Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World (2001)

ISSN: 1525-447X

Ozioma Onuzulike: Redrawing the Frontiers of Ceramics

C. Krydz Ikwuemesi

Anyone who knows Ozioma Onuzulike’s antecedents as an artist would not be surprised at the quality of work he displayed during his recent exhibition (Earth to Art) at the National Museum Enugu, Nigeria. From a budding artist who graduated in First Class from the University of Nigeria (in 1996), and held several exhibitions both group and solo, so much is to be expected. But unlike most other younger artists who would easily fizzle out at glowing accolades, Ozioma has held on tenaciously to his vocation, as he continues to search for new idioms to enrich his vocabulary in the perpetual dialogue with life, which art represents.

Ozioma is definitely not a new-comer to the exhibition halls in Nigeria. But he remains “a familiar stranger” in the sense that his creative idiom is yet to engender wider appreciation in the art arena. Although his creative trajectory strongly anticipates the attainment of such an objective, the artist seems to be living ahead of his time. Like the radiant eagle, he has cleverly kept an eye on the art horizon, in search of new mountains, new rivers to cross. Guided by a positively adventurous spirit, he has broken out of the usually conservative confines of “old hat” ceramics to discover new territories all his own.

Ozioma’s experimentations typify my belief - nay, conviction - that the finest artists are not just those who are able to have a finger in every pie, but those who can harness, domesticate, and communicate with, diverse media in their search for a sustainable idiom. This mediumistic elasticity, of course, has broadened Ozioma’s vision in nearly superlative terms, allowing him to transcend now and again, the ceramist in him. Thus he has resourcefully if successfully exploited the painter and sculptor in him in a constant attempt to locate himself at the cutting edge of ceramics-sculpture and redraw the boundaries of the genre. It is this singular character that stands out in his recent solo exhibit at the National Museum, Enugu.

Indeed, as the title of that exciting show (Earth to Art) implies, the works harbour an attempt to find art in anything under the sun. Anything: clay, drift wood, metal, wire, rope, cane, waste paper, colour, glaze, and uncountable other objects are boldly fused in numerous evocative pieces, notably, Casualties 1, Genocide, Innocent 1, Democratic Question, Earth at Crossroads, and others. In these works, Ozioma renews his image as a muralist and instrumentalist. He reworks and extends the “Nsukka School” pattern as it relates to social relevance, and addresses himself to the society at large in the unending effort to become “the pedagogue of a new society.”

In the Mass Suicide and Casualties 1, for instance, it is the pangs of a society in throes of transition, with its conflicts, that are thrown before us for contemplation. In Casualties 1, the emotions are released with the help of clayey figures, contorted and burnt in parts, all strewn to metal colanders. In the Mass Suicide we still find the same figures, a multitude, dangling loosely on copper wires, tied to multi-pronged driftwood, in a rather graphic commentary. The effect in both works can be as startling as it is empathetic. For those contorted figures are not just figures. They seem to pulsate with a strange life entirely their own, generated from their inner soul. They are mirrors in which we are uncannily reflected. They are us and we are them - a beautiful-sad characterisation of our writhing environment and its disillusioned population; a metaphor for life’s serpentine momentum and man’s entanglement in it.

In Genocide, the artist tries to evoke similar emotions by exploring a theme very close to that of Mass Suicide. Here he seems to be concerned with the ugly side of industrialization/modernization and some of the attitudes it has engendered in the community, especially in a developing society like Africa. To fully dramatise his vision in this particular work, Ozioma has deployed representatives of the products of industrialization on welded strands of thin metal supports, combining them with highly abstracted clay forms which probably represent some dehumanized beings. In all, it is the vivid image of the present world in which man himself seems to have entered the list of the endangered species, ironically, as a result of his own attempt to dominate his environment. On a second level, the work represents the monstrous visage of postmodernism with its laissez-faire spirit and glorified emptiness.

Besides these works, there are still others in which Ozioma has retained traditional clay and glaze as the principal media But even in such works, he has introduced colour and a certain painterliness which distance the works from armchair ceramics. In this category are Old Akwete with Kente, The Politicians Are Back, and numerous others. Against whatever paradigm they may be examined, Ozioma’s recent projects remain challenging and exciting. Although I refuse to call it “avant garde” because of the Eurocentric arrogance inherent in the term, I must remark that it is highly cutting-edge in parts and very much ahead of its time. With an intellectually-lazy audience and an art-buying class that is largely conservative and sometimes ignorant, Ozioma may not find it easy with some of those equally ignorant little gods who hold the keys to the exhibition centres in Lagos and Abuja. The reaction to his work may not even be much different outside the shores of Nigeria, especially in Europe and America where ‘African’ art is still pigeonholed in preconceived models which do not easily accommodate recent artistic realities from Africa. But the young artist must realise that to worry about this possibility would only amount to summoning unnecessary localism and undue disaster upon his imagination. “Art is long,” as Hippocrates said. An artist should follow the path of art wherever it leads him/her, so long as he/she continues to find fulfillment in the pursuit. I consider it dangerous and irrelevant for the artist to begin to worry about the lonely opinion of gallery cranks or the hegemonic attitude of those who consider themselves the divinely ordained advocates and interpreters of African art.

So far, Ozioma has done well professionally. He has also learnt well, given the eclectic nature of his artistic parentage. It is possible that the works of Chris Echeta and Tony Umunna have provided him the initial spin-off necessary for a stylistic rebirth. But in the recent exhibit, one discovers that he has also looked elsewhere - beyond the homestead - in recent times, appropriating ideas from the so-called Western avant garde all in the effort to create and sharpen his own voice in the global art space. The images that emerge in his current project are not to be compared to the consummate forms that are characteristic of the celebrated Magdalene Odondo. They are divinely inspired forms which arise from the depths of the heart, testifying to the artist’s immense promise and tenacious commitment. That his voice will ultimately echo forcefully in the art arena is perhaps the final message in Earth to Art.

Citation Format

Ikwuemesi, C. Krydz (2001). Ozioma Onuzulike: Redrawing the Frontiers of Ceramics. Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World: 2, 1.