Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta

Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Los Angeles, California May 19-November 17, 2002

The exhibition "Ways of the Rivers" and its accompanying publication of the same title (reviewed on p. 10) are important additions to existing knowledge about the Niger Delta, a unique geographical environment and definitely one of the most interesting culture areas in the world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the exhibition provided us with an opportunity to evaluate an emerging crisis of representation in African art history. I refer to the growing dichotomy between art exhibitions purporting to represent distinctive ethnic forms of material production through historically dated art objects and the emergence of contemporary forms of art in those contexts that bear little formal resemblance to canonical cultural artifacts. In other words, it appears we no longer have a clear idea of what art objects are appropriate to representations of African cultures. Contemporary exhibitions of African art need to specify the historical nature of their artifacts in order to distinguish between their canonical forms and new productions that may not be based on those prototypes that are created with different intentions and directed to different uses.

These exhibitions also need to deconstruct the re emergence of "tribal" identification in African art history. We can agree, without being facetious, that we have found all the "tribes." The important question today is how to transcend theoretical paradigms that conceptualize African cultures mainly in terms of tribal (ethnic, societal, ancestral, etc.; insert your word of choice here) identification. Given the increasing awareness that ethnic identities are relatively recent formations indebted to Africa's colonial history in the past century and a half, new paradigms that provide a better assessment of African cultural practice are needed. (1)

The Niger Delta region and culture area is a prime locale for engaging the above questions. It is a geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse environment marked by centuries of interaction among its different indigenous societies and with Europe since the fifteenth century. Prominent ethnic groups in this area include the Ijo, Itsekiri, Isoko, Urhobo, Delta, Yoruba, Igbo, Ekpeye, Abua, and Ogoni, many of whom share masquerade traditions and forms of social organization. As Kenneth Onwuka Dike noted in his seminal work on Niger Delta economics (1956), the entire region is linked by navigable waterways that have served as migration routes for people, goods, and ideas over the centuries. The Niger Delta is also the second largest--and the largest inhabited--delta system in the world.

"Ways of the Rivers" was the first exhibition "dedicated to the complex cultural matrix of the Niger Delta." Its catalogue is also "one of the few studies of African art to examine the relationship of culture to environment and to explore the expression of an entire region as opposed to a single ethnic group" (p. 11). (2) By now, the protocols for presenting exhibitions of this kind are fairly evident, and no institution does a better job of relating African artworks to their original cultures and tracking their reception in international spaces than the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. "Ways of the Rivers" continued the Fowler's tradition of calling attention to important cultural paradigms, aided in this instance by a politically charged environment in which the insidious corporate exploitation of Niger Delta resources has made the area internationally notorious.

The curators, Martha G. Anderson and Philip M. Peek, showed great insight in their selection of the objects for the exhibition. These included a remarkable body of artworks spanning many centuries, from the still-mysterious products of the Lower Niger Bronze Industry (some dated to the mid-seventeenth century) to the contemporary installations of Bruce Onobrakpeya and Sokari Douglas Camp, arguably the most famous contemporary artists from the Niger Delta. Anderson and Peek also pursued a greater objective for this exhibition through their decision to interrogate the relationship between Niger Delta cultures and their environment. This decision required them to navigate the minefields of environmental determinism and the quagmire of essentialized ethnic identities represented by monolithic "styles," what Sidney Kasfir famously criticized as the "one-tribe, one-style" paradigm. They were largely successful in these objectives.

The exhibition was divided into several sections, and the installation provided viewers with a clear and uninterrupted view of each object. The first gallery was anchored by a spectacular display of three masked headdresses that revealed the shared veneration of water spirits among Niger Delta peoples. In the same display, there were also a group of life-size ancestral figures and a selection of intricate bronze objects from the Lower Niger Bronze Industry. The focal point of this effective entrance display was an elegant sawfish (Oki) mask headdress whose sleek shape pointed to the dangerous power of both the animal and the water spirit it represents. This section of the exhibition subsequently explored a range of art objects designed to illustrate the long history of Niger Delta art and cultures.

Other galleries focused on life-cycle rituals and how art is used to construct individual and ethnic identity among Niger Delta peoples. The curators selected objects that illustrate masculine virility and artworks that speak to female interests, which emphasize the transition to adulthood. Five strategically placed video monitors spooled documentaries of various ceremonies, war canoes, regatta displays, and masquerade performances. The documentary on an Iwopin or Ijebu regatta ensemble was notable, as was the one showing a Shark or Python masquerade whose textile armature faintly recalled Chinese dragon displays. Pictures mounted at intervals provided explanations of the artworks on display.

Notable pieces included the monumental sculpture of an Ijo multiheaded bush spirit, Kalabari duein fubara ancestral screens, and a very impressive collection of Isoko ivri sculptures, ritual objects used by their owner to control assertiveness. Ivri echoes similar ritual objects found among the Igbo (ikenga), Edo (ikegobo), and Igala (ikega) and points to local interpretations of common ideas among these ethnic groups. Other memorable artworks included a pangolin masquerade headdress used by Ekpeye peoples and a re-creation of an Isoko shrine ensemble. A section on contemporary Niger Delta arts rounded out the exhibition with a prominent installation by Brace Onobrakpeya (Akporode) that echoed the accumulative principle of the Isoko shrine in its function as an archive of memory.

The exhibition thus introduced us to a wide array of art objects from the Niger Delta. Similarly, its catalogue provides a dense exegesis of the objects as they are used and interpreted within the indigenous contexts of their production. An examination of the catalogue is important to any analysis of the exhibition itself, since the artworks depended on the publication to enunciate the finer details of their use in distinctive cultural spaces.

Exhibition catalogues are a principal means of inscribing knowledge about African cultures, and their capacity for explication is used to good effect in Ways of the Rivers. In their introduction, Anderson and Peek, who are also the catalogue's editors, suggest that the "... Niger Delta ... is perhaps best conceived as a conceptual framework ... whose inhabitants exist within a unique fabric of cultural resemblances and cultural differences" (p. 30). The viewer reader thus benefits from an interpretation of not only the wide range of artworks presented but also the discursive structures underlying the exhibition and its publication. The curators were judicious in their selection of authors for the exhibition catalogue. These include Lisa Aronson, Henry Drewal, E. J. Alagoa, Keith Nicklin, Sonpie Kpone-Towne, Kay Williamson, E. E. Efere, Joanne Either, Kathy Curnow, Jill Salmons, Joseph Eboreime, and Philip E. Leis.

The catalogue is divided into three parts. The first deals with the early history of trade and contact in the Niger Delta. Part two addresses the environmental and cultural confluence arising from the relationship between environment and culture. The third part focuses on how art objects support local ethnic and cultural identities. In their conclusion, Anderson and Peek argue that although great ethnic and linguistic diversity mark the region, local populations have managed to maintain distinct identities and diverse cultural traditions. They also suggest that the area's history of fusion and fission present a microcosm of the ethnic and political tensions of the Nigerian nation since independence.

One notes here the struggle between a biologically coded, essentialist idea of ethnicity and a relativistic idea that locates ethnic identities in active forms of cultural education. Strangely enough, there is no focus on individuals whose identities fall between the ethnic groups described by the authors--those who, for example, profess allegiance to two ethnic identities (say, Ijo and Urhobo, or Yoruba and Itsekiri), whether because of parental intermarriage or simply because of an upbringing and fluency in two cultures. Many Niger Delta people are bicultural or multicultural in that sense, and their story is yet to be enunciated. That said, the essays provide lucid and insightful analyses supported by brilliant illustrations of historical and contemporary contexts of cultural practices in the Delta. The 480 illustrations (430 of them in color) constitute a valuable compendium of images on the subject, many of which are published here for the first time. Ways of the Rivers looks set to be a benchmark publication on this area's visual culture.

The curators noted that although the Delta's unique geographical environment plays a large role in its historical and cultural development, it is a long leap from this fact to an assertion that its peoples are defined by their environment. Similarly, the obvious transmission of ideas across cultural boundaries makes it impossible to attribute forms of artistic practice solely to individual ethnic groups--to assert, for example, that Isoko peoples are defined by their use of ivri. In fact, one interesting aspect of this exhibition is the manner in which indigenous proclamations of similarity or difference shifted constantly and refused to be bounded by strict ideas of ethnic identity. (3) It is now generally accepted that fluid ethnic identities of an earlier historical period became sharply delineated under British colonial rule from the nineteenth century onward. (4) However, the politics of ethnic diversity is a constant aspect of contemporary social organization in the Delta.

What accounts for the region's extreme cultural diversity? Archaeological evidence suggests that the area has been inhabited since the eighth century. There is also a mix of indigenous populations forced into agglomeration by external forces, like those engendered by the Edo territorial expansion from the sixteenth century until the kingdom's demise in 1897. (5) Intermarriage across the region produced common riverine models of cultural practice that are most evident in masquerade traditions dedicated to the shared veneration of water spirits. European presence on the coast from the fifteenth century onward also contributed in no small measure to contemporary ethnic identity among Delta peoples. Aside from obvious influences on costume and regalia, a main aspect of this interaction was the racial intermixing between local populations and European traders and sailors that ultimately led to a valorization of fair skin by the Urhobo and Itsekiri in the contemporary era. Different aspects of the above heritage are incorporated into the artworks, costumes, and attitudes of Niger Delta societies.

The attendant density of symbols systems, signs, and concepts deriving from this heritage provides a unique matrix of visual and verbal representations that the exhibition explored in great detail. It was evident in the monumental wood and delicate bronze sculptures, water spirit masks, and canoe paddles displayed, and also in all manner of trade goods of foreign provenance that have been incorporated into indigenous contexts of practice, such as the Italian glass trumpet included in the exhibition (catalogue, p. 89).

Anderson and Peek thus hinged their selection and analysis of artworks on the fluid nature of ethnic identities in an environment where ideas about cultural practice and social organization have circulated among individual societies for centuries. The principal themes--water and war--and the artworks (mostly focused on masquerades and shrine arts) underlying the exhibition provided evidence of this intercultural process. It would be hard to identify any two factors that contributed more to the organization of contemporary Niger Delta cultures than water and war. In the first, navigable waterways fueled endless migrations and the resources to sustain human ingress. The second factor attests to the fight among diverse populations for control over those same resources, and to the tyranny of oppressive powers, both local and foreign, that succeeded in imposing their will on the environment.

The struggle between abundance and abjection is an age-old story that has left physical and psychic scars on the watery landscape of the Delta. The initial site of this struggle was the encounters between different migrant groups and their need to secure living space. From the fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century, it was evident in the immense local wealth and concomitant social disintegration engendered by the transatlantic slave trade. Later it emerged in the conflict between local leaders and the colonial aspirations of the British for control of economic and political power. Anderson's analysis of this aspect of Niger Delta history strikes a sour note in an otherwise creditable text. She asserts (p. 80, Interleaf B) that chiefs emerged in many places in the Delta because of colonial structures of governance; yet preexisting economic and social forces had already engendered the rise of powerful rulers who competed for economic advantage. Anderson notes, however, that "... during the latter part of the nineteenth century, many of these colorful leaders made the mistake of trying to outsmart the British"--with disastrous consequences. The implication here of natural British power insults the memory of those great Niger Delta chiefs. It also places on them the onus of conflict and the eventual destruction of Niger Delta polities. The historical record clearly shows that the Western world has never accepted that Africans have a claim to their own bodies or natural resources. It was the British who, through genocidal force and unethical trade relationships, tried to outsmart these leaders in their own local spheres of influence; thus their resistance. The historical record is littered with the subjugated bodies of those great rulers: King Jaja of Opobo, King Nana of Itsekiri Koko, and, most scandalously, Oba Ovortramwen of the Edo kingdom of Benin. The ensuing disruption of Niger Delta kingdoms engendered by colonization directly resulted in the contemporary corporate exploitation (both local and international) of Delta resources that represents today's unique brand of African enslavement.

This history of conflict subsists in the environmental devastation caused by oil exploitation and Delta peoples" fight against faceless European and American oil corporations. The demand for equal access to oil wealth by local communities and the harsh repression and murder of many indigenous activists by the Nigerian government protecting the oil companies have made the region notorious. (6) This struggle for equitable treatment has not been going well for Niger Delta peoples in recent times, although it may account for the emergence of a warrior ethos. In fact, Martha Anderson suggests (arguing about a specific ethnic group) that the warrior ethos "provides a model for Ijo art and ritual, as well as an ideological basis for warfare and other forms of cultural aggression." This idea is typified by the ceremonial war canoes floated every year to celebrate the memory of valiant ancestors (pp. 91-119).

The idea of celebration typified by the regatta spectacle recurred in the exhibition, which asserted that it is important to celebrate the life and cultures of the Niger Delta peoples despite the adversities they confront. To this end, "Ways of the Rivers" provided a large number of images to illustrate daily life. The various media (sculpture, photography, video) in which they were presented provided the visitor with a lot of information on different ceremonies. These images also captured the generic poverty of these communities despite their location in one of the most resource-rich areas on the planet.

This obvious destitution may be the reason why the exhibition catalogue emphasizes how the history of Niger Delta communities since the mid-twentieth century has been tied to oil exploitation and environmental degradation. Thus the celebratory tone of several texts in the catalogue is counterbalanced by analyses of the conflicts engendered by oil companies' activities, even though the authors chose not to focus on a narrative of victimhood. Nevertheless, these populations are clearly victims of local and foreign oppression. Thus the pristine photographs of isolated museum objects represented in the exhibition strike a discordant note with the barely concealed destitution of the populace attending various pageants as shown in the above-mentioned documentary videos.

The curators commendably tied questions of cultural practice to questions of environmental degradation in their choice of artworks and narratives. There was also an unspoken acknowledgment that the arts and cultural activities of the sort on display serve as coping mechanisms for local populations in their struggle with the environmental and health hazards engendered by the exploitation of petro-chemical resources.

I agree with the curators that one should celebrate the spirit of Niger Delta populations in the face of adversity. However, at a time when African issues have been deemed irrelevant in the international context and its continued exploitation validated as a normal state of affairs, it is necessary to review the politics of representing African cultures. One could assert that there is a crisis of representation in the discourse on African art relating to our objects of study. Despite analysis of social histories and contexts of practice, this discourse is slipping into a redundant formalism in which celebrations of the "art and cultural spirit" of African populations displace urgent concerns about postcolonial emancipation in the postindependence era.

There is also a need to redefine the objects of study appropriate to representations of African cultures in this new century, as the canonical objects become increasingly scarce and commodified. This action is imperative because of capitalism's appetite for new commodities and because of the dictates of our own discipline as art historians who chronicle the changing conventions of cultural practice in African societies. As the "classical" objects get canonized, (7) the field, still mired in its focus on a specific historical period (defined as "precolonial"), turns to artworks of more questionable provenance and less artistic skill.

We could see this problem in "Ways of the Rivers." Some sculptures were clearly of interior workmanship, something we can criticize without getting bogged down in arguments about the ideological implications of the word "quality." Expert workmanship or artistic skill (what the Igbo call Ikwa-Nka and whose adepts they call DiNka) is widely recognized in Niger Delta societies. It extends to constructing headdresses, arranging the layout of textiles in funerary installations, dancing, and producing sculpture intended for use as masquerades, power figures, secular items, and so on. Assured handling of materials and methods was clearly lacking in some of the artworks in the exhibition. (8)

These questions also affect the inclusion of two prominent contemporary Niger Delta artists: Bruce Onobrakpeya, based in Nigeria, and Sokari Douglas Camp, who has lived in London now for more than three decades. Two plastograph etchings and an installation, Akporode (1995, from the Royal Academy's Africa 95 exhibition in London), reflected Onobrakpeya's advancement from printmaking to three-dimensional work. Akporode deploys the logic of actual African shrines in that its parts were accumulated from objects produced in different periods of Onobrakpeya's career. It thus serves the artist as an archive of memory that is in many ways similar to the archival intent of a real shrine. Sokari Douglas Camp was represented by rather weak examples of her signature metal masquerades (except for Green Alagba, 1995). In any case, the contemporary art section appeared tacked on to the entire program. The modernist impulse in both artists' works may reference traditional art or construct narratives of artistic identity based on their Delta origins, but it is nevertheless directed toward different goals. There is no serious explanation of the conceptual transformations involved in these artists' contemporary practice in the exhibition catalogue, although Anderson provides a brief note on their work (p. 330).

This exhibition faltered on the issue of visual display. Niger Delta cultures deploy some of the most colorful costumes and art for daily use in all of Africa. Yet, the installation's walls and mounts were in a gray tone that bled into the objects, thus giving the entire tableau a rather somber look. Although one got a glimpse of the colorful nature of quotidian reality in the Niger Delta from the video documentaries, a couple of large pictures showing people in vividly hued clothing would have done the trick. The catalogue abounded in these kinds of pictures, which made it all the more disappointing that they were not considered for the exhibition's installation format.

The above criticism does not detract from the exhibition's success. The fact that "Ways of the Rivers" allowed us to raise these issues in the first place attests to the great effort and intellectual integrity of its organizers, given the sheer scope of the project and its meticulous documentation. Above all, the exhibition succeeded in actualizing the voices of Niger Delta populations, whose explanation of why they do what they do was incorporated into the critical analysis of different cultural forms. These indigenous explanations point to the value of narratives in the construction of identity and may not be easily discounted.

Consider in this respect two of the most enigmatic artworks on display in the exhibition, identified in the catalogue (p. 206) as mask headdresses of Ijebu Yoruba or Ijo origin, hence of indeterminate provenance. These masks combine avian and marine animal characteristics with the tusks and horns of land animals. Their somber colors and white-striped bands render them even more enigmatic. This kind of fantastical (or phantasmagoric) agglomeration is common in Niger Delta symbolic forms and can be seen to great effect in the Isoko ivri sculptures, a wide selection of which was on display. Despite their erudite scholarship and the meticulous identification of the exhibition's art objects, the authors were compelled to concede that although these two mask headdresses represent powerful spirits, their actual origins can no longer be identified. This fact in no way enables a conclusion that knowledge about the mask has been lost to its users. Rather it reaffirms that although one can experience and interact with masked spirits, they are basically unknowable. A confrontation with a masked spirit negates witnessing. The viewer or acolyte comes to terms with his inability to comprehend mystery represented by the masked spirit; he confesses his ignorance precisely so that he may be informed and enlightened.

Above all, this desire to be enlightened provided a structure for the curators in their attitude toward "Ways of the Rivers." Anderson and Peek recognized that no one exhibition can do justice to the complex environment and politics of the Niger Delta, and they structured their engagement with the subject(s) accordingly. They are to be commended for their honesty and intellectual integrity, and also for producing an excellent exhibition that enlightened its audience on the culturally impressive and politically troubling environment of the Niger Delta.

(1.) See, for instance, Thompson 1989:107-8. Thompson argues that "ethnic processes in the 'underdeveloped' world have been relatively recent historical creations of colonialism and imperialism and the subsequent post-colonial period in which primordial communities have become integrated into new and often unstable state structures."

(2.) The Fowler Museum prefers that the accompanying publication (Anderson & Peek 2002) be called a book. I continue to use the word "catalogue" in recognition of the fact that the book reproduces the discourse of the exhibition even though several of its authors provided critical examination of Niger Delta cultures.

(3.) This focus on indigenous interpretations of cultural and social organization reflects what Andrew Apter calls a "hermeneutical focus [that] examines how indigenous forms of knowledge and power constitute the critical conditions of social reproduction and change" (1992:7).

(4.) For instance, Aidan Campbell (1997:6) argues that the conception of absolute ethnic identities is an ideological framework for Africa constructed in the West.

(5.) Anderson and Peek (p. 30) identify this idea as the "refugee area" hypothesis and point out that E. J. Alagoa, a contributor to the catalogue, stands opposed to this hypothesis. Nevertheless, the disruptive warmongering of the Edo kingdom of Benin played a great role in the history of the Niger Delta. For analysis of how Edo hegemony and expansion affected Niger Delta communities see Okpewo 1998.

(6.) See in this respect the special edition focused on the Niger Delta by TELL magazine (2003), a major Nigerian publication. In addition to graphic stories of environmental degradation and subjugation of the local population by Nigerian military forces, TELL chronicles the medical effects of endless gas flaring and oil spills on the population. See especially the illustrations on p. 58 of a baby with "congenital malformation" and the boy with his brain growing outside his skull.

(7.) The collection of objects in Tom Phillips's Africa: The Art of a Continent (1995) may be interpreted as a basic canon of "classical" African art. The questions of validation and cultural patrimony raised by this canon are noted but not discussed in that publication.

(8.) The objects in the re-created Isoko shrine ensemble are an example. It should be noted that shoddy workmanship does not in any way interfere with the efficacy of the shrine as a locus of spiritual power. A process of consecration that calls the spiritual power invoked into being activates objects used in shrine ensembles. To that extent, the objects themselves undergo further transformation through accretion resulting from sacrifices, thereby becoming powerful objects defined not in terms of their physical forms but in terms of their affect.

References cited

Anderson, Martha G. and Philip M. Peek (eds.). 2002. Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

Apter, Andrew. 1992. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Campbell, Aidan. 1997. Western Primitivism, African Ethnicity: A Study in Cultural Relations. London: Cassell.

Dike, Kenneth Onwuka. 1956. Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830-1885: An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria. London: Oxford University Press.

Okpewo, Isidore. 1998. Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony and Identity. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Phillips, Tom (ed.). 1995. Africa: The Art of a Continent. London: Royal Academy of Arts.

TELL magazine. 2003. Lagos: TELL Communications Ltd.

Thompson, Richard H. 1989. Theories of Ethnicity: A Critical Appraisal. New York: Greenwood Press.

Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie is an assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a consulting editor of African Arts.

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