Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, Princeton University; Discussant: Ivy Mills

In the last decades of the 20th century, the sweeping political and cultural changes in Africa gave rise to schools of artists with radical ideologies. The Nsukka School, associated with the Uli movement, emerged from the art department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in Eastern Nigeria, after the Biafra war (1967 – 1970). This school of artists and the Uli aesthetics have been traced to the decolonization project that began with the Natural Synthesis ideology of the Zaria Art Society.

In this lecture, Iheanyi Onwuegbucha will draw from his ongoing research on the yet-to-be-examined aspects of the history of the Nsukka art school to explore how sociopolitical and economic crisis could become a catalyst for creative experimentation. In the aftermath of the Biafra war, the people of Southeastern Nigeria became creative and innovative in their various endeavors to cope with the harsh realities of the living condition that followed. How do we make sense of this survivalist framework in relation to the post-civil war art program of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka which produced the Nsukka art school? How might this framework allow us to examine the experimental works of the new generation of artists emerging from Nsukka?

In the second part of this talk, Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, in conversation with Ivy Mills, will discuss how the artistic and curatorial interventions of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos reflects this idea of innovation as a result of challenges from the shifting socio-political conditions in Africa. 

Iheanyi Onwuegbucha is a Nigerian curator and art historian. He is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He was Artistic Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. He is presently researching the Nsukka Art School and post-civil war art dynamics in Nigeria. His recent curatorial projects include Diaspora at Home with Sophie Potelon at CCA, Lagos and Kadist, Paris, and Uncensored: How Free Are the Arts, with Joao Simoes.