In Dakar, Ibe Ananaba Preaches Emancipation from Political Bondage

In two works featuring at the Dakar Biennale – known as Dak’Art – Ibe Ananaba extends his messages of hope. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports 

“Redemption Song,” as a title, expresses a lot more than even the artist could have hoped for through the work. Obviously inspired by a similarly-titled timeless revolutionary anthem by the late Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley, the work—perhaps the more visible of Ibe Ananana’s two works at the 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale—no doubt arrests the viewers’ attention with its expressiveness.

Talking about the work, which measures 88 x 62 inches, it is an acrylic on canvas installation work featuring suspended paintings and drawings, whose production year was written as 2021-2022. Through it, the 1999 Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu painting graduate decries the inequalities and injustices in African societies despite their natural endowments. This is while he also acknowledges the impact of the external factors, which are “rooted in racial injustice.” In his opinion, it is the effects of what he identifies as both the external and internal factors that “continually heighten the black struggle.”

Flashback to May 25, 2020. The real-time murder of a 46-year-old black man George Floyd in the US city of Minneapolis by a 44-year-old white police officer left a stain on the collective conscience and sparked off global anti-racism protests, which rode on the crest of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. That same year, Nigerian youths were up in arms over police brutality after a video of a man allegedly murdered by SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) went viral. The protests, tagged #EndSARS, paralysed economic activities in most Nigerian major cities, including the federal capital Abuja. 

“As an artist, I tend to view from a social observer’s lens in order to contribute to the conversation towards a resolution, hence the idea behind this piece- ‘Redemption Song’,” Ananaba says. “With music as a strong source of inspiration, I imagine a choral feel of people coming together to sing in one voice. I see ‘the outsiders’ with some liberation vibes. I hear a united song of hope. I see the ones to whom the future belongs. I see a brighter tomorrow!”

Alongside his fellow members of the artist collective KnitWork, Ananaba was officially invited to participate in the biennial event, which officially opened in the Senegalese capital on Thursday, May 19 and ends on Wednesday, June 21. The invitation, which was extended to the collective by the Senegalese Ministry of Culture and Communication, was an initiative of one of Senegal’s renowned artists Kalidou Kasse. The idea, according to Ananaba, was “to unite and participate in an arm of the exhibition programmes for the 2022 Edition of the Dakar Biennale, which is titled ‘Le Marché International des Arts’ at The African Renaissance Monument (Monument De La African Renaissance).”

A close-up on the KnitWork collective. It is composed of the multidisciplinary artist Yrneh Gabon (Jamaica/USA), the Jamaican multi-dimensional artist and cultural producer Maxine Walters, the American multi-dimensional artist Michael Massenburg, the American painter and teacher June Edmonds, the American interdisciplinary artist and social entrepreneur Janet E. Dandridge, the American curator Marie Vickles and the Nigerian contemporary visual artist and designer Ibe Ananaba.

Interestingly, this year’s theme of the biennale, which is more often known as Dak’Art, revolves around the concept ‘Ĩ NDAFFA#’ drawn from I NDAFFAX – which means “to forge” in Serer language. After the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea of a renaissance – or perhaps, a phoenix-like reemergence from an ashen heap – seems increasingly more appealing to an innovation-hungry cultural scene. 

“My Dakar Biennale experience further shed light on the role of art as a vital tool in uniting Africa as well as a grand platform for us to tell our authentic stories of how great Africa is or even greater it could be regardless of its challenges,” Ananaba reminisces. 

Something about Dakar as a city impressed him while the biennale lasted. Besides the visitors from different parts of the world, who arrived in great numbers to be part of the experience, he felt the palpable excitement among the Senegalese, who seemed to relish the post-pandemic ambience.

“The Senegalese Government throws heavyweight support to ensure the Biennale is impactful, coupled with the hospitable nature of the average person out there who’s ready to welcome you. From the Immigration guys at the airport, the concierge, and the hotel guys, down to the taxi guys, food vendors and folks you see on the street, I felt their collective sense of pride to host an art event that acts as a magnetic force pulling folks around the globe together.”

Meanwhile, his second work at the biennale, titled “CAST YOUR V,000,000:TE”, is an assemblage of 24 x 24 acrylics on canvas works. 

This assemblage, produced in 2019, takes a swipe at the issue of vote-buying in most African societies while accusing the masses, whom he labelled “gullible”, of “willingly mortgaging their future by selling their voting rights in exchange for unsustainable promises.”

Obviously a believer in the Western democratic tenets, the artist hinges his simplistic viewer of the African problem on the untrammelled exercise of voting rights. His concern about the weakening of the electoral procedure and the heightening of corruption echoes the Western mindset. 

“Being a deeply rooted systematic problem, I believe a good step in curbing this menace is to create an awareness campaign using arts, hence I am creating the body of works below titled CAST YOUR V,000,000:TE.”

Born in Belgium and raised in the southeastern Nigerian city of Aba, Ananaba discovered art early enough and has grown to value it as a potent vehicle of change. “I believe art, whether painting, sculpture, or film, holds the power to rewrite our story as a people,” he told an interviewer in a recent exhibition catalogue. “I think the future is bright, it all depends on the individual looking inward, like Nas sings, and finding their weapon, their asset, their strength and applying it to changing the narrative. Because at the end of the day we’re all making history. Posterity will either frown or smile at you.”