J Obviously our discussion 
•ould attempt to span the venous 
Phases of your work as an artist. And n that somehow we will be able 
witl 
ment. 
\ in q little bi.t of your bios 
/ M . —i L-./. AU^W interact 
you are
For starters I want to 
ask how you got yourself into the 
business of metal sculpture. 
Amoda: Metal sculpture for me dates 
back to 1 981 in Auchi Polytechnic where 
I studied. That was the time when we 
started specialising. 
GR: Before that time you were not really 
into it. 
Amoda: No, before then nothing on 
metal. I just had the feeling that I was 
gifted in art, like any other kid who had 
one gift or the other. 
GR: It wasn't something you had running 
in the family? 
<GLENDORA 
Amoda: Well after graduation, after a 
series of exhibitions, people started to put 
bits and pieces together, tried to link my 
sculpture to my Dad who was a goldsmith. 
My Dad has told most people who 
have tried to link it to him, I never met 
him practise; but I knew his former 
apprentices who became master goldsmiths 
and on my way from school I was 
always attracted to their anvils, the sound 
they made with their anvils, you know 
those drum-like... I enjoyed that, and I 
just went there from our primary school 
to drum on the anvil, that's all that I can 
put together. 
GR: So you wouldn't agree that your 
ultimate election of metal sculpture over 
other aspects of fine art where you 
Quarterly on the ArB><Wtt@Hol> 
<78>
Peasant (1999) steel & wood 62cm diameter 
0/u Amoda 
obviously had some interest and talent 
also had something to do with the family, 
I'm referring to painting, to textile, 
pottery, wood carving. How then did 
metal sculpture gain a kind of upper 
hand? Was it the subconscious...? 
Amoda: Yes you used the right word, 
subconscious. Which means that consciously 
I wasn't a part of that decision. 
Apart from that, in the art school you 
had those you admired, mentors, some 
were your teachers, some friends in 
higher classes. I remember one of the 
class projects they gave me, that was not 
even the specialising year, I was in my 
second year and I used metal to execute 
the project. One of the things about 
sculpture as against other forms of art is
that students always felt free to express 
themselves. The thrust of sculpture even 
from the beginning was self-realisation. 
The assignment was such that we could 
do something from our locality, a masquerade 
from your place. Now you can 
imagine a teacher who had no idea 
whatsoever what a masquerade from 
your place looked like. It could open you 
to fraud. Well this time good because he 
doesn't know, and what he is going to 
judge is not based on what he has seen 
but on what you had on the ground, the 
forms, the proportions; if you appealed to 
his sight he considered it a good piece. 
Everybody came out with something 
different. You found that in a class of 
twenty-five there were twenty-five different 
approaches and I for one am not a 
conformist, which makes it easier for me 
to fit into sculpture. And it is because it 
allowed me to be myself. 
mirror 'hawk & lizard' (1999) mirror & steel 
149cm by 103cm 
Back to the question of why sculpture 
gained an upper hand. When you study 
under teachers, what they say to you can 
<GLENDORA REV.EW> < African Quarterly on tne Arts> <VOI3(,rNo, > 
<80>
mirror 'Okada' 
(1999) mirrorS, 
sieel & wood 
99cm by 99cm 
become very important. Apart from the 
grades they gave to you, there are 
certain remarks certain teachers who 
you have respect for might pass and a 
sensitive student would take seriously. I 
remember one of my teachers, Muffy 
Ajayi, who was in charge of that 
particular project, he was looking at 
everyone's work, and there were about 
one hundred and five students approaching 
the same thing and he later 
said that in that class there were a 
hundred and five possibilities. He picked 
my work and said, 'I don't know 
anything about you but if you do 
consider majoring in sculpture do not 
hesitate to move towards metal.' 
And then when I left school in 1983, in 
1984 there was a group show, a twoman 
show at the national council, 
myself and Wale Ajayi. ' 
GR: That's the National Council for Arts 
and Culture? 
Amoda: Yes, then with Imoukhuede as 
<GLENDORA REVIEWx/I/ncjn Quarter/yon the/4m><V013@Nol> 
the director. There I exhibited almost 
everything that I had learnt in school, in 
the media which you already enumerated: 
wood, stone, metal, plaster-of- 
Paris, fibre-glass, all you know, name it. 
Because I was fresh from school and I 
had the energy, then also because you 
wanted to prove that you were very 
versatile. But then something very 
interesting happened during that 
exhibition, all the works that I sold there 
were the the metal pieces. Everybody 
called and said to me, 'I love your metal 
work, I love your metal work'. And I was 
resisting because I didn't want to be 
boxed in by anybody who will say, 'go 
and do this, go and do that.' And 
because I was nonconformist, people 
saying I love your metal was good 
reason for me not to like them. 
Then also the power in metal, the 
challenges in metal I just could not resist. 
That was one area I couldn't remain 
myself, and I had to give in to the 
attraction to metal and people's en-
taking the fish by the fins (1999) steel 170cm by 144cm 
mabel (1999) glass & steel 90cm by 76cm 
<GLENDORA REVIEW> <African Quarterly on the Arts> <VOI3@No, > 
<82> 
dorsement and people's getting freaked 
out by anything I did in metal. So I said, 
'why give yourself the stress this man. You 
are a slave to metal' and that's where I 
am. 
GR: Interesting. You appear to have been 
in serious professional practice for ten, 
eleven years. Is it possible to describe 
beyond that early induction how you got 
to where you are now? Eventually we are 
coming to the more utilitarian expression 
through metal. 
Amoda: The best way to place what you 
are saying is to go back to that very 
exhibition, because exhibitions, especially 
group exhibitions, are supposed to be 
testing grounds for the acceptability of 
whatever medium you are doing. I don't 
now remember whether it was 1992 or 
1 993 or even '94, the National Council 
for Arts and Culture again decided to put 
up an all-sculpture exhibition for the OAU 
(Organisation of African Unity) summit in 
Abuja and they had a test-run in Lagos 
here and all the artists that were invited 
to participate in that exhibition were 
people who were trained in Auchi. We 
had the hall segmented to the artists so, 
being in Lagos, my work arrived late. You
know, mine was closer to the Church... 
(laughter) 
It was not my own making. The 
organisers decided, 'let us go for the 
difficult terrain first' and then they can 
take the others, because they came to 
collect the works themselves. So the 
arrangement was such that those based 
outside Lagos got the space allocation 
first, their works arrived first and they had 
set up. And I came in and my works were 
further inside. We all trained in the same 
school and we all represented different 
generations. 
GR: How many sculptors? 
Amoda: We were three metal sculptors at 
that very outing and some stone sculptors 
also. Obviously from people's remarks 
and also from my observation, some of 
the sculptors were not just near to each 
other, you could not tell them part. But as 
for me, after graduation I didn't go back 
to Auchi. I didn't remember what the 
school was like and what was the 
tradition. As I told you, I am nonconformist, 
I don't believe that I should go back 
to the school. And in any case I was too 
busy in Lagos to want to travel back 
there. 
So, my work came into the venue and of 
course there was a transition. There was 
a sharp transition. My approach and their 
approaches were quite different. Now to 
come to when it started to depart from 
the school, I cannot really put a time to it, 
but even in the school my approach was 
beginning to be different from what the 
others were doing. 
GR: Before I go to my next question, I am 
tempted to ask how that essential Amoda 
began to evolve beyond the walls of 
school, where you got your vibrations 
from? What circumstances or situations 
or even persons and practitioners gave 
the concrete stimuli in terms of style, how 
did it come or were they all just within 
you? 
Amoda: Well you must try very hard not 
to push that. I am not sensitive to that 
point where it started manifesting. As I 
<GLENDORA 
'/SO i'£•.'.{ #*;' 
!•' 3 81 5 I 
said, I am nonconformist and the fact 
that people are doing things in a 
fabric of 
ancient 
civilizaiion 
(1998) wood 
& sfeel 61cm 
by 120cm particular way is enough reason for me 
not to want to do it that way. That 
reduces or eliminates the factor of 
influence from somebody or anyone, 
but there are books, some books which 
are so serious; in fact what really trips 
me when I look at people's works is the 
standards of the artists... 
GR: And not the specificity of form. 
Amoda: Yes, it is the standard of a work. 
When you see a complete work, when 
you see a work that is an embodiment of 
everything, it is difficult for you to start 
saying you want to dissect it. It is a whole 
piece and if ypu remove anything, it 
<83>
windows of dreams 'B-FLY' (1999) steel 89cm by 134cm 
takes away from it. 
The holistic point of it must be there and 
that is my approach to it. I am a fan of a 
host of the early European constructivists: 
German, Russian, etc. I say it is the 
height of the finish of a work, the 
standards, not the form, not anything. I 
am experimentalist, the technique is what 
we all have in common, the form is what 
you try to create. 
Most essentially for me as a Nigerian, 
the environment itself is one of the 
greatest challenges... 
GR: The environment in what sense? 
Amoda: Well, for welding to take place 
there must be electricity. And as they say 
NEPA (the National Electric Power 
Authority) is like the proverbial bird that 
has learnt to fly without perching and we 
<GLENDORA 
the consumers we have to be the hunter 
that would shoot without missing. 
Therefore, if it is one hour of electricity 
they give to you you must utilise it to the 
fullest. This puts you on your toes, it 
keeps you on your guards. As soon as 
the light comes you start work, it triggers 
you and as the light goes you take a 
break. In that kind of situation you have 
to be very spontaneous, so what I do is 
to prepare for NEPA piles and piles of 
studies and sketches that I do, in anticipation 
and even mentally create the 
work. 
GR: There is a certain kind of contestation 
for prominence between the utilitarian 
and the non-utilitarian forms in your 
work. My observation after reviewing 
these Windows of Dreams and also the 
fences is that the utilitarian seems to 
have completely overpowered and 
overwhelmed the non-utilitarian form of 
expression. How did you begin to find 
your leaning? Was it deliberate? 
Amoda: First I would not agree with you 
that the utilitarian has overpowered the 
non-utilitarian. It is subjective, because 
when I am creating I don't see these 
distinctions. One is an extension of the 
other. Because of its nature, because of 
the presentation, one tends to be more 
effective or more compelling so, the 
fence, the windows, they are things that 
you see when you come to a house and 
as your eyes wander around you see, 
they rest on those. The others, the nonutilitarian 
works, maybe you don't have 
enough of them within the set-up to give 
that command. Maybe that is what's 
responsible but to go back to the 
question, how did I get drawn to that? 
Again as I said, the environment, the 
social needs compels one to try to 
address problems arising from the 
environment. When I was growing in 
Warri, there were no fences. What 
demarcated a plot from the other was 
just a shallow drain. So you cross a 
shallow drain and you are in the other 
man's premises; you cross again and 
you're in a house. It was only after I 
came to Lagos, after the civil war, that 
fences started growing. First they grew to 
^ Qumerly on the Artsx 
<84>
maiden dance 
'omoko' glass & 
steel 12cm by 
128cm 
the point where you could scale the 
fence, then it grew to where you needed 
a pole to scale over. And all of a sudden 
we found ourselves in prison. We say we 
want to shut the armed robbers or the 
hoodlums out of the house so you have 
bars. Now the truth of the matter is that 
they are the ones who are free, you in 
the house are the one who is in prison, 
who is restricted, and it's supposed to be 
the other way round. And I decided to 
come up with this concept of windows of 
dreams where I wouldn't feel restricted 
and still shut out them all the same, so 
there is a balance. When I'm looking at 
the window it's now without the view that 
I am shut in or I am shutting them off, 
instead there's a screen which serves a 
dual purpose. We carry it also to the 
Doors of Paradise and we carry it also to 
the gate, and now its spreading to the 
fence. Coming back into the house we 
have the tables, we have the kitchen 
cabinets, the wardrobes and what have 
you? 
Again it is the environment. In the 
beginning I called carpenters to make 
tables for me, tables that are strong and 
the tables gave way in no time. The 
same thing with the bed until I had to do 
everything myself, my steel bed, everything 
through steel. And because I can 
do it, because I want to be involved with 
<GLENDORAREVlEW><4fr;ca/? Quarterly on the Arts><V0\3@Ho 1 > 
<85> 
L 
If1
'FLORA' steel 89cm by ?34cm windows of dreom
I ;f j 1" gf 
1
Kg
* S r .
/ i 
A: 
I^^ 
IIm
"-1 i 
11 i 
1
i 11 
^i 
tmmmmt II 
^S^- II
is also the weakest. You have to lock the door 
leave it open it is very easy for the breeze to 
it, there is this aspect of injecting your 
spirit, your person into what you use and 
your character you know,... it becomes a 
way of life for me. That is one of the 
things that necessitated my moving in 
that direction. And of course if you look 
in my house you find many things that I 
did myself with steel, that again is 
because Nigerians are doubting 
Thomases, they have to see it before 
they believe it. I have to use myself as a 
guinea pig, they come in and they like it 
and it's easier to say, This is what I'm 
talking about'. 
GR: The way these windows come across 
to me is that you are trying to maximise 
the possibility for space. When I look at 
the attention to detail and the seriousness 
that goes into the production I see 
something comparable to the regular 
<GLENDORA PEV,EW 
hangings except that with the Windows of 
Dreams there are no fillings. So I actually 
thought you were trying to maximise 
space by moving the regular hanging 
away from the solid wall to the open 
space of the window. 
Amoda: Well you see that's the beauty 
about it. You start off from one point, you 
never can tell where... art is very powerful, 
very compelling but you see the 
bottomline of this thing is that the artist 
himself, the manufacturer of these 
artifacts, must be honest, once you're 
honest to the material, honest to your 
call, you cannot hold back the direction 
and the possibilities of these things. So I 
agree with you, yes; again that's why I 
said I didn't see it as too separate 
because one is essentially an extension of 
the other. The detail that you saw, yes, we 
Sage (1999) 
steel 43cm by 
19cm by 
21cm. 
What the 
paper says 
(1999) steel 
30cm by 
23cm by 
34cm 
I 
>"'eArts><Vo]S(<6No\> 
<86>
8 
for it to be the strongest part and if you 
pass through in. 
try to. Again the architects in this country 
are very critical, you are dealing with a 
lot of people who assume a position of 
authority, you can't let your guards down 
at all. Once you find yourself in that kind 
of position you start to push and push 
and push. I am experimenting, I really 
don't know where it will end. 
GR: Is it possible to view your work in 
this idiom as a kind of response to the 
more common or the more regular, 
simple window filigrees? 
Amoda: You are right to some extent 
there. When I moved from windows to 
doors my intention was to question the 
rationale behind Critall-Hope doors. 
Year in year out it is the same type of 
metal-glass doors and it's not serving 
the purpose, people still have to put West (1999) steel 38cm by 26 cam by 20cm 
<GLENDORA REVIEW >< African Quarterly on the Arts><Wb@Ko\> 
<87>
plot from the other was just a shallow drain. Sc 
the other man's premises; you cross again and 
to Lagos, after the civil war, that fences started 
burglar-proof behind the doors. I felt I 
could put all the functions into one frame 
- beauty, security, operation. Yes I was 
reacting to what we've been living with 
year in year out. These people have been 
in business for forty-something years and 
yet what they offer us is the same profile. 
They say things really must be as they 
were forty-seven years ago, and I say no. 
First I wasn't born then, second, I'm 
exposed, third I studied the art of creating 
forms. So, if my predecessors allow it to 
go, I don't want to be a part of that, fortyseven 
years after, when the dynamics of 
the situation has changed. 
GR: How about the economics of producing 
these works? Was that why you 
actually began to adopt found objects? 
Amoda: Oh no. The truth about it is this is 
my house and I have enjoyed considerable 
freedom in terms of the materials 
that I incorporate into the jobs represented 
here. But a lot of people cannot 
even deal with that, they are not so 
exposed as to accept them (found objects) 
as contributing to the form of the works. If 
you, let's say for argument's sake, ask for 
twenty thousand naira for a window piece, 
that twenty thousand could, in regular 
window bars, do five windows. So they 
would not understand if you ask for twenty 
thousand and you now put some found 
objects there. They believe that every bit of 
the money given to you must be spent 
buying the materials. They do not understand 
that an art work is not about the 
materials but about the spiritual commitments. 
And truly speaking, if you look at 
the metals that we use the cost of them is 
nowhere to be compared with the value 
that we as artists place on the works. 
GR: The other thing is, do you have 
situations in which certain fences or 
vanity series (1997) 
glass & steel 61cm 
by 92cm 
windows have already been composed 
and then someone comes and says to 
you I like this concept or I don't like this 
one. Or you actually go on to produce 
specifically for someone, or maybe at 
other times the idea is determined by a 
specific architecture...? 
Amoda: First the issue of people coming 
and saying I see and I want, is a regular 
occurrence. Everything that is achieved 
or actualised here are things that people 
want to have but I am always quick to tell 
them that there are no works that I want 
to repeat. We usually have to go to the 
architecture and see how it can introduce 
something, or even the lifestyle of the 
person concerned. A doctor for example 
who gives me a brief, because these 
things can have a therapeutic feeling; you 
<GLENDORA REVIEW> <Afacan Quarterly on the Arts> <V0I3@Noi> 
<88>
you cross a shallow drain and you are in 
you're in a house. It was only after I came 
moving part of this job, not the very 
lucrative part because the cost is 
enormous, unlike the doors, and the 
clients cannot understand that because 
of the relative price compared with the 
bullet-proof doors that the Lebanese 
bring in. And I always argue that we 
don't need bullet-proof doors here, we 
mirror 'torso & 
birds' (1999) 
mirror & steel 
107cm by 78cm 
homes is the strongest part of the 
structure and it is also the weakest. You 
have to lock the door for it to be the 
strongest part and if you leave it open it 
is very easy for the breeze to pass 
through in. Therefore what to do is to 
look at the sophistication of crime here: 
we have people who are armed 
robbers, who want to break into a 
house. We have hired assassins. And if 
you have hired assassins, these doors 
cannot prevent them because they are 
out there waiting for you at your gate as 
soon as you get out. 
GR: Do you consider artists working in 
the building industry, with architects and 
so on, as providing a kind of possibility 
for subsistence, for greater financial 
independence? 
Amoda: Certainly, it is a moneyspinning 
industry. Everyone who is 
building a house, wants to protect the 
property, wants to protect the lives and 
people also want to do it in style.GR 
growing. 
want something you look at and you can 
sleep or something you look at and you 
feel secure. So that yes, the architectural 
style or pattern affects the type of form 
that we create. Secondly I purposely resist 
any repetition. I'm a young man and I 
feel that I still have a lot to do, so why 
should I saddle myself with repeating 
what I have done? 
Now what we are doing again is that a 
scheme can be translated into different 
forms. So you can see a work that 
continues, and a part of it disappears 
into the wall and reapears in the other 
windows. If you have enough space then 
you would be able to read the elements 
continuously. 
But they (the windows) are not the very 
<GLENDORA REVIEW: 
z African Quarterly on theArts> <V013@Nol > 
<89>