Art & Politics: An Unlikely Relationship 

Chief Elizabeth Ifeyinwa Jibunoh

We often hear phrases like ‘the art of politics,’ and even ‘the politics of art.’ We know what they mean or do we really? Because the question is does the world of politics and that of art have any commonalities or even interdependencies? Or should the world of art exist without recourse to politics and viceversa?

In Nigeria and maybe even other democracies, it is hard to escape the pervasive atmosphere of politics in the lives of practically everyone within that geographical space especially during the electioneering cycles. The polity begins to heat up for good or for bad, as politicians, political parties and their supporters up the ante in their activities and engagements in anticipation of the elections.

There is no denying the fact that the demand for good governance is what the generality of people would advocate for . Getting involved and seeking that as a right is deeply ingrained in the collective DNA of the totality of a nation. However apathy sometimes from discontent and disenfranchisement introduces a despondency in political participation where real interest is limited to mainly the groups that feel they stand to gain from the politicking. Sometimes there is a wind that blows in politics that brings with it a dramatic change especially within the despondent group and sometimes it starts with a slogan or a personality.

To rise above the fray and generate momentum among supporters, political campaigns have long relied on slogans such as Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can or Nigeria’s General Buhari’s election campaign which came with the CHANGE slogan. There are so many others that one can cite however the 2022 Nigeria’s Presidential Primaries has been generating so much interest since Peter OBI originally seeking a ticket from his former party The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) decided to make a cross over to another party….The Labour Party citing unacceptable conditions that bothered mainly on financial emasculation, a new awareness , a rebirth in the political scene of Nigeria has happened and it is taking practically everybody by surprise. He did not come in with a slogan or maybe he may still develop one for as I write Campaigns have not officially started for the 2023 elections. However his followership seem to have developed a cult like love and adoration with mainly the youths dedicating an unbelievable zeal towards the acquisition of their instrument to vote… the Permanent Voters Card(PVC).People that were hitherto not keen on politics have now become promoters and most of them the Voice for Peter OBI and by extension more people are now participating fully in the ongoing events even within other parties. Never has Nigeria seen this kind of zeal within the political space especially amongst the youths. In my opinion this is reminiscent of the Zikist Movement and the Awolowo era where devotees and followers based their followership on the Man and not really the Party. Today the Peter Obi followers behave like that but also they represent a kind of End Sars mentality when in 2021 the youths made a bid to dismantle unacceptable structures within the security apparatus of the country. The Peter Obi movement have also birthed the OBIDIENT Group and certainly their belief and trust in the man Peter has all the trappings of a cultish followership. He has become for now the most popular contestant for the Presidency in Nigeria for the 2023 elections. I believe this love for Peter OBI came from the disenfranchisement and the total lack of faith within the existing leadership both the ruling and the aspiring even though I may be wrong. I say this because the End Sars Movement had created a boldness in the youths to challenge existing status quos. Mr Peter OBI also seems to be speaking a different political language and any Change for a despondent group is a much needed balm for the soul.

Now let me redirect this paper having set out the parameters of the current political scene in Nigeria as outlined above. Usually, the so called cognitive elite’ i.e. those who make their living through intellectual and mental – as opposed to manual – endeavor) may not want to participate in politics. The default posture being that the ‘well-informed’ critic or analyst usually offers his assessment of how the doers of deeds within the political arena might have done them better or differently. They usually hesitate or are truly reluctant to meddle in politics. They are usually content to leave the leg-work (and in most cases, the ‘dirty’ work) of active politics to the other classes sometimes much lower – or to the ‘moneybags’ and ‘godfathers’ who traditionally only seek to manipulate the processes and outcomes to their own advantage..

I don’t think I would be too far wrong if I should include among this ‘cognitive elite’ the creative artist (and again I am limiting myself to the visual artist – the painter, sculptor, designer, etc.) Perhaps due to the nature of his work, the visual artist possesses a natural aversion to the hurly-burly, the rough-and- tumble and, one may say, the noise and rowdiness of political action and public participation – especially as practiced in our parts.

But does this need to be the case? Are the worlds of Art and Politics mutually exclusive? Or is there an area where the two converge – and perhaps even offer an unlikely but mutually beneficial synergy?

As we have already noted in this series of articles, the occupation of the artist is largely a solitary one. In fact, solitude can be said to be the natural condition of the artist. To the artist, a ‘creative’ application of solitude is not just necessary for the realization of a successful work of art, but it is an antidote, even a defence, against the impact of the chaos that our modern industrial society has become. To the artist, solitude serves the following functions: a) it regenerates his mental powers; b)it clarifies his thinking over a particular issue and helps provide greater insight and perspective with which to make better judgments; and c) it deepens his awareness of his physical, psychological and even spiritual environment, in a way that affects his character positively and makes him more disciplined. 

Silence, it seems, is the bread and butter of the artist’s occupation. By ‘silence’ here, I don’t simply mean the total elimination of all sounds, but simply the elimination of those distracting and discordant sounds that tend to disrupt the train of creative thought and throw the inward processes of creative formulation into disarray. Far from retreating into a dark and barren mental wilderness on account of his love for silence and hatred for noise, the artist sees his love for silence (and related to that, his affinity with Mother Nature and his dependence on her for much of his inspiration) simply as a synthesis between his constructive engagement with the public, by way of the art he creates for patronage and public consumption, and his need to stay apart from that public. It is, as one writer aptly put it, ‘a subtle compromise between solitude and multitude’.

Does this then mean there can be no political role for the artist or that the political actor cannot imbibe the artistic personality in his activities in the turbulence of the political arena? To answer this question, I will like to look at two aspects of the artist’s usual interaction with the public right from the traditional, post- colonial days of our forefathers and on to the present:

a. The Role of Art in Society

What role does – or should – Art and those who create it play in the larger society? In the days of our ancestors, the artist was one of the custodians of the people’s culture, in the sense that their visual representation and interpretation of reality derived solely from his technical expertise and creativity. So, in a sense, he was one of the pillars of society. In those days, he operated within well-defined and strict aesthetic limits imposed on him by the society in which he lived. He was primarily a sculptor, and in the traditional African society, the art of sculpture had enormous social significance because it was intimately linked with both secular and religious power. The masked figure, for example (or masquerade) was an agent of social control. Generally speaking, art in those days was created for both secular and religious purposes. It was used to commemorate important events in the life of the community; it was used to honor the King and accentuate his majesty and that of his royal court; and it was used to represent the gods of the land.

Even though times have changed, and these days the artist is no longer bound by the conventions imposed on his creative output by a usually conservative society, but he is still subject to a more subtle form of imposition and or control by his environment from which he cannot escape and still be true to himself. 

The artist, even today, is still required to be an accurate witness, and even a spokesperson, of his culture and times – and as the culture and times change and evolve, his art must change and evolve alongside. So he has to balance his detachment from the currents of society with a different form of involvement, armed with a keen interest in the life of his environment in order to perceive the larger picture and the direction in which it is going. Whatever he has to say about his environment in his art (whether in appreciation or in condemnation) can be interpreted as a political statement of some sort. And because of the perspective he brings to the subject at hand, thanks to his technical expertise, society will do well to take note, not just of what the artist is saying, but how he says it.

Even though social and political commentary in the arts in Nigeria is more noticeable in the works of singers and performing artists (such as Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) and writers (like the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, Wole Soyinka) than in the visual arts, a few painters and sculptors are also making statements, albeit more muted, about the times in which we live and the direction in which our society is going. Perhaps, as the visual arts gain greater prominence in the nation’s cultural life in the days to come, these voices on canvas, clay, metal and stone, etc. will resonate even more.

b) The Artist’s Ideology

An important part of the creative process, apart from the techniques, materials and methods the artist employs in executing his work, is the message he is trying to convey – namely, his impressions of what is before him, the outward expression of his inner vision, or his worldview (what he thinks of the world around him), and so forth. In formulating this message, the artist draws on what he has seen; from his personal experience or the collective experience of a group to which he belongs – such as his family, ethnic group or nation, and so forth – or from his emotional responses to a given situation or circumstance.

Political players and students of government like to use the word ‘ideology’ to describe their positions on issues of policy, growth and development, and the general direction of government, the economy and society.

So what is the artist’s ideology? Does he have one? Yes, he does. Whatever his political inclination, an artist is essentially a humanist in that he is usually driven by a commitment to the welfare and happiness of his fellow humans, and to the harmony of his society, a harmony without which he cannot function, whether in creating the work of art or to market it afterwards. There may be some exceptions, of course, but on the whole, an artist is devoted to the quest for peace within and around him, a preoccupation he strives to express in his works. One such artist was the legendary Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Regarded as the most influential Western artist of the 20th century, Picasso was renowned for his constant experiments with a wide variety of materials, methods and techniques in the course of his long career. More than that, Picasso’s body of work can be said to be a sort of visual biography of (and commentary on) most of the notable events, both private and public, that took place during his lifetime. His reaction to these events ranged from childlike wonder, to intense fascination, to moral indignation, to outright rage. Whatever mood he tried to portray on canvas, his works were a clearly reflection of his humanist outlook.

One of such works is ‘Guernica’ which was painted during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39. This painting was Picasso’s angry response to the bombing of a small town of that name by German warplanes fighting on the side of one of the warring parties. The artist’s outrage is depicted in the stark use of black and white in the painting to convey the tragedy of the event. All but one of the casualties in the painting are civilians (women and children). Picasso portrays the senseless cruelty of the attack in the mutilated body parts scattered all over the canvas. His qualities as a humanist are seen in the fact that while the politicians, generals and journalists, in contemplating the Guernica massacre, might have considered its strategic significance and its impact on the course of the Spanish conflict, Picasso could only see the human cost, the needless agony and premature death. That is the hallmark of a humanist – a person who dedicates himself to life, who stubbornly affirms it in all its beauty and ugliness, its ups and downs, and its hopes and disappointments.

As a Nigerian female in the art space, I have long understood that creating an aesthetic code based on my ideology (or set of ideologies) demands that I understand and empathize with the human condition in all its manifestations, because the true aesthetics of life upon which any artist must build his/her own version of a political ideology, must seek to elevate life rather than debase it. It must celebrate life, and mourn when it is destroyed or tarnished in any way. Above all, my political ideology when expressed in creative work, is a battle against chaos, against death and against oblivion. And God knows we have seen too much of these in our country of late.

So, should a visual artist ‘join’ politics, or stand on the sidelines like other members of the ‘cognitive elite’ and criticize or analyze political events? My answer to that is that at its very core, the artist is essentially a political player, a political animal, a vital and strong part of the political space. He already has a role, he wields his brush the same way the law swings as a double edged sword. For good or for bad the artist is enmeshed in politics capturing, narrating and saving the moment for posterity. His role is that of the humanist for the society, using his art as a repository – or weapon if need be. That is his Politics.

All he has to do is to figure out exactly how to play it well.

Brief Profile 

Chief Elizabeth Ifeyinwa Jibunoh holds a Master’s degree in Museum and Gallery Management from City University in London, United Kingdom, as well as a diploma in Floral Artistry from Boerma Institute International Aalsmer in the Netherlands. An art consultant since the early 1980s, Chief Jibunoh is the founding director of Didi Museum, the foremost private museum in Nigeria. She is a seasoned international curator who has worked with the Smithsonian Institution to facilitate the repatriation of the Alonge Photographic Artworks back to their ancestral home in Benin City, Nigeria. An entrepreneur who deals in exquisite leather goods. She is a health and wellness resource person and the CEO of both Superlife Juice Limited and the Ridgewood Wellness Sanctuary. A passionate social entrepreneur, she is the Founder of the Strength of Women Initiative. She is an avid art enthusiast and enjoys mentoring rising artists – a role Jibunoh enjoys as much as she does her role as a wife, mother and grandmother.

* Jibunoh, Chairman /Founder, Elizabeth Jibunoh Art Foundation, writes from Lagos.