Authors : Babson Ajibade, Emekpe Omon and Wole Oloidi
Abstract: This study traces the non-accordance of traditional African works of arts like sculptures their real artistic values until the latter half of the last century. Western missionary and military colonisers initially approached African sculptures not as sculptures but as uncontemplated fetish, tribal and nonsensical products. One of the reasons why western colonisers could not understand was because sculpture’s (art) such as masks, totems and statues functioned in religious, fertility and other social contexts. And they were not, for display sake, exhibited in western-styled museums or galleries just for audiences to admire. Whereas this erroneous approach to African sculptures was made by western people that did not understand nonwestern and unfamiliar artistic idiom, today in urban Nigeria, Africans themselves are now repudiating and denying African artistic products like sculptures as works of art. They do so on the basis of a new Christian episteme which is different from but evolved out of the colonial missionary Christianity that initially denied African arts. This study seeks to analyze how this postcolonial Christian episteme fundamentally beclouds the apprehension of art among Africans today making them see sculptures as idols, fetishes and works of the devil the same age-old, negative and problematic categorisations brought to bear upon Africa by western colonial missionaries.
Babson Ajibade, Emekpe Omon and Wole Oloidi, 2011. African Arts in Postcolonial Context: New Old Meaning for Sculptures in Nigeria. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 8: 172-180.