Lectures in Critcism: “Art in the Shadow of Military Dictatorships in the 1980s Nigeria”

Chika Okeke-Agulu, Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, joins us for “Art in the Shadow of Military Dictatorships in the 1980s Nigeria.” The West African country Nigeria, rising from its political independence from Britain in 1960, witnessed two military coups in 1966, a civil war (1967-70), and an oil boom in the 1970s. In the 1980s, a one-term Second Republic was overtaken by successive military regimes. General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-93), the smiling, brutal dictator, enforced Structural Adjustment, raised corruption to statecraft, and impoverished the citizenry. In that same decade, the painter and poet Obiora Udechukwu (b. 1946), a leading figure of the Nsukka School of artists, gained national renown and influence, with drawings and paintings acclaimed for their lyrical power and trenchant sociopolitical commentary. In this lecture, Okeke-Agulu discuss Udechukwu’s work and the fate of art and the broader critical culture produced by artists, writers, poets, and musicians, during that long decade, in the shadow of the military regimes.