Interview by 
Chika Okeke 
R: Let us begin with the Second International 
Symposium on Contemporary 
Nigerian Art which you convened three 
years back. What were your primary 
reasons for taking on the project? 
Udechukwu: I think the time was overdue for the 
second symposium after the first one that was held in 
Nsukka. So many things have happened and there 
are a lot of activities in the Nigerian art scene. 
Nigerian art is attracting more and more attention 
outside the country, so I thought that we should come 
together to talk about issues related to contemporary 
Nigerian art; and of course it happened that Uche 
Okeke who convened the 1976 symposium was 
turning 60, so that became a galvanizing point for 
that effort. 
GR: Couldn't the symposium have come earlier? 
Did you have to wait for Uche Okeke to turn 60? 
Udechukwu: Well, let's face it, I believe that a 
symposium like this should be organised by art historians 
and scholars who are not studio people. We are 
studio people busy painting pictures and so on. Since 
they didn't seem to be planning anything we felt that 
we could take the initiative as it were to call people 
together, afterall I did not organise the conference 
myself. I did it along with others. 
GR: Is it still part of the failings of the art 
historians and scholars who have also been blamed 
for the dearth of art literature and scholarly activities 
in contemporary Nigerian art? 
Udechukwu: I think the problem is squarely in 
their own court. Their job includes curating, making 
proposals, and seeking the necessary funding for 
exhibitions as well as writing the appropriate cata- 
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logues and so on. The artists, painters and sculptors 
are expected to produce works of art. It is after they 
produce works of art that the historians and critics 
can talk about the art. It is too much to expect one 
group of people to be producing art and writing 
about it as well. So the fact that the art historians 
have not performed as well as they should is partly 
responsible for the problems today. 
GR: It is believed in some quarters that the 
participation of foreign agencies and individuals in 
the promotion and documentation of contemporary 
Nigerian art is anything but healthy. 
Udechukwu: What is the alternative? If you 
can't do something and then someone does, are you 
saying it is better not to have anything than to have 
it done by someone from outside? I think if one 
follows that argument then most of the research done 
by our own people would not have been done. Ifyou 
think about the contributions of people like Kenneth 
Murray for instance, of Duckworth, of Danford, 
Michael Crowder, Ulli Beier, and others, if you 
remove their contributions, I don't know how much 
we have left in Nigeria. I have heard this argument 
concerning whether people should exhibit in foreign 
cultural institutes, but I ask, what is the alternative? 
Do we just stay away at home waiting for the day our 
people wake up from sleep? So I don't buy that 
argument. Foreigners can play a role and it is our 
duty to play a more substantial and significant role. 
So the challenge is for us. It is counterproductive to 
just keep complaining and only frown that they 
(foreigners) should not do what they are doi ng. Why 
don't we provide alternatives? In the area of literature 
the problem is not there. There are many 
Nigerian critics and scholars In the early Fifties 
Gerald Moore, Ulli Beier and a few others were very 
active in writing about our literature. But by the 
Seventies our people had taken over completely, 
which means that people like Bernth Lindfors, Robert 
Wren and Don Burness could still write and nobody 
is saying that they shouldn't write because they are 
contributing something useful and these come together 
to form the corpus of literature which students 
and researchers can benefit from. The same thing is
not happening in the visual arts. 
GR: Back to the symposium, what was the 
response of foreign and Nigerian artists and scholars 
in terms of attendance and participation? 
Udechukwu: There were well over fifty papers 
and several, in fact most came from Nigerians artists 
and scholars. There were, of course, contributions 
from people in Germany, England, The United States 
and the Czech Republic. 
GR: With hindsight, how successful was the 
symposium? What problems were there? 
Udechukwu: Given the conditions under which 
we operated, it was fairly successful. We were able 
to have all the papers presented as it were. The 
participants were very happy with the level of 
organisation which could still have been better. I think 
the greatest constraints we had were in the area of 
funding. If we had more money than we did, we could 
have made it even more successful in terms of 
organisation. 
GR: Are you saying that you approached 
certain individuals or corporate bodies but failed to 
get anything? 
Udechukwu: We wrote a number of corporate 
bodies and individuals and some of them responded 
positively while others were not forthcoming as it 
were. If we had planned it for a period of about two 
years, I think the response could have been better. But 
since we were tailoring the programme to coincide 
with UcheOkeke's60th birthday we had to work with 
the constraints of time which was why I said that given 
the conditions under which we organised the symposium, 
I think we didn't do badly. 
GR: With the symposium behind you now, what 
projects, if any, do you intend to go into next? 
Udechukwu: We have said that they, art historians, 
should do this kindofwork, but we have papers 
from the symposium and it is important that they be 
selected, edited, and published. The 1976'papers 
were not published, which was a great loss. Quite a 
few of them were published individually by their 
authors, but I think that given the calibre of papers 
from the last symposium, we should publish a book 
from the selected and edited papers. But of course 
one needs money to do that. 
GR: Sometime ago you complained of the 
apparent lack of interest, among artists, in attending 
art exhibitions. Did you notice the same attitude 
during the symposium? 
Udechukwu: What I was really complaining 
about concerned art exhibitions which is just a 
question of one or two hours to look at what other 
artists, one's professional colleagues, have done 
and give them the needed moral support. My argument 
was that we cannot be complaining of how 
Nigerians do not encourage artists, or appreciate 
art; that government does not promote art, yet the 
artists fail to encourage themselves when the least 
they can do is to attend exhibition openings. 
GR: We have seen quite a number of retrospections 
in recent times. It appears we are entering 
a significant stage in contemporary art. 
Udechukwu: I don't know which ones you 
have...
GR: We have seen Ben Enwonwu, Ben Osawe, 
Irein Wangboje, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Sina Yussuf, 
Uche Okeke, and of course, we have seen your own 
retrospective exhibition. 
Udechukwu: I believe that it is good once in a 
while to see the path which an artist has trodden over 
the years; to look at his development as an artist. 
There are two reasons for that. One is that you can 
see a total profile of the artist. The second is that 
other artists can also benefit from seeing that to get 
somewhere as an artist, one needs a couple of years 
to really mature and produce work that is lasting and 
significant, and profound. So I think that is essentially 
what retrospectives are supposed to resolve. 
GR: When is the right time for an artist to have 
a retrospective of his work? 
Udechukwu: The art historians have a role to 
play here. They should decide from time to time 
when an artist has done enough work to warrant a 
retrospective. But many of the cases we have had so 
far have been tied to birthday anniversaries. The 
late Enwonwu's retrospective was in conjunction 
with his Seventieth, Onobrakpeya's too, was with 
his Sixtieth and so was Uche Okeke's. 
GR: Your own retrospective at the Italian 
Cultural Centre, Lagos, was titled 'SO FAR....' why? 
Udechukwu: So Far... can be read in different 
ways. It can be so far so good, so far so bad or 
whatever. It can be read as a journey that is so far... 
this is more like taking stock of what has been done 
so far and by implication stating that as long as one 
is still alive there is still a lotto be done. So it says this 
is what I have done so far. I hope I will be able to do 
more. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
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Ugulu (Harmattan), 1993 
acrylic on canvas, 140 x 100 
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GR: Concerning your.recent works, we notice 
something new Ther&'are more shapes and colours 
than lines for which you were previously known. 
What accounts for this shift in style? 
Udechukwu: Well, I don't know if lines had 
always been there from the beginning... 
GR: Yes. For instance Pat Oyelola talks about 
the sensitivity of your lines - lines manifested as linear 
trails of a moving point, but in your recent pictures we 
,see more colours and bold, flat shapes. 
A 
Udechukwu: I believe that reading was based 
on the fact that for many years I concentrated on 
drawing, and in drawing, lines become more 
prominent. We have line in painting alright, but one 
is also dealing with masses, shapes, and colours. 
What has happened is that I am beginning to go back 
to painting. For many years I was not painting. 
Although I stated in a paper written many years ago 
('Towards Essence and 
Clarity1, Nigeria Magazine), 
that I was going to 
transfer some of the experiments 
in drawing to painting,- 
I never got round to 
doing it. Now I am just 
beginning to do what I proposed 
more than ten years 
ago. 
nyhody who should 
know about the artists 
living abroad should be 
reading the relevant lit' 
erature on art. lids implies 
that those who ought 
to know about these artists 
should know, whereas 
those who do not, still GR: So we are seeing 
a sort of going back to 
painting because we notice 
that before your uli experiment 
of the early Seventies 
you were painting in 
the traditional sense of it. 
With uli you went into drawing 
and lines, and now you 
are tracing your steps back 
to painting. You want to 
attempt painting with the 
have a lot of work to do. 
"there is no time that this 
home audience we are 
. talking about will know 
or recognize those living 
abroad when in the first 
instance, it does not 
know about the home 
Udechukwu: Yes, I think so. 
Udechukwu: Of course. As I said somewhere 
based artists. 
experience of your uli experiments. 
GR: There is a minimalist tendency in your 
space organisation and one can see traditional uli 
wall painting as a historical precedent, but does uli 
also explain the vigorous texturization evident in your 
recent work? 
else, uli traditional wall painting in some areas of 
Igboland have akika patterns as the background - 
akika patterns by the way are geometrical patterns 
which are created in monochromatic colour. In the 
Agulu/Nri area for instance, the artists paint over 
the laterite background with a coatof Aja nwa mmuo 
which is red and while the Aja nwa mmuo is still wet, 
they go over it with the fingers or ntecha which is 
something like a rag. In the course of the rhythmic 
hand movement, the paint in those areas where the 
ntecha presses on the wet colour lifts revealing the 
darker red laterite in the background. So they have 
their finger or ntecha creating those kind of textures, 
which I have tried to create. There is a link between 
what I am doing now and akika pattern in uli 
painting. 
GR: Your use of forks, razor blades in creating 
these textures marks a departure from the uli wall 
painter's cpproach, and even from your usual painting 
techniques. 
Udechukwu: I believe other artists have used 
tools like that but for these recent works I discovered 
that I could achieve some of the effects I wanted using 
such tools as the fork which is like a comb. It can 
create parallel lines so if I am using acrylics, when 
the painting is still wet, I could go through the surface 
with plastic forks which will then reveal the underlying 
layer of colour. Of course with the razor blade 
I can also scrape wet paint to reveal the underlying 
colour, or the canvas itself that is already stained 
with pigment. The same thing goes for watercolours, 
one can remove areas with razor blade when the 
pigment is still wet to create some very interesting 
effects.
GR: Sometimes you also introduce dots or 
lines which you described as 'hemming' and these 
again are used in traditional uli to emphasize motifs 
or patterns. I see a possible link between the hemming 
we see in your work and that seen in uli wall 
painting. Yet there is also a striking visual relationship 
between these uli design techniques and certain 
aspects of Aboriginal painting. How far can one 
stretch the cross-cultural affinities especially in the 
light of your earlier work on the similarities between 
uli and Li, the Chinese art of drawing and painting? 
Udechukwu: Well I have not really looked at 
it but there are possible areas of correspondence in 
the use of dots and breaking up of large spaces with 
textures which of course appear in the paintings from 
other cultures. You should not forget that when you 
reduce a painting to the basics, you are dealing with 
lines, dots and masses. Of course when you want to 
emphasize contours or boundaries you use lines or 
dots to do that. 
GR: How have acrylics affected your painting, 
since you have not been working with the medium 
until recently? 
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Udummili 
(Rainy season), 
1993 
acrylic on 
canvas, 
140 x 100 
Udechukwu: I used acrylics for the first time in 
the early 70s but for many years I had been painting 
with oils and watercolours. Now I am slowly going 
back to acrylics. What I find exciting about acrylics is 
that they enable me to work as fast as I prefer to. When 
I am working with them I can go on with a picture for 
hours on end, and this is possible because the paint 
dries very quickly and I can lay several successive 
layers. With oils, it is a different thing because you 
have to allow the paint to dry or you end up with a very 
muddy surface especially if you have to do all this 
scraping and scratching. 
GR: Are you saying that if you were working 
with oils some of the techniques you are exploring 
now may not be possible? Could that possibly account 
for the sift? 
Udechukwu: They might be possible but I don't 
see how I can lay a glaze and go back to it in three 
hours if I am working with oils. 
GR: There are areas in your paintings where 
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you combined ink and acrylics. I doubt if such 
combinations would be very possible with oils: 
Udechukwu: What I have done in some cases 
is that I draw on the canvas directly with ink and then 
I go over that with acrylic medium to secure it. In 
others, I go over the varnished drawing with lightly 
laid colours so that the white of fhe canvas is not 
retained as the background colour. Now I am not 
aware that I can do that with oils, nor that I can finish 
a drawing, it dries in hours then I go over it with 
varnish, and then lay colours on that. 
GR: How would you describe your current 
thematic focus if there is any such thing? 
Udechukwu: I haven't really looked at the 
body of my recent work to be able to determine the 
focus. But there are works which make comments on 
personages in our recent national history as well as 
on figures in world politics. There are pictures that 
refer to man's condition generally, and there are 
those that comment on ethnic relationships in Europe 
and elsewhere. For instance in Germany I noticed 
there are many tribes, I use 'tribes' because that is 
what they use for Africa, and there is a deep 
intertribal friction there. I have pictures based on 
landscapes and there is a series, The Seasons, which 
reflect the cycle of life. Then of course there is the 
large painting I produced in Germany that refers to 
the Black man, his condition, and his history. These 
might provide a clue to what I am engaged in right 
GR: You seem to have become more philosophical 
when compared with your series on No 
Water or Rhythms of Hunger, and some of your other 
thematic preoccupations in the past. 
Udechukwu: May be one can say that but 
even in those earlier works there was always questioning 
which is what all philosophical enquiries are 
involved with, and those series you are talking about 
were raising questions on human conditions. They 
made explicit comment on very topical issues whereas 
the recent works are a little bit more implicit. 
GR: The socio-economic situation in Nigeria 
now is at best discouraging. As an intellectual, an 
artist, or as a citizen you feel the pulse of the time. 
But as an artist where does frustration come in and 
where does inspiration begin? One is aware that 
there are arguments that such a social environment 
as we find ourselves no\v inspires artists while some 
harp on the destructive propensities of situations like 
this. What is your position? 
Udechukwu: My position has always been
that the work produced by an grtist is his response to 
his immediate experience and history, and if the 
historian or critic is ableto look deeply at the work, he 
could be able to make the link between the formal 
images of the picture and the social conditions or 
environments in which the artist exists. I believe that 
these links are always there. When the artist responds 
to an event, inspiration is involved because to produce 
a work of art there must be a measure of inspiration. 
There is of course the mechanical, the reportorial kind 
of response which reveals the artist's ability to handle 
his media. But the response which each artist makes 
to a given situation belongs to him and is reflected in 
his work. I don't know what kind of frustration you 
allude to, but for me my basic frustration over the years 
has been that I am aware that Nigeria is capable of 
creating a viable economy, a good environment. The 
people can be galvanized to create a nation which 
Black people all over the world will be very proud of, 
but this has not happened. 
I don't think that a greater percentage of the 
population is happy with what is happening here at 
present. There is a lot of suffering and it is believed that 
Nigeria could do better than it is doing at the moment. 
So as an artist I also feel the crunch of inadequate 
funds for living, lodging and transportation, and other 
necessities of life. You find that you cannot readily do 
what you would like to when so much time is spent 
searching for fuel, for cooking gas, and even water. 
These are things that should not be happening. They 
slow down the work that should be done and that is my 
major frustration. 
GR: Some artists and intellectuals have therefore 
decided to leave to find more conducive environments 
outside Nigeria where they can continue their 
work. What is your thinking concerning this exodus 
occasioned by the increasingly worsening socio-political 
situation? 
Udechukwu: Talking about'exodus', how many 
have left in relation to the entire population of artists, 
writers and scholars? 
GR: Not any sizeable number perhaps, but the 
quality of people that are leaving is impressive or 
rather worrisome. 
Udechukwu: How many artists of the Ben 
Enwonwu or Bruce Onobrakpeya class live abroad? 
I believe among the writers too there are quite many 
of the Soyinka class resident here in the country. So 
I really do not see so much of this exodus. 
GR: But a visit to the institutions of higher 
learning and cultural establishments gives a rather 
dismal picture of their situation. Many more are even 
threatening to leave if... 
Udechukwu: My attitude to leaving is quite 
simple. Even before the current social crisis, some 
people elected to live abroad and academics in the 
past were quite mobile. Many travelled outside the 
country for short periods, but I think that what-is 
happening now is that the likelihood of returning 
now for these who travel is minimal There is a 
saying that if things are good for the river, it will be 
good for the fish. So, if the condition here improves, 
I believe most of the artists or intellectuals who have 
left 'permanently' will return, but if it worsens, many 
more will leave. 
GR: And you foresee a situation where you 
will be forced to leave too? 
Udechukwu: I don't know whether I will leave 
in terms of a permanentdomicile abroad. But if I see 
that I can no longer operate here, if my work begins 
to suffer so much that I cannot attend to my primary 
office and I find a more conducive environment 
elsewhere, I will not hesitate to move so I can 
continue with the kind of work which ultimately I will 
be remembered for. If for instance a writer finds that 
he cannot write in Nigeria but can in South Africa or 
Moscow, if he discovers that he can write his best 
novels abroad, it is better for him to leave and 
produce the novels than stay here wasting. Ben Okri 
left Nigeria before the economic down turn, he 
elected to live abroad and if he had lived in Nigeria 
and could not publish those works. I would prefer he 
leaves for England to write The Famished Road than 
stay here hedged by socio-economic frustration. 
GR: And what would be the relationship 
between the artist living abroad and his home 
country? How much of information is available to 
him concerning his homeland outside of the usually 
refracted information in the international news media? 
Udechukwu: If the artist lived in his homeland 
for some time, he will maintain the links. As an artist 
there will be a bridge, a spiritual link between him 
and his homeland. I could liken it to a psychological 
umbilical cord that can not be severed. His essential 
self, no matter the distance, is still bound to his 
homeland. The situation is even better now that there 
are faster communication links and more frequent 
visits to the artist's host country by people from home. 
It is easier for the artist to become aware of actual 
situations in his homeland. But as I always say, if he 
is sensitive as an artist, there will be no break. 
GR: But then he will be creating for a different 
audience. GR 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
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