CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Niger Delta in southeastern Nigeria has been synonymous with images of oil fields, environmental degradation and political corruption.
But artist and filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa shows different images of the place, and of the Ogoni people, a minority ethnic group living there. She wants to transform perceptions of the Niger Delta by showing the culture and spirit expressed in food, folklore, art and religion. She has filmed Ogoni people eating, praying and performing masquerades – activities she calls strategies of psychic survival.
Her work is a combination of documentary and performance, shaped by her wry sense of humor, said Amy L. Powell, the curator of modern and contemporary art at Krannert Art Museum. The museum is hosting the first solo museum exhibition of Saro-Wiwa’s work, primarily photography and video, curated by Powell. The exhibition “Zina Saro-Wiwa: Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance?” opens Nov. 17 and runs through March 25.
Saro-Wiwa was born in Nigeria and raised in Britain. She divides her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Nigeria, where she has set up an art gallery called Boys’ Quarters Project Space in the city of Port Harcourt.
The work featured in the Krannert Art Museum exhibition concerns questions of the environment and environmentalism, the role of contemporary art in post-oil futures and the relationship of Ogoni people to land. Saro-Wiwa works with the Ogoni as a curator and cultural producer on her projects, rather than just observing them, Powell said.
“She directs them, but she also learns from them and honors them, really. In that sense, they are collaborators,” Powell said.
A video called “Karikpo Pipeline” features men dancing a masquerade fashioned after the antelope and once performed to honor the harvest. Saro-Wiwa put the men, who perform entertaining high-flying acrobatics, on landscapes affected by the oil industry. The images jump across five video monitors.
“It’s a very dynamic installation,” Powell said. “It’s really about these men dancing the landscape so instead of despair, they’re bringing this athletic, imaginative, acrobatic movement to land and to history.”
“Prayer Warriors” shows a group of pastors intoning in the Ogoni language and moving in order to connect to the spiritual realm, Powell said.
“Evangelical Christianity is really prominent in this area of Nigeria. Zina recognized this as a strength of the culture there. The prayer warriors are really performers,” she said.
Food is central to Saro-Wiwa’s work, and a major component of her practice is to craft recipes using Ogoni ingredients in new ways to stage feast performances. In the video “Table Manners,” a set of monitors shows a person eating a meal from beginning to end while staring at the camera, giving the viewer the impression of sharing the meal while also subverting any fascination with the ways Africans eat, inherited from the colonial era.
The exhibition also includes several photographs owned by Krannert Art Museum related to a masquerade performed by men called Ogele. In Saro-Wiwa’s photos, the men wear or lie next to masks depicting members of her family, which has a strong history in the region’s politics. Her father, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was a writer and an environmental activist who was executed in 1995 by the Nigerian government.
The exhibition is co-presented by Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, where it opened in 2015. An accompanying catalog features recipe-stories by Saro-Wiwa, essays by Powell, environmental cultural studies scholar Stephanie LeMenager and writer Taiye Selasi, and a conversation between the artist and art historian Chika Okeke.
Also opening Nov. 17 is the School of Art and Design Faculty Exhibition, featuring work by artists on the school’s faculty. It will include paintings, sculpture, printmaking, graphic design and new media.
Graphic designer Stacey Robinson’s newest work is collage pieces that he thinks of as a visual form of hip hop – sampling and remixing what other artists have done. His work is influenced by the art that has documented black protest movements, and he uses images from the past and present to portray themes of race, Afrofuturism and social justice.
Robinson loves comics and is part of a duo called Black Kirby that produces works influenced by Jack Kirby, an artist who created many of the superheroes for Marvel Comics.
“That’s what all my work is really about – connecting the past to the present,” Robinson said. “I’m really concerned with passing down a legacy. I purposely reference those who influence me.”
One of the three pieces Robinson has in the exhibition is called “We Got Next.” It depicts a Saturn B-Boy in a space helmet, and Robinson said the collage represents the claim of black people to take their place and be represented in the world of education, art, capitalism and democracy.
Patrick Earl Hammie is a visual artist whose work is mainly large portrait and figure paintings concerning issues of social equity, gender and race. His painting in the exhibition, “F.B.J.,” is an 80-inch by 68-inch portrait of his 92-year-old grandmother, Flore Blakney Jett. She was the first woman in his family to get a higher education degree, and she was a civil rights activist who ran a center for at-risk youth in Connecticut.
“When one thinks of black women in art, they are typically equated with mammies or servants. One usually doesn’t see them front and center as a main subject,” Hammie said.
The portrait was part of a show, “What’s Inside Her Never Dies,” last December at Art Basel in Miami – a city that prioritizes youth and virility, Hammie said. His work exhibited there focused on the perception and legacy of a black woman. He wanted to show her dignity and experiences of motherhood and of aging.
“If you look at the portrait, the eyes are fixed. There is a weariness to them. There’s a lived life in there,” Hammie said. “I think it’s important to not always feel like someone has to present a façade of strength or of being happy. This is someone who’s lived life and seen the ups and downs – the transformation of the American landscape. Hopefully, some of that can be communicated through the portrait.”