Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you welcome.

This is 3rd editon of our annual roundtable conference. The first edition was held here in this hall in conjunction with an exhibition in honour of the late Prof. Chika Amaefuna in 1994. There was no conference in 1995. When we decided to turn it into an annual event in 1996. It still could not happen because of the prolonged strike in Nigerian universities with its adverse effects on some of our members, friends, and associates. The circle eventually came round again in 1997 when the second edition was held at the National Museum, Uyo, under the auspices of the University of Uyo.

            Today, we are gathered to discuss one of the burning issues in the art circles at the end of this very renmarkable century. The theme of our discussion is The “African Artist” at a Crossroads: Identity vs. Postmodernism.”

            You could notice in the theme that “African Artist” is in quotes. This obviously underlines the ambiguities and near-pejorative significations of that term in recent times. Who is the African artist? Dids such an artist ever exist? Does he still exist? If he does, must he be categorised in order to properly identify him or pigeonhole him. In what senses and to what extent is the term, “African”, used? Is it ideological, philosophical, or paradigmatic? Or is it just a term for discursive convenience devised primarily as a geo-political determinant? We shall attempt to find answers to some of these questions, although they may never be conclusive.

            There is a certain urgency about the questions themselves. I say so because in recent times many artists of Africa have begun to worry about hteir identity. In the catalogue to the Uli exhibition held last year at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Olu Oguibe, one of Africa’s most fiery and vocal art critics, insisted that he was neither an Uli artist, nor an Igbo artist, nor an African artist. He wanted to be seen simply as an artist in the sense as David Hockney or Jeff Koons. Similiarly, El Anatsui, the visionary sculptor, also echoes the same sentiments in a recent interview with C. Krydz Ikwuemesi.

            These claims to internationalism certainly encounter in the atrist, now and then, the nostalgia for the cultural homestead, a homestead which has refused to crumble even in the face of unprecedented globalisation and rather nihilist cybermania which has enveloped the modern world. That is where it would seem, the crossroads begins to emerge.

            Our ancestors, steeped in the traditions of woodcarving, metal craft and bronze-casting, were the patron saints of modernism. The occident stole that paradigm from them through its liveliest atrists in the dying years of the last century (you must be familiar with the roles played by Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, Vlaminck, and Co. In htis regard). They later resold it to us through the colonial system of education on which we have built ever since. When the West was through with modernism, its (the west’s) fatigue, perhaps, give birth to postmodernism. To the extent of Africa’s involvement in the birth of modernism, postmodernism could rightly be said to be our step-child or grand-child. But as we claim it against the background or foreground f internationalism, should the Africa in us literally die? How does the “African artist” blend the fancies of postmodernist internationalism with the demands and realities of the homestead?

            Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Pan-Africa Circle of Artists (Nigeria-Council), I invite our key speakers, Mr. Tayo Adenaike, Mr. Peter Ezeh, and Professor El Anatsui, to hold our hands as we talk through the unending lawns of critical discourse and scholarship in search of plausible answers to some of the questions that have been raised.

A statement read on behalf of PACA-Nigeria by the President

Ayo Adewunmi at the opening of the PACA-Nigeria 3rd Annual

Roundtable Conference.The British Council, Enugu, October 8, 1998.