A GARLAND FOR AN ART MATRIARCH AT 70

TRIBUTE
Okechukwu Uwaezuoke

Over-the-top revelries customarily trail the breasting the septuagenarian tape. So shall it be for Nike Davies-Okundaye, who joins the club today. A special dinner event, at the instance of the Lagos State Government (through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture) in partnership with GAC Motor, will be organised in her honour at the Banquet Hall of Eko Hotel in Victoria Island, Lagos from 6 pm. Expected at the event, whose chief host is the Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwoolu, are the leading lights of the local arts community.

At the landmark age of 70, the woman – known in the art circles as “Mama Nike” – has every reason to be thankful for the inexorable weavings of creation. Her life’s story so far is an exemplar of the triumph of spirit, which saw her wade through the darkest nights of her soul.

She was left in the lurch after losing her mother when she was just six years old and her grandmother a year after. Nonetheless, the resolute soul lurking beneath her young body cheerfully took whatever fate threw her way in her strides. Indeed, it was this longsuffering inner disposition that helped her glow through those years when many in her position would have given up, reproachfully demanding an explanation from the Creator.

Instead, Nike found solace in the arts through leveraging her upbringing with her great-grandmother, who was the head of all the craftswomen in the Kogi State community of Ogidi-Ijumu. It was the latter that taught her what she needed to learn about weaving textiles and making adire fabrics.
Still on the arts, there were early signs of their calling her into their service. Besides her late mother and an aunt, who raised her, were known to be art-inclined, there was also her father, who was known to be a multi-talented artisan. Then, egged on by unfavourable weavings of fate, which made it impossible for her to continue her formal education, she clung to her passion for the arts.

Hence, when she ran away from home at the age of 14, to avoid being married off to a polygamous junior government minister, she first found a second home with a travelling theatre company, Olosunta Travelling Theatre. This was before breaking free to become independent and moving on to the Southwestern Nigerian town of Osogbo, which was then passing through a period of artistic ferment, thanks to the activities of the German-born Ulli Beier and his English-born wife Georgina.
It was in Osogbo that she not only met her first husband Omooba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki, who was more popularly known as “Twins Seven-Seven”, but also learnt the art of indigo-dyeing and adire-making from the town’s informal art school.

She owes her rise to fame in the industry to her unwavering diligence, marketing skills and, of course, her amiable disposition. From modest beginnings at legendary Africa No. 1 Shop – her first gallery, which started in her bedroom – she wormed her way into the close-knit circles of the local art community. Fate would smile at her in 1974 when she was selected to be among the 10 African artists who were to teach traditional weaving in the US. During the trip, which was her first outside Nigeria, she was able to visit museums and learnt new skills, which included quilt-making.
As one of the many wives of Twins Seven-Seven, with whom she made this first trip to the US, Nike had always asserted her individuality. Hence, her breaking free from the ethereally-suffocating family cluster shouldn’t surprise anyone, who knows her for her free-spiritedness.

She has since moved on to become one of the most favoured artists of the Caucasian expatriate collectors in Nigeria and eventually firmly entrenched herself in both local and international exhibition circuits. For not only has she as a textile artist given workshops in Europe and North America, but her Osogbo Art School-inspired figurative paintings have also from 1968 till date fascinated aficionados. Some of her works have, since 2012, found their way into the collection of The Smithsonian Museum as well as The Gallery of African Art and The British Library, in London. There are, of course, others, which are in other high-profile public collections worldwide and private homes, including that of a former US vice-president, Walter Mondale.
Besides, she currently lectures at several universities in the US, Canada and the UK, even without a university education.

As a philanthropist, the woman who holds two major chieftaincy titles – the Yeye Oba of Ogidi-Ijumu and the Yeye Tasase of Osogbo – has trained over 3 000 young Nigerians for free in the visual, musical and performing arts in her four art centres in Lagos, Osogbo, Abuja and her hometown, Ogidi-Ijumu.
Only recently – on December 19, last year, to be precise – a comprehensive generously-illustrated biography, titled Bata Mi A Dun Ko Ko Ka (A Biography of Nike) by Kofo Adeleke, was formally unveiled by the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and the Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwolu at the Choice International Building, along Ligali Ayorinde Street in Victoria Island, Lagos.