MODERN IGBO TEXTILE ARTISTS 1970 TO 2005

ABSTRACT

This work studies the modern Igbo textile artists from 1970 to 2005, the first 35 years after the Nigerian Civil War. The primary objective of the study is to fill the gap created by the non-availability of literature on the modern Igbo textile art and artists, and establish the modernist tendencies. The work studies the history – the growth and development, and the creative activities of the modern Igbo

textile artists. It takes a summative look at the Igbo textile traditions – the Igbo weaving communities. The emergence of modernism on the western and Nigerian art scenes as well as the Igbo textile art is analytically studied, and the obvious similarities highlighted. The study profiles some of the modern Igbo textile artists, particularly the creative activities of modernists like Uche Okeke, Chukwuanugo Samuel Okeke, Ifedioramma Dike, Godson Onyebuchi Diogu, Nicholas Amamchukwu Anozie, Jane Nwakaego Emeafor, Adaobi Loretto Olikagu, Sylvanus Odoja  Asogwa and  Rita  Doris  Edumchieke Ubah  whose works are analytically studied under a historical periodisation. The evaluation covers a collective and synthetic analysis of their works. The  work also  discusses the aesthetic prominence in the modern Igbo textile art and the conceptual attributes of the works of the modern Igbo textile artists.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

The Igbo textile artists are among the least documented Nigerian artists. This is most surprising because as an art discipline, textile is a very resourceful area.  It  is  highly  creative,  and  in  terms  of  dimensional  possibilities,  it  is resourceful and versatile, compared with the other traditionally two-dimensional areas of art like painting and graphics. Of all the five areas of the creative arts; include  ceramics,  graphics,  painting  and  sculpture,  textile  has  ventured  most across interdisciplinary boundaries, into the other areas because of its dynamism in the utilization of forms, creative ideas and design in producing modern works of art.

The incursions of textiles into the three–dimensional domain, traditionally characteristic of sculpture and ceramics, have widened its horizons and extended its vistas as a creative discipline. Works which are not only three-dimensional but really sculptural, both in relief and in the round, have been the dominant experimentation in a new area of textiles, the fibre art, which since the 1960s has become prominent internationally. For instance, Waller observes that “the last fifteen years have seen the flowering of a new art medium, that of fibre, thread and textile-based constructions. Used by great artists to give substance to their ideas, it

has resulted in some of the most significant and powerful art statements of our time”.1

In contrast with this recent development, not more than five decades in Europe, the dynamics of the textile art in assimilating and manifesting itself in the traditional characteristics of other areas of art had long been a tradition in the Igbo art culture. The Igbo masquerade culture is a perfect illustration. According to Chinua Achebe in his foreword to Igbo Art, Community and Cosmos by Cole and Aniakor, “If the masquerade were not limited to the male sex alone, (as Mbari is not) one might indeed call it the art form par excellence for it subsumes not only the dance but all other forms – sculpture, music, painting, drama, costumery, even architecture as we see in the Ijele  masquerade …”2. The Ijele (Plate 1.1), an essentially textile piece by its materials and techniques of construction, has effectively simulated mural painting in the gaily appliquéd panels. Formalistically, architectural concept has been integrated in the dome shape of the Ijele. Dimensionally,  this  textile   masterpiece  is   “a  composite  sculpture  bearing numerous other symbols and figures in the round”3. The creative potential and diversity of the textiles, as portrayed in the Igbo traditional art culture, have also been effectively established on the contemporary scene. The pioneering experiments in the area of fibre art and textile sculpture by Ifedioramma Dike, since the past three decades, are eloquent testimonies of thisinterdisciplinary dynamics of forms, ideas and design in the production of modern works of arts in textiles.

Apart from this prime position which textiles occupy in the creative arts, some of its products like cloths and clothing materials are the most useful, if not indispensable to the society. There is hardly any aspect of the societal life that does not have  the predominant presence and use of textiles. In personal and individual uses, at homes, private and public houses, clothing, cloths and other textile products are of prime importance in providing coverage and decoration. Even in religion, traditional and alien, textile materials are used in various ways as articles of worship. In the economic, social and political spheres, textiles are articles of trade and have played informative and communicative roles. Against this lofty background and high creative promise, textiles and textile artists have not attracted the level of popularity and documentation enjoyed by art areas like painting and sculpture. .

In the traditional Igbo society, textiles have played no less significant role. The entire socio-cultural arena in Igbo society is dominantly serviced by textiles more than any other area of the creative arts. The Igbo traditional theatres like the masquerade and dance drama are replete with textile materials. The ‘King’ of Igbo masquerades, the Ijele, by the techniques of its construction and the materials used, is essentially a textile master piece. The Igbo dance drama is an inter play of gorgeous arrays of costumes and rhythmic dance steps. In the traditional and

indigenous textile industry, the Igbo weavers have won unprecedented national and international recognition:

Akwete is probably the most famous of all places associated with the use of the women’s vertical loom in Nigeria. It was an Akwete loom, for  example,  that  graced  the  cover  of  Ling  Roth’s  Studies  in Primitive Looms, one of the pioneering works in the serious study of extra- European weaving.4

The undisputed age-old tradition of textiles in Igbo land is attested to by a number  of  archaeological  findings  in  the  area.  The  antique  woven  textile materials, excavated by Thurstan C. Shaw at Igbo Ukwu, hydrocarbon-dated to about the 9th  century A.D (Shaw, 1970), are a strong testimony to the age-old tradition of textile industry in Igbo land. It also shows that the industry must have been established and flourishing long before contacts with the Europeans in the

15th  century. The Igbo Ukwu excavation also throws light on the original values

and extensive usage of textiles among the Igbo. Its funerary function, as early as the 9th century A.D., is indicative that cloth must have been in use in the Igbo area as early as about  700 AD to 1050 AD5. This also shows that the production must have been indigenous.

Igbo Traditional Textile Communities

The nature of the textile industry in Igbo land, beginning from the basic stages of cultivation and harvesting of the cotton fibres locally, to the processing into yarns and the eventual weaving of the fabrics, points to the indigenous origin and development of the industry. No literature has been found establishing an external origin of the Igbo weaving tradition. The industry is developed on a closed cultural system of apprenticeship in which the indigenes are nurtured in the art and skill of weaving right from childhood. In most Igbo weaving communities, non-indigenes are  precluded  from the  knowledge of  their  art  of  weaving.  In Akwete, for instance, the women are bound on oath from imparting the knowledge to non-indigenes.

The Igbo traditional textile communities are found in three main geographical areas: the Northern, the Southern and the Western parts of the South- South and South-East geo-political zones of Nigeria (Figure 1.1). The Northern Igbo weaving community covers the Nsukka/Oba axis and the Abakaliki area. The Southern Igbo weaving community includes the Owerri in Imo State and the Aba and Akwete people of Abia State. The third weaving community – the Anioma people are found in Delta State and on the Western bank of the Niger. In most of these areas there is evidence of cotton cultivation which is spun and dyed locally for weaving. The local cotton yarns are now being supplemented and replaced with imported machine-spun yarns.

Figure 1.1 Distributions of Igbo Weaving Communities in Nigeria

© Lisa Aronson

Areas of Textiles

Textiles as a discipline, is made up of three major areas: textile designing, fabric manufacture and textile production. Textile Design is the concept building stage and the starting point of the products of the other two areas. It involves the production of the technical notations and the visual framework on which the

productions of the other two areas are based. Textile design is of two types: the drafts or the designs for a woven fabric and the paper design or visual representation for a printed or dyed fabric. Draft can be defined as a “system of notation used to represent graphically the appearance and mechanics of a weave”6.

A comprehensive draft includes not only the graphic representation of the appearance of the weave showing the points of “intersection of warp and weft”, but also the “threading, tie-up and treadling sequence necessary to produce the weave”7. A complete or comprehensive draft is therefore, a composite of four drafts. The cloth or weave draft graphically illustrates the weave or its structure. The threading draft shows the order in which the yarns are threaded through the heddles of the harnesses while the tie-up draft indicates the order in which the harnesses  are  to  be  lifted  in  the  process  of  weaving.  The  treadling draft  or treadling order is the order of pedaling to lift the harnesses and create the sheds (Figures 1.2 to 1.5). With these designs, the weaver is guided in the construction of the fabric.

The design for the production of printed or dyed fabrics is a visual, on paper, of what the fabric to be printed or dyed will look like. It is the presentation of a repeating unit of the design elements of the finished product in their exact colours and sizes. It is, therefore, an anticipation of the finished product on paper (Plates 1.2 and 1.3)

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