The Sensitive Line: seven artists of the nsukka group

Th e Se n s i t i v e Li n e T he October 1997 open in g of "Th e Poetics of the Lin e: Seven Artists of the Nsu kka Gr o u p " at the Nation al Museum of African Art of the Smith sonian Institute, W ash in gton , D.C, is in m an y w ays a groun dbreakin g event. "Th e Poetics of the Lin e" is the in augural exhibition of the Sylvia H. W illiams Gallery which is dedicated to the late former director of the museu m un der wh ose leadership, the m useum built its collection of works by modern African artists. Th e sh ow is also a statement about the comin g of age, and ackn owledgmen t, of the art of a cluster of artists w h o trained, or w er e/ ar e based, at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Th e University of Nigeria, Nsu kka has been a site of intense artistic activity that h as h ad a profoun d impact on the history of Nigerian art. Th e art department was started in 1961, but durin g the Nigeria-Biafra W ar of 1967-70, a gen eration of Igbo artists from aroun d the coun try con verged at Nsu kka, which served as the intellectual fount for the new nation of Biafra. It was durin g that war that Uch e Okeke, w h o began to experiment with the Uli art form at the turn of the 1960s, drew the attention of a n umber of youn ger artists wh o - with writers, dramatists and poets were active behind the w ar fronts. At the end of the war, Okeke took up leadersh ip of the art department at Nsu kka and within the next few years, Uli became the rallying point for man y artists w h o passed th rough Nsukka. Th e infusion of the aesthetic an d compositional strategies of Uli into the art of man y Nsukka-train ed artists has been so successful over the years that there h as been a tendency to syn on ymize Uli with Nsu kka. Th is does not tell the wh ole story, for there h ave been a n umber of artists wh o did not catch the Uli bu g durin g an d after their sojourn at the art departmen t. Th er e is a justification behind the connection, h owever, because a majority of the Nsukka artists w h o h ave had an y significant profession al career bear the trace of Uli. Interestingly, both the ideological strategies and the formal concerns of the Nsu kka artists h ave h ad a significant impact, also, on the art produced in other centers in Nigeria. Th e rise of the O n a artists at the Obafemi Aw olow o University, Ife for instance, seems to h ave been influenced by the Uli experiment at Nsu kka. W h ile the latter turned primarily to Igbo Uli painting ( Nsu kka and a majority of its artists are located in the Igbo territory), the former appr opriately looked toward Yoruba art and design . An d there are discernible linear gestures in w atercolor painting from Auch i Polytechnic (in the west-central region of Niger ia) that are similar to the type evident in the w or k of Nsu kka artists. If there is an y unifying factor in the art from Nsu kka, it is a con sciousn ess of the basic principles of Uli design and form. As has been articulated by Uli sch olars from Uch e Okeke to Obior a Udech ukw u, the art relies on the lyrical power of gestural lines as well as on the sensitive balan cin g of n egative and positive spaces in any given composition . W h en these two elements of Uli design come together as in the works of the finest of 'traditional' Uli artists, it approximates visual po5 4 » N k a [ j o u r n a l o f...