ABOUT_BOOK

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ABOUT THE BOOK

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About the book
"The title is significant to us in Benin. The year 1897 means much to me and my people; it was the year the British invaded our land and forcefully removed thousands of our bronze and ivory works from my great grandfather, Oba Ovonramwen’s Palace."
HRM The Oba of Benin

The production of this book equally represents a very significant move to challenge the orchestrated design to perpetually distort African history and appropriate African creativity, ingenuity, craftsmanship and industry as well as misrepresent the historic legacies of our forefathers.

The wide range of issues and themes covered in the volume marks it out as an invaluable material in the study and understanding of African art, culture and history.

"I unreservedly recommend the volume to students, readers and whosoever may find it relevant in his or her professional and intel•lectual pursuit."
Professor Tunde Babawale, Director, Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC)

"A contemporary Nigerian artist and art historian, a teacher in both formal and informal institutions, Peju Layiwola combines these and many more attributes and talents to make her stand tall as a role model to her generation."
Bruce Onobrakpeya

Hmmm...1897? or An Introduction
If the 1897 invasion of Benin by British imperialism is construed as a text, at once fully charged as a (re)constructed discursive formation yet date-marked, there is evidence that the century-long interval has yielded its several layers of the intertext as seen in the previous passage above...But the primal text is not without its rebuttal as a colonialist master-text; in the mortifying lingo of imperial-speak it is called a ‘civilising mission’. A tragic event of this nature hardly begets a narrative summary, but it is precisely that impracticality that this paragraph seeks to achieve as it suggests that a couple of events, both external and internal, led to the 1897 incident in Benin. In relation to Britain, the empire was expanding, just a while ahead of the accolade of being so large the sun could never set on it.
Sola Olorunyomi, Curator and Co-Editor

Resurrecting the Disappeared: A Recontextualisation of 1897
I have good memories of visiting my grandfather in the palace. I will go along with my cousins and elder brothers to visit the king. Everything looked rather large and grotesque—the masks, carvings, metal sculptures and the entire throne. We would walk up to him, kneel and then say the usual royal greeting ‘Domoaba’ which I later came to know as ‘Domo Baba’, meaning ‘Greetings to you our Father.’ Then he would ask after everyone at home. He had so many grandchildren but he knew us all by name. After all the greetings, he would reach out for a pack of imported biscuits...
Peju Layiwola

Benin1897.com: Peju Layiwola’s Metamonument
Peju Layiwola’s Benin1897.com, simultaneously an installation and a metamonument, consists of multiple assemblages of ancestral portraits, symbols, and texts that are imbued with Benin histories and memories. In a rhythmic arrangement of a multitude of art objects within harmonious spatial unity, its iconography displays honorable subjects that synecdochically stand for Benin dynasties and populations prior to and after that tragic Benin Massacre/British Punitive Expedition of 1897. Encompassing the spectator in its postmodern structure, the metamonument forces ambulatory viewing and critical reflection that monumentalizes the past, yet connects nostalgia, pain and anger over cultural loss to current issues of restitution, preservation and the problem of recognition encountered by contemporary artists in the current age of digital culture (.com); especially women. Though arousing aesthetic pleasure, the metamonument simultaneously thwarts it with texts and images that refer to lost monuments and lost lives. Preeminent in the iconological import of Benin1897.com is a reiterative criticism of aggressive art imperialism. That is especially apparent in the simulacra of the multitude of ancestral heads that were displaced from sacred shrines and storage in Benin.
Freida High

Art, Anonymity, Anger and Re-appropriation
The 1897 rape of traditional power was a farce that Oba Ovonramwen had seen through even before its enactment. The looting of art that ensued after that farce is an ongoing tragedy whose denouement has been deferred for too long. And unless we reach that decisive moment, the inexplicable distinction in monetary value between antiquities and works done today in the idiom of antiquity will remain unresolved. The system of valuation used in today’s art market is such that a premium is placed on two categories - the looted’ and ‘contemporaneous with the looted’ - almost as if Edo art ended with the rape of 1897 and whatever comes after that date of rape is ersatz or kitsch.
Benson Eluma

The 1897 British Expedition in Historical Perspective:
Lessons and Challenges
From the afore-stated, it can be seen that the Oba was divested of his traditional powers. This means that the powers of the chiefs were also limited considering the erosion in the powers of the Oba, but a few of them, especially the Iyase, gained more powers and influence during this period. Yet, the entirety of the people in Benin were happy at the restored monarchy, the symbol of their society, customs and tradition.
Victor Osaro Edo

Of Desecrated History, Memories and Values in Peju Layiwola’s
Recent Works
A redraft of the popular nursery rhyme might just be necessary to set the tone of this paper:
Pussy cat, pussy cat,
Where have you been?
I have been to London
Not just to see the Queen
But to request of her and her people
To return all the STOLEN African artifacts
In London and the entire West.

... There have been clamours over the years for the return of these artifacts via internationally institutionalised agencies3 and procedures, but these have been discountenanced and countered with arrogance and sophistry such as the view that it is the ownership, but not the location of these objects, that should change...
Akin Onipede

Material Culture, Maternal Culture: Peju Layiwola’s Art and Its Obligations
Nurture relates to the maternal, parental care or upbringing given to a child. It mainly involves the training and guide provided by the mother (mainly) towards character development or a vocation in life. Contemporary notions of nurture bring alongside the parental influences issues of environment, peer influence, mass media, ICT and even class factors.

Peju Layiwola has been nurtured by a mother whose legacy to her offspring may traverse several generations of artists still. Nurture in and through art is an evidence of a form of apprenticeship in a familial context where the child grows through whatever artistic preoccupations sway the parent(s). Here, I consider inheritance as a major factor of the nurture Layiwola underwent. With nurture, it is evident that the power or force the artist’s origins have, impinges on works emanating from her...The factor of nurture is a foundation on which art can be built.
Mabel Evwierhoma

The Sword of Oba Ovonramwen:
1897 and Narratives of Domination and Resistance
Families lost parents, wives and children in the invasion. He himself lost his wife and two children (a son and a daughter) in the invasion and until his death in 1986, whenever I asked him about what happened in Benin on that day, he would say ‘Uwa Kpu Ekpu’ (the world turned upside down).
Sylvester Ogbechie

Negotiations for the Return of Nok Sculptures from France to Nigeria:
An Unrighteous Conclusion
Among the objects captured is an exquisitely crafted ivory pendant mask now at the British Museum. In 1977 Nigeria requested the loan of the ivory mask for a pan-African cultural festival centered in Lagos, and which had chosen the mask as its emblem. The British Museum initially requested an insurance bond of £2 million for the mask, but then argued that it was too delicate to be moved from its carefully controlled environment. In the event the mask was not lent, which led to controversy.
Folarin Shyllon

One Counter-Agenda from Africa: Would Western Museums Return Looted Objects if Nigeria and Other African States Were Ruled by Angels?
As if it were not painful enough that looted African artifacts end up in Europe and the United States, there are museum directors vigorously advocating the right of Western museums to acquire African artifacts even if their provenance is dubious. James Cuno, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, an institution that collaborated with Nigeria in putting up the recent exhibition, Benin - Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria has in books and articles propagated the doctrine that the Western Museums have the right and duty to acquire artifacts without regard to their provenance. Those countries that enact laws to prevent the looting of their artifacts are described by him as nationalist retentionists. Cuno also argues...
Kwame Opoku

List of contributors
Folarin Shyllon was Dean and Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan. His areas of specialisation include Cultural Property Law and Intellectual Property Law. He has written extensively in these areas including a book, Intellectual Property Law in Nigeria (Max Planck Institute and Verlag C.H. Beck, Munich, 2003). He is a member and Vice-Chairman of Nigeria Memory of the World Committee.

Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (Ph.D. Northwestern) is Associate Professor of Art History (Global African Arts and Visual Culture) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and 2009-2010 Consortium Professor at the Getty Research Institute. He is the author of Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (University of Rochester Press, 2008), Director of Aachron Knowledge Systems, and founder and editor of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture.

Mabel Evwierhoma is Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Abuja. Her area of specialisation is Theatre Theory and Criticism, with bias for the Literature of the Arts, which has a gender-specific or women-centered stress. She graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1986. Her Master’s and Doctorate degrees were obtained in 1988 and 1996 respectively, from the same University. She has been Head of the Department of Theatre Arts (1998-2000), Deputy Director the Consultancy Services Unit (2001-2003), and is presently the Director, Development Office, University of Abuja. She speaks several Nigerian languages including Urhobo, Edo, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.

Freida High is Evjue-Bascom Professor of Modern and Contemporary African and African-American Art History and Visual Culture, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published in areas of feminist art theory and modern/contemporary African art (special interest in Nigeria), and worked as a consultant to the Ford Foundation of West Africa. Select publications and professional reports include: ‘Interweaving Black Feminism and Art History: Framing Nigeria,’ Contemporary Textures: MultiDimensionality in Nigerian Art (ed. N. Nzegwu, 1999); ‘In Search of a Discourse and Critique/s that Center the Art of Black Women Artists,’ Theorizing Black Feminism: A Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women (ed. S. James and A. Busia) 4th publication in Feminist Art Theory (ed. Hillary Robinson, 2001); and several other publications. She has exhibited nationally and internationally.

Benson Eluma holds a BA (Combined Honours) in Communication, Language Arts and Classics and an MA in African Studies (Anthropology option), both from the University of Ibadan. He is an independent researcher and freelance copy-editor.

Akinwale Onipede is a research student in the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos. He works as a curator in the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC). He is also a painter.

Kwame Opoku is a commentator on cultural affairs.

Victor Osaro Edo is a Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Ibadan.

Peju Layiwola teaches Art and Art History in the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, Nigeria.

Sola Olorunyomi teaches Performance and Media Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.