Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: Monuments, Deities, and Money

7. Heritage as Control: From Art and Religion to Media and Mediation

CHAPTER 7 Heritage as Control From Art and Religion to Media and Mediation Having nearly reached the end of our explorations of the art of heritage in Osogbo, it is finally time to tackle the one question writers on Osogbo have thus far avoided addressing. As we have seen, a prominent theme running through the numerous accounts of Osogbo’s entry into the Western art world is the modernist narrative of rupture and renewal. According to this largely European account, by the late 1950s and early ’60s, when the Osogbo art movement started, colonial modernity had led to a steady decline in traditional Yoruba art and religion, leaving behind a spiritual and artistic vacuum into which Ulli Beier and Susanne Wenger, the two expatriates who initiated the movement, introduced new forms and injected a new artistic spirit. A wholly different story is told in Osogbo. Contrary to the hagiographic subtext of the modernist narrative, which depicts the foreign initiators of the movement as both saviors and transformers of Yoruba culture, people in Osogbo point to Osun as the agent of change. From their point of view, the manifold artistic initiatives Beier and Wenger unfolded in Osogbo would not have been successful without the active approval and support of the city’s guardian deity. Drawing on oral traditions about Osun’s involvement in traditional art forms like pottery and dyeing, Wenger and Beier’s efforts, as well as the recent inscription of the deity’s grove into the UNESCO World Heritage list, are merely the most recent demonstrations of Osun’s power and interest in the realm of beauty and art. As I shall now argue, there is a third perspective complementary to the heroic and the primordial narratives, one which both parties have avoided addressing so far. Its concern is the political dimension of decisions that affect the grove. Of particular importance is the role of the former traditional ruler of Osogbo, Ataoja Adenle. After all, as owner of the Osun cult and chief guardian of the land, Adenle could have refused to give his consent to the project being carried out in the grove. Yet he did not. Instead, his attitude toward the “experiment” was largely supportive and encouraging. Not only did he provide assistance, 138 OSOGBO AND THE ART OF HERITAGE he also saw to it that in 1965 the Nigerian Government declared the Osun grove a National Monument. Considering the fact that Adenle was thus an active player in the reshaping of the Osun grove, it is surprising that questions of local agency have never been asked, let alone properly discussed. To do so, I suggest it is wise to move away from the realm of art and religion, and start from another angle. Media theory provides an illuminating alternative perspective from which to approach the Osun project.1 Given the hybrid character of the field, no clear-cut paradigm prevails; instead, various, often rival perspectives coexist under the umbrella of media theory with emphases on communication, practice, and historicity serving as common denominators. Given the use of the term media in everyday language, there is a temptation to conflate the concept with its technology: that is, to understand “media” simply in terms of the instruments of (mass) communication. But to do so is to miss the fundamental paradox inherent in the concept of media, for while a medium does indeed communicate /mediate/connect between two poles—from a writer to a reader, a musician to a listener, an artist to a beholder—it is more than just a “middle.” In the words of Tom Mitchell (2005: 204): “The medium does not lie between sender and receiver; it includes and constitutes them.” Indeed, the material and technological dimension of media must be understood within the larger dimension of practice. The relationship between picture and image illustrates this practice. As Hans Belting (1997; 2005) has shown with respect to the history of Christian imagery in early Europe, questions of pictures have always been questions of belief. His examples range from the Byzantine iconoclasm controversy in the thirteenth century over the Protestant secession from Catholicism during the so-called Reformation to nineteenthcentury disputes about the authenticity of the Turin shroud. The argument rests on the insight that pictures are not independent entities, but media hosting images. The relationship between image and picture is not self-evident or “organic,” but requires training on the part of the viewer. Most likely a Roman Catholic monk in Italy will “see” pictures of...