In “Okhou”, her first solo exhibition in the UK, Nigerian artist, Taiye Idahor, has
introduced her signature works of historical and cultural significance to the Benin
Empire and Nigerian history to London’s art world, in a confident fashion.
Her first solo exhibition “Hairvolution” (2014) was held at the Whitespace Gallery
in Lagos, Nigeria where she is also based. “Okhuo” opened at London’s Tyburn
Gallery where it will be on show until May 9. The collection of 11 new works, a
set of 30 smaller works on perforated paper and 4 previously exhibited ones.
In what is now present-day Southern Nigeria, Benin Kingdom dates back to the
11th century and reached the height of its military and cultural dominance in the
16th century during the reign of Oba Esigie whose mother, Queen Idia, is said to
have ensured her son’s rule with a combination of political clout and sorcery.
Queen Idia was herself a renowned warrior whose new role as Queen Mother,
added to her stature and myth as an exemplar of industry and ambition.
The works Ms Idahor has made for “Okhuo” (“woman” in Bini language) do not
feature physical representations. They, in fact, have no physical human features
and are instead figurative renderings of Benin iconography, the most prominent of
which are coral beads (“ivie” in Bini) – used as symbols of high office and
important personages, a tradition that has continued into the present day.
Ms Idahor’s primary media, for her new works, are photo paper collages with pen
drawings in colour pencil which depict dressed corals beads – as worn byindividuals – but devoid of life images, and against clear white and black paper, as
though suspended in a clear cloud, giving the works an ethereal beauty. To make
them, she made prints on bond paper using an inkjet printer, which she then
glued to soft tracing paper. In the artist’s own words, her decision to leave out
life images was to “kind of speak of a presence that should exist within the
beads”. In their place, weaves, resembling tassels of newspapers, stripped and
knotted together, hang down.
—
Why have you chosen, as your primary media, soft tracing paper and an inkjet
printer given their sensitivity to water and moisture?
I started working with these delicate materials for my first solo exhibition in 2014
and I have continued with paper till now in more recent work. Paper is a fragile
material compared to canvas and sculpture. And this for me expresses the same
kind of sensitivity around conversations about and of women in this part of the
world.
What are the origins of the 4 blue works which are part of a separate set
called “Embryo Series” – and are not part of the “Ivie Series”?
They started during a residency in Joburg and this was during the aftermath of
the xenophobic attacks, so everyone was tense. There were curfews, shops were
closing early, also it was winter. There were major power cuts during that time
which meant parts of the city were literally black. In summary it was a very
depressing time and so as a result I started to think about life and death. Theworks were a combination of sculpture (made from rusted steel wool) and
collages. In contrary to the sculptures which represented death, these
represented life…embryos.
Why have you chosen to make 8 of the works on white paper and the other 3
are on black paper?
There’s no symbolic meaning to that. I think I still have that freedom to choose
colors, without it having any specific meaning.
—
Ms Idahor is understandably reverential of Queen Idia whose responsibility as
mother and wife, Queen Mother and warrior, the artist encourages more young
Nigerian and African women to draw inspiration from: “if a woman raised
children it was something they did alongside, raising their family. They were
always in the cabinet, they were always entrepreneurs, they were always running
businesses. That’s how we women have always been. My mother was like that”.