Dapo 
Adeniyi 
HRIS Afuba's studio and open 
air workplace on the outskirts 
of Enugu. October 2. 1998. In 
the background of sound 
recording were falling anvils 
on metal panels and fire 
sparks, as the interview lured 
the sculptor's concentration 
away from his work. 
I I 
I 
Interview with Chris Afuba 
about your response to installation. 
GR: Motivation comes in various forms I was asking 
Afuba: It is a nice idea. There is a need for people to 
I am saying that people do not, should not lose sight of 
Some impressions could be so fleeting that they require 
change with the time. 
the fact that art is not just that temporal. 
fast execution, to capture the mood and spirit of that idea. 
But again you discover that one needs to see something 
he has just dreamt of or he has just created. After some years 
one needs to see that again and again under different light and 
style. The more you look at how a work that has been created 
is recorded it enables not just you as an artist to appreciate it, 
it enables generations to come to appreciate what you 
created. It gives scope for wider interpretation so I do not 
believe or agree that people should just be doing installation 
because it is in vogue. But if people are moved to do installation
installation as a form of art. works have been critiqued or to know what peopl 
If you are inclined to a particular style or interpretation 
in art which you are so much at home with, 
continue with that particular style. There's no need for 
you to change as an artist. 
GR: You don't feel under pressure, sometimes, 
from reviews, critical discourse from international circles, 
say about me, I do not bother myself about that. 
G.R: You belong to AKA. In your circle do yo 
sometimes get together to discuss, at the theoreticc 
level, certain currents, certain emerging current 
which run across the work of artists within the group 
some elements, maybe some mild form of sell 
more or less pointing ways forward or suggesting new 
vogues; you find it easy to shrug them off, damn them, 
criticism, and things like that? 
Afuba: We do get together when we have ou 
meetings. And of course you know that when artist 
meet there is no limit to what artists discuss. We do no 
say we are coming together to talk at random. We at 
have agenda but what I am saying is that when we 
meet, we discuss trends in art, and it comes naturally 
people talk about us, about our work, some brine 
people, and we listen to them and react naturally 
When artists meet, that is artists who are involved, we 
discuss our work, creativity, developments in art, arl 
appreciation and so on. 
We even get information on people, may be 
about us, about our work and often these lead us into 
intellectual discussion. When artists meet there's no 
and continue with what you're doing? 
Afuba: Actually I've never really come under 
pressure from any quarter because, what I'm doing is 
internal. A work that is individualistic and emotional 
comes from within. And as far as I am concerned, it's 
only someone who's not convinced or serious with 
what he's doing that would be distracted or have 
pressure from external influences, when doing a work. 
Once you have an idea in art, record it, irrespective 
of what people think about it, that's how great 
ideas have been created. Picasso, for instance had not 
been listening to people, Monet and others were not 
listening to people's criticism about their work and 
styles. Cubism, impressionism and all that which they 
created in no time evolved. 
They stay in it, they were convinced and not 
bothered about what people thought. And later they 
brought people to see to the idea because what they 
were doing was honest and authentic. And when I talk 
limit to what can be discussed 
G.R: In an interview Obiora Udechukwu who 
is a member of your group complained that art 
historians were not doing enough work to support 
what the creators of the art are doi ng. That they are not 
forthcoming in terms of projecting what people are of authenticity, I mean the thing that they started, and 
they are fully convinced that they are pushing out their 
own idea. 
They continue doing it until people accept it or 
reject it. That's what has been happening to art styles 
and movements in the world. So I do not feel any 
doing on the field and all that, do you agree? 
Afuba: If you say not doing enough yes he is 
right. Because I have always quarrelled with the fact 
that art historians and critics do not go out to the field 
as you have just come to me. It's only on very few 
occasions that you see them coming like this to sit pressure neither am I under pressure. 
down and interview artists at work. G.R: Do you read a lot? Essays, criticism about 
your work about the work of other African artists? 
Afuba: I read about my work. But in fact there 
are many things about my work which I have not read 
Many artists in the hinterlands who work and 
who even find it difficult to go out do not go out looking 
for publicity. And of course a studio artist is a studio 
artist and he works on his art twenty-four hours. It is true 
not because I do not want to read them, but because 
that one should go out to organise certain things for I do not just go about asking people whether my work 
himself. But you must remember that creative artists has been critiqued. I do read things, if I come across 
are not that extroverted. They are not gifted with them, I've got magazines, articles, I like reading a lot 
running oround and then coming back to the studio Jo but I do not just search papers to see if I have been 
do their work. criticised or others have been criticised, as a routine 
So art historians need to reach out to artists by because you see in life, as you get older and more 
mature, you discover that you have very little time left contacting them where they do their work, just ^e 
You have little time to attend to your domestic their colleagues look out i n most developed countries.lf 
needs, attend to your work, push out your ideas and they hear or read about an artist who they think is 
record them. So I read, but I do not actually, if y o u worthwhile, they go out to the person and find out 
mean that I should be looking out for articles where my what he's doing; they do not wait for the person to 
come to them or may be write from what has been 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
GLENDORA .»;.
submitted i n terms of exhibition brochures or look at 
how many exhibitions the person has held. 
I here are many great artists who may not even 
hold one exhibition, yet they are great. They stay in 
their homes crnd work, people collect their works and 
they are at home working there and creating. They are 
much more productive that way than if you ask them 
to go out, get involved in running around, with the 
idea of exhibitions and things. 
Thus, as far as I'm concerned, art historians are 
not doing enough because they are supposed to reach 
out to people, to artists, because it is hard for someone 
to do the •work and again have to write about himself. 
G.R: Do you feel satisfied by the things that 
have been written about you, especially by non- 
Nigerian critics? 
art historians need to reach out to artists by 
contacting them where they do their work, 
just like their colleagues look out in most 
developed countrics.If they hear or read 
about an artist who they think is worthwhile, 
they go out to the person and find out what 
he's doing A f u b a : If you say satisfied it would seem like 
I have read everything that's been written about me... 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts
G.R: But whatever you have read; do you 
sometimes feel repulsed? Or even feel like responding 
to say, well, I don't agree with this? 
Afuba: I have responded on a number of times 
over things written on me, then there are those that I 
prefer not to bother myself over. 
Agreed, sometimes I feel repulsed but most times 
I feel encouraged. There are people who either 
because they do not understand what the artist was 
telling them or one way or another, because of their 
own disposition, they decided to represent the artist the 
way they thought best. Therefore, the artist is bound 
to find what they have written repulsive and one feels 
like reacting or responding. 
I think there have been one or two occasions 
when I felt like responding but I'm always here working, 
before I know it, the day is spent and I find out I have 
not done all that I had hoped to do. 
On the whole, both internationally and locally, I 
sometimes feel encouraged by what has been written 
on me, even though sometimes I have also been 
unhappy over some articles on me. 
G.R: Are you happy about this generalisation... 
when people w a n t to define, y'know, even contemporary 
artists in this section of Nigeria, they tend to want 
to group all of them under Uli. And I can see that many 
of you have actually extended beyond some of those 
confinements. 
Afuba: Well, this is a problem of the world 
Generalisation about Uli or what we may call Uli 
Stylistic Approach which is the Uli traditional element 
^design: If I getyour question very v^ll. you're asking 
G.R: I'm referring to some publications in fact in 
wh,c e v e n contemporary artists, people like you, and 
fhentheysayallofyoufallunderUli. 
A f U b O : Y ° U S6e 6 V e n t h e S ° - c a l l e d Uli ° r t i ^ those p 
e X P ° n e n t S 0 f U l i ^ no, always use Uli element 
On- Th6y d ° not d r a w R e a l l y , alwav always 
9 in the Uli style of art expression. 
areas U\* f " ' ^ ™ ^ that all artists in these ureas rail und h
h 
. So it is not safe for 
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rea 
traditional to them bu'you'll find t h , 
-9ht be o f f , h ° 
'letely because they are not inclined ,o that 
African Quarterly 
For instance, in the AKA group, we have members 
who are not strictly inclined to Uli: Boniface 
Okafor is one case in point, his style is surrealistic but 
he comes from this part of the world, the Igbo ethnic 
group.
Another example, Nsikak Esien, is expressionistic 
in interpretation. He has lived here for so long, like 
Tayo Adenaike; Adenaike works in this style may be 
because he was trained at Nsukka. 
But then it's not everybody who was trained at 
Nsukka that is at home with the Uli style. It depends on 
personal idiosyncrasy, art has to be a notion of feeling: 
what you feel and how you want to push it out. 
Nsikak Esien actually does use Uli motive but 
that is not a dominant feature in his work. He likes to 
produce works that can be characterised as the strict 
IMT approach to art interpretation, which is experimentation. 
The Institute of Management and Technology 
(IMT) Enugu art style has to do with experimentation. 
Nsikak likes to produce images that are charged 
with strong movement. Nsikak loves movement, he 
likes dramatic expression. 
This is obvious in his work, but people should 
not be generalising or take it for granted that if you 
come from an area you are using the art style of that 
area. 
The people who use Uli artform as a mode or 
expression are people who, from their background, 
from their root, have been in love with that art style. 
Take myself for instance, I started using Uli even 
before I knew its use in contemporary art. I started 
using Uli in wood where itwasa wayof life. Scrubbing 
the mud house, painting it, watching women draw Uli 
on their bodies.... Once you're a child in Igboland and 
you have a mud house in your area you have to learn 
how to use Uli; you have to decorate the walls with 
patterns. 
So those children who grew up in that way, 
when they come out to understand, like myself who 
came to study under Uche Okeke, it was there that he 
exposed me to the use of Uli in contemporary art. 
He taught me that. How to use Uli. I saw him 
doing that and I became aroused So we could be 
using Uli in contemporary art, not copying the old style 
but interpreting it, using it in your work as a form of 
expression, trying to draw like the traditional artist but 
using your own style, your own language You do not 
copy the past That is what Okeke calls synthesis. 
Using the past to join the present to create the future. 
G.R: I want us to return to this issue of changing 
attitudelook at installation art for example, you were
The Institute of Management and Technology 
(IMT) Enugu art style has to do with experimentation. 
Nsikak likes to produce images 
that are charged with strong movement. 
Nsikak loves movement, he likes dramatic 
expression 
telling me that it is not new.... 
Afuba: It is not new. I keep saying it is not new. 
Remember that when you asked me the question you 
were asking me whether I agree with the trend; that 
trend in art. 
I told you that installation is not new, because 
what people do temporarily, expressed as an art form 
(I mean in fleeting impressions; fleeting expressions by 
persons who are creative by nature). There are works, 
even footsteps as you take a walk, that are instinctive. 
It is prompted by instinct,... of course there is a natural 
tendency to take steps and walk, and move, but again 
there is this creativity that comes into walking. 
If one sees his girl friend or her boy friend 
approaching and she/he wants to impress him/her, 
the lover walks in a particular pattern. You would be 
surprised how creative the human being can be... they 
swagger and pose.... Even the affluent do it, when 
they want to throw their weight around. 
G.R: But we are defining installation essentially 
as a kind of stylistic pattern. 
Afuba: It's a stylistic pattern that is very temporal. 
I told you about laughter; about how a market 
woman sets her things in the market. How she sets her 
wares such as cocoyam or other articles. It's not 
exactly the way she sets them today that she'll set them 
tomorrow. At times even in the course of the market 
day, as the day progresses, she might think that what 
she had just set may not be impressing customers, or 
may be she did not set the most attractive articles in a 
more prominent place for people to see... she would 
re-organise the setting. 
Talk of installation, it's just a temporal art; it has 
to do with a fleeting impression, fleeting expression 
So you do it, you re-organise it, you do all. 
But my own... what I find against it, what I keep 
saying is, art is supposed to... art is supposed to be 
lived. In that way installation is good-art as it is lived. 
This could be captured with photographs, video 
cameras and so forth. With people acting out their 
daily living the way they should be acted, set things 
that could not actually be made permanent - in that 
way, installation is very wonderful. If people go to set 
them up on beaches , in areas, on parks where people 
come and watch what has been set up, photographed, 
documented, that way that is okay with 
installation. 
But if you want to talk about installation and you 
tell me that because it's in vogue, therefore it has to be 
adhered to, even by artists who are not so inclined, 
then I would say that that is wrong. Because, there's 
nothing greater than the art of posterity, the art that is 
be bequeathed to the future. The art that could be 
concretised. 
If it's something that is to be carved you carve 
it, so that people will keep on seeing it, appreciating 
it; If it is something that's going to be constructed you 
construct and its preserved for people to see. 
important... 
world would not have history. 
G.R: So preservation and permanence are 
Afuba: Yeah, they're important otherwise the 
G.R: I saw the work of a graduate student who 
is actually working in soft sculpture, and of course, 
s n - t 
that is not exactly installation because it lasts much 
longer and is not as fleeting but at the same time it j 
made in enduring material. 
Afuba: Soft sculpture like that has been pQrt o f 
what I teach students... you know the name of m e 
student? 
G.R: No. 
Afuba: Okay. Those who have passed through 
Ogy 
p e t s . 
me, (in the Institute of Management and Techno| 
IMT)) study soft sculpture as craft. Dolls, pupp e t s 
pillows, cushions, upholstery are all doing soft Scu|p. 
ture. They are using soft materials, cut foams to g e t 
shapes, create forms and even though they could be 
made as art objects that could be kept and appr e c i . 
ated for what they are, they could be functional when 
they are produced as cushions to sit on, or pillow* fOr 
people to lay their heads or as dolls if used as pup 
they're all soft sculpture. 
The area of soft sculpture is really wide. B r e a d 
making is another aspect of soft sculpture... 
G.R: Bread is even soft sculpture. 
Afuba: Yes, it's soft sculpture. After all whQt h 
African Quarterly f]
In any party, even during a party, human 
beings install themselves in a sitting position. 
A dancing hall is an installation. It is a unit of 
design set with balloons, every thing. Somebody 
set them up. It's installation. Installation 
is very wide and soft sculpture is very wide; 
I i 
using balloons to create different forms, is 
soft sculpture 
sculpture other than the creation or carving of forms in 
three dimensions or in relief. 
G.R: And come to think of it, do you know that 
many years ago my father was a baker and they used 
to actually create forms on the bread and bake and the 
bread had patterns, a form of Uli if you like, on the 
hunch of the bread... 
Afuba: And many of them, apart from, representing 
forms of animal, figures, you have purely bread 
shapes and forms that are purely formalistic in terms of 
what they call 'Luxurious Bus', a large rectangular loaf. 
It looks like a bus. A big bread now baked, has 
a roof; may be because of the rising of the bread in 
forms like the roof of a vehicle. It's just the basic form 
of a bus but that's not just the point. You have other 
shapes that are created by the bakers. 
Even making cakes, when you go to a wedding 
you find different types of forms. One woman baker 
tries to outclass the other in making of cakes. And it is 
installation. The installation is just cut and destroyed 
when the bride and bridegroom deconstruct the cake. 
But its an installation brought together there and set 
and everybody admires it. 
G.R: It is constructed in order to be 
deconstructed... 
Afuba: True, so even bread; you bring a loaf of 
bread and place it on the dining table for people to 
eat. And within a moment everything is set. The dining 
table during any meal is an installation; women who 
are dedicated, who are artistic (because everybody is 
an artist... have one thing in mind there's no human 
being that's not on artist. People make that mistake. 
When we wantto begin to classify them we wanttotalk 
about the 'Professional Artist'. But everybody is an artist 
by nature). 
So when you set the table it is installation and 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
GlENDORA ...» Vol. 2/No. 4 
before the time to say the Grace, the food to be 
presented to guests, the table is an art piece. And when 
you see different baked bread, cake, meat, all set, it's 
installation. 
In any party, even during a party, human beings 
install themselves in a sitting position. A dancing hall is 
an installation. It is a unit of design set with balloons, 
every thing. Somebody set them up. It's installation. 
Installation is very wide and soft sculpture is very wide; 
using balloons to create different forms, is soft sculpture. 
Even on the street, how cars move, how cars are 
parked in open spaces... 
G.R: And the fuel stations... 
and look at these things I just laugh. 
capture such moments, and it becomes enduring. 
Afuba: The filling stations, you see when I stand 
G.R: I remember some photographers who 
Afuba: Yes, that's the only way installation can 
become recorded or what you might call Recorded 
Installation. Installation is, for me, 'the art of daily 
living'. Everybody is involved in installation. If somebody 
wants to do that now and invite people to come 
and see, for me, it becomes, 'contrived installation'. 
Natural installation is the life that is lived by 
everybody, every day: the way that people park their 
cars, queue up, the way people atimes crowd together 
to view one event or the other... 
G.R: Or watch soccer... 
Afuba... or watch soccer, gather in the stadium, 
is installation. You see though video cameras, you see 
people when they want to clap, they rise up, (Mexican 
Wave - M.A) I don't know how they do it now, it's like 
they shout yeah! yeah!! 
It looks like everybody is planted. You go to the 
stadium, some architects, designers, planned the 
stadium or stadia in such a way that when people sit 
down, they form some letters... 
G.R: Bulgarian art! 
Afuba: It's installation. People sit down... the 
architects had planned it, designers, landscape designers 
had planned it such that when people come to 
an arena, when they sit down they form in the environment, 
elevation, depression, when people come to sit 
there they conform and accentuate the form of the 
environment therefore creating and enhancing that 
environment creating a picture, a work of art. 
G.R: So it becomes limitless, y'know... 
Afuba: It's limitless.