Transcultural Conversations: American and Nigerian Art in Dialogue

Wura-Natasha Ogunji, queens, May 11, 2013. Performance; Bar Beach, Lagos, Nigeria. Photo: Ema Edosio

American and US–based Nigerian artists have executed projects over the years in various parts of Nigeria. Funding for such projects comes from the US Consulate and the US Information Service, based in Lagos. A few artists receive privately sponsored fellowships through specific art exchange programs.¹ This article explores some of the far-reaching and impactful community-based projects that have been carried out in Nigeria by two exemplary African American artists, Brett Cook and Wura-Natasha Ogunji. While many artists awarded Fulbright scholarships work within universities and other educational institutions, Cook and Ogunji organized projects within the larger community, involving audiences that consisted of various groups of people across social, cultural, and religious divides who were not necessarily connected with the academy. I will examine how their art practices, funded by the US government and a US-based institution, have had a strong impact on the host community and provided avenues for cross-cultural engagement.

Brett Cook's smARTpower Sharing Culture Project

Brett Cook, from Berkeley, California, describes himself as a healer who was chosen, in some respect, as a US cultural ambassador to work in Nigeria.

I understood Nigeria, like all of Africa, to be a complicated array of people, cultures, and values, so my visit wasn't to "discover" some ethnic essentialism. However, in a time when Yoruba religious beliefs have more practitioners and are more widespread than ever, I knew a more intimate experience with Nigeria would provide me a unique perspective to understand religious practices, and culture in general, across ethnic groups. As a person who has regularly integrated spiritual as well as cultural signs and signifiers in my work, the exposure to Nigerian life directly integrates new references and experiences into my practice. . . . The visit was both a way to become more expansive about African identity and more precise about one of the most inspirational areas for African American culture.²

Cook was one of fifteen American artists selected from among nine hundred applicants across the United States to carry out collaborative projects in local communities in fifteen countries.³ This was done under the platform of the US State Department's sponsored program called smARTpower, which emphasizes people-to-people interaction, using the visual arts as a tool.⁴ The program's name derives from the term "smart power," which refers to an international diplomatic approach that uses benevolent methods in building relationships among countries. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton mooted the concept in 2009:

The best way to advance America's interest in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions. . . . We must use what has been called 'smart power,' the full range of tools at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural—picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation.⁵

Cook's primary objective as an artist was to create a platform for cross-cultural exchange, not at the level of the Senate or the government, but for the common person. Oga Steve Abah, who evaluated Cook's Sharing Culture project, identifies two approaches to the evolving American diplomacy:

There is a difference in the practice and interpretation of these diplomatic channels, one in spaces that are gilded, protected and where ordinary persons are excluded. The other is in public arenas of ordinary citizens where voice articulation is in abundance.⁶

It is in the latter venue that Sharing Culture, under the frame of the larger smARTpower project, finds voice and gives expression to common people through art creation.⁷

The US funding for Cook's project consisted of a $1 million grant aimed at empowering communities by promoting long-term sustainability of projects funded by short-term grants through the involvement of nonprofit organizations located in various countries. These partner organizations were charged with coordinating the artists' projects. The funding was also targeted at empowering under-served constituencies such as women and youth in these societies...