Graduate Seminar with Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu

Graduate students in all departments and disciplines are welcome to join Chika Okeke-Agulu, Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, for a seminar and brunch. Professor Okeke-Agulu will lead a discussion related to the spring 2025 Lecture in Criticism, “Art in the Shadow of Military Dictatorships in 1980s Nigeria.” Abstract: 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. I focus on that of General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-93), the smiling, brutal dictator, who 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, I 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.