Migratory Mythopoeism: A Critical Examination of Moyo Ogundipe's Paintings

For Moyo Ogundipe (1948–2017), as for many contemporary African artists, the global condition has been experienced through the prism of migration. Disillusioned by political turmoil in Nigeria, he fled the country shortly after Sani Abacha assumed power in the early 1990s and settled in the United States, returning only in 2008. At that time, he joined a small but ever-growing returnee community in the southwest of the country and, as a mature artist, invented himself anew. In this article, I argue that the experience of migration, and particularly the experience of displacement (or sense of isolation from both a homeland and a new land) that so often accompanies migration, became the catalyst for his creative practice. He worked within the dynamic tradition of mythopoeia—what he conceived as poetic mythmaking—and produced an imaginative new body of work designed both to make sense of what he often described as "this inexplicable world" and help chart his course forward in the multicultural global sphere.¹

In his self-described exile in the United States, Ogundipe was overcome by nostalgia for his Yorubaland, even while eager to take advantage of the professional opportunities that existed abroad and to carve out a space for himself in the international art arena. He accordingly grounded his work in Yoruba culture and re-presented archetypal characters from the extensive corpus of classical Yoruba mythology—in effect, transposing concepts contained within past myths into a contemporary global context for reference. On his return, Ogundipe took stock of the problems in the country, but, still eager to put down new roots, he attempted to reconcile his imagined homeland with his present-day experiences. In a series of returnee paintings, featuring a new cast of characters based loosely on the women he met in southwest Nigeria, he envisioned a possible, even if by no means certain, future in which past social codes continue to provide the bedrock of an increasingly diverse society.

The primary intention of this article is to illustrate that, as a mythopoeic painter, Ogundipe produced a multidimensional mythography related to the global condition and his varied experiences with displacement during his exile and on his return. The study also acknowledges that he often deliberately transcended the geopolitical moment in which he worked to visualize the beauty in this infinite universe and to examine more fundamental mythic questions related to the nature of the cosmos and human existence. I begin with a discussion of Ogundipe's early career, addressing the implications of the sociopolitical landscape in postcolonial Nigeria for his early career and subsequent migration. I then trace the subtle changes in his approach to mythopoeic painting over his long career as his orientation on the global stage shifted.

THE IFE ART SCHOOL YEARS

As a student at the University of Ife between 1968 and 1972, Ogundipe built on his cosmopolitan upbringing in colonial southwest Nigeria to develop a distinct postcolonial art practice. (For accounts of Ogundipe's early upbringing in southwest Nigeria, see Okediji 2002: 100–109; Sytsma 2008: 29; Filani 2017: 3). He originally planned to follow in the footsteps of Victor Daramola, his art teacher at the prestigious Christ's School in Ado-Ekiti, and to study fine arts at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in northern Nigeria (see Osundare 2008: 14 for an account of Ogundipe's early training at Christ's School). The country's unstable political conditions, however, compelled him to reconsider. By the time he was to enroll, a few decades' worth of ethnic tension had erupted in a bloody civil war, commonly referred to as the Biafran War, making travel around the country increasingly dangerous. He decided to remain in the southwest and, since that region did not have a university with a fine arts program, he elected to pursue a degree in art education at the University of Ife (what is now Obafemi Awolowo University) on the new campus in Ile-Ife.²

The art education program at the University of Ife provided an ideal complement to his secondary school art education at