is modest, she has received compliments from the likes of Lilly Allen, Nadia rose and Munroe Bergdorf. I was interested to see some of the illustrators she admired within the instagram sphere and why. Without further a due, here are the 5:

SUBJECTS IN THE MIRROR.

In Zanale Muholi’s 2015 photograph, Look or See from her Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness self-portrait series, the question of looking and seeing now burdens me. Muholi lays on her back in bed straining to look into a mirror she holds above her. Her look is somewhat curious, inquisitive even. Is she being looked at or is she being seen? Is she just looking or is she seeing? This may then become a question of gaze. Whose gaze is it? This is the question I believe the piece poses. How does a viewer see from a camera?

Zanele Muholi. Look or See (2015). Charlottesville.

Hans Memling’s 1485 painting, Vanity is a full-length portrait of a woman standing amongst lush and vibrant greens, her body a warm white as her red hair frames her silhouette. She stands facing the viewer, presenting her body to us but her gaze is focused on the image in a mirror she holds in her hand, thus she is given the implication of vanity as the title suggests. We look at her, she ignores us, unaware of our presence while we feast our eyes on her fleshy body, instead, she looks at a warped image of herself in the mirror as presented by the painter Memling. This depiction by the renaissance painter may be an active metaphor for the male gaze and women’s perception of it.

500 years later, a painting of the same title and similar subject matters emerges, Vanity, a 2018 piece by Chigozie Obi. A melancholic man sits in a moody room, a dressing table mirror in front of him. Much of the image is obscured in loose and quick brushstrokes except his face in the mirror. We follow his eye line into the image of himself. His expression seems to be suddenly aware, suddenly present in a look of what may be realisation after contemplation. His face is lit up by a cold - compared to the rest of the image - side light; the only clear source of light. The space around him is heavy with warm pinks, reds and oranges that dance freely in the atmosphere.

Hans Memling. Vanity (1485)

Chigozie Obi. Vanity (2018)

The question of seeing then lies with us and the artist. What do they want us to look at or see? With Muholi and Obi, we look at the subjects seeing themselves. Muholi’s piece suggests a studied curiosity of her identity as she almost peeks into the image reflected back with uncertainty, this could be an implication of where this image was taken, Charlottesville, Virginia, a predominantly white area. One can imagine the reactions—better yet looks—she would have gotten as a black woman there.

As implied by an accompanying poem by Adulphina Usomineh Imuede, Obi’s piece seems to raise fresh a realisation of the colour of skin and the given title “person of colour”. As in Imuede’s poem that asks “what does it mean to be a person of colour?”. We can look at this piece as an examination of the new awareness of the colour of one’s skin. Meanwhile, with Memling, we are not looking at her reflection but her body, our focus is elsewhere. Furthermore, we are looking at her, looking at herself, her reflection is not something that plagues or even simply faces us. Her knowledge and awareness of herself is not something that burdens us. This to us, is easy viewing, soft porn.

The mirror is one of the most curious objects. Its unnatural in its nature yet when we stand in front of it we expect to see truth looking back at us. Art in a way is a mirror that reflects the world, artists can use art to reflect their own realities and as viewers, we do expect to discover a level of candour within most artworks, a sense of the artist. So when faced with situations like these of mirrors within mirrors we begin to wonder and open up to a deeper exploration of honesty and truth in depictions, questions of intention arise and then you find yourself looking at double images wondering "who am I looking at?"