Programme attached
ART, SOCIAL STRUGGLE AND THE NATION STATE
AND BOOK PRESENTATION OF
ART, PARODY AND POLITICS: DELE JEGEDE'S CREATIVE ACTIVISM, NIGERIA AND THE TRANSNATIONAL SPACE
The conference brings together scholars and associates of dele jegede to examine his work and their import for understanding Nigeria, the oil rich but embattled postcolonial African State, and other locations that jegede has had cause to interrogate in his work. The conference is divided into three main phases.
Close to a dozen scholars will be discussing, among other things, the body of work by dele jegede and how it represents alternative history. The visual collective—cartoons, paintings and drawings—underpins, in the degree of its contestation with the universe of leaders and elites in Nigeria and its recall of the tensions within the social fabric, jegede's discontent with the structure of his society and his longing for a utopian state. Examining jegede's art and its impact becomes necessary in framing and reframing the leadership question in Nigeria, reviewing the boom and austere periods of Nigeria's history, and the gloom and vivacity of metropolises in such a postcolonial state. The artist/scholar witnesses a society that degenerates from affluence into hardship; wealth turns into woes, blessings into curses. However, he refuses to be a passive onlooker. It is not part of his pedigree to be quiet. In dreaming of the ideal, his creative cadence detours from the sheer pursuit of beauty and begins a conscious engagement with social realism and political visual expressions. His artistry gradually becomes tied to activism and to a nationalistic credo.
Artists across the ages and around the globe have had cause to be at logger-heads with the leadership of the nation state. They empty their fury on canvases, papers and various other media. The general examples of activist/artists or 'furious artists', whether in Africa or in the West, will be used to frame discussions about the specific example of jegede's artistry and what we have designated as "artivism". The scholars at the conference who are also contributors to the edited volume on jegede will be using the pivotal creativity of jegede to ask and answer a series of questions as they relate to art and politics, the artist and social responsibility, and the artist and the nation state. They will particularly address the restiveness, recklessness, dysfunctional system, corruption and inordinate power structures that are symptomatic of the Nigerian polity. The seminal publication on this remarkable artist and great nationalist entitled Art, Parody and Politics: dele jegede's creative activism, Nigeria and the Transnational Spacepublished by Africa World Press, Trenton New Jersey, will be formally presented.
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