One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century Pablo Picasso once said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” For sure, Picasso, the great Spanish painter, sculptor and all-round art maestro was right. Every child is an artist, most never made it beyond childhood, but Nigeria’s Chinze Ojobo did, making a cross from core science to study Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Last month she got Lagosians and connoisseurs of arts trooping to her exhibition at the National Museum to catch a glimpse of her creative fervour and get a real feeling of what contemporary art is all about. A widely travelled artist, she has had her works showcased in Hollywood, London and Bulgaria. Her strength is her ability to interpret events, emotions and concepts in rich paintings of acrylic on jute, mixed with a kaleidoscope of materials from traditionally woven fabrics, metal pieces and plastics. It is pure art of the pristine order that looks inward rather than outward; all materials are sourced locally.
Chinze is passionately pan-Nigeria with strong Afrocentric disposition; a worthy Ambassador and promoter of made-in-Nigeria nay Africa. This year’s exhibition is symbolically tagged “Unfinished Business” and its essence is captured in the words: “Life is constantly reforming and as such it is an unfinished business”.
The exhibition focused tangentially on the Girl-child and the rave of our time: Social Media. So, why the girl-child? She explains: “The girl-child is that component of humanity that is most abused, rarely remembered for good and often converted as a beast of burden. She is that child that is opposed and violated by the society that should protect her”.
She enumerates the needs of the girl-child to include: right to education, gender equality, nutrition, legal rights, medical care and protection from discrimination. In Save Me, Greater Tomorrow and Preserved, Chinze takes humanity through an emotional path to illustrate the damage injustice and ill-treatment could do to the girl-child as opposed to how good education and societal care could launch the same girl-child from the streets to the palace or boardroom or any such well-appointed milieu.
Nobody in Nigeria’s contemporary art has illustrated the newfangled media called Social Media better than Chinze. In ‘Social Media’, she captures most succinctly humanity’s peculiar disconnection in a much-touted connected world. Social Media tells the story of the capitulation of our attention to modern day communications gadgets from phones to tablets and all. It is a compelling illustration of the under-emphasised weakness of humanity in the face of the armada of digital revolution unleashed on us by technology.
“It is an irony of life that modern communications tools have connected us together yet we remain disconnected from ourselves, our environment because all of our attention is focused on the one that ought to connect us. In other words, what has digitally connected us has made us mentally and emotionally disconnected from one another”, she explains.
Chinze’s works at the Museum attracted a cross of personalities from Africa, Asia, Europe and America. Dakuku Peterside, the Director-General of NIMASA declared the exhibition open. He did not hide his excitement at the breathtaking showpiece of artistic ingenuity and mastery of contemporary art that characterised the works of the multi-talented graduate of Applied Arts from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Peterside remarked: “Great and amazing work. Chinze has shown exceptional ingenuity. I am so impressed with her use of colour, materials and form. Chinze will go places and I dare say, will place Nigeria on the global map of the arts”.
Another art connoisseur and a creative artist of note, Mr. Fidelis Anosike, remarked: “This a great inspirational rendition, very edgy and sound artistic mastery”. Anosike who is also the publisher of Daily Times newspaper said the works of Chinze are unique as they easily connect you to modern day realities.
Chinze’s themes takes you through a journey from despair to hope, pain to pleasure, royalty to red carpet, chains to liberty and much more. Such themes as The Minstrel, Alone with God, Every Star Has a Scar, Soulful Dirge, Seed of Potential, Being Me, Global Village, Journey of Life, The Marriage, Surulere at Sunset, The Red Guitar, Royalty, Polo Player, Politicians (arrayed in conspiratorial assembly), Songs of our Land (an exuberant showpiece of our rich cultural heritage in folkloric songs), and Young Love advertise Chinze as an out-of-the-box artist with a good understanding and interpretation of the complexities of humanity.
In Save Me, Greater Tomorrow and Preserved, she brings to the fore the daunting challenges confronting the girl-child, her struggles against domination and abuse in contrast with the beauty and the success which a well-catered girl-child could attain. Her strong use of acrylic, jute and just any trash in the milieu distances Chinze from the crowd and makes her work purely indigenous with boundless global appeal.
