Chika Okeke-Agulu

The first monograph on the work of celebrated and influential Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. This is the first book to document her evolution and explore her impact.

Authored by two acclaimed scholars, Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative account yet on the work of El Anatsui, the world-renowned Ghanaian-born sculptor. The product of more than three decades of research and close collaboration with the artist, it shows how his early wood reliefs and terracottas, and the later monumental metal sculptures, express a search for alternative models of art-making. The authors argue that the pervasiveness of fragmentation as a compositional device in Anatsui’s oeuvre evokes the impact of colonization and postcolonial forces on African cultures. At the same time, the invocation of resilience and fragility invests his shape-shifting sculptures with iconic power. The authors also show how, in his critically acclaimed metal works, the manual labor of flattening, cutting, twisting and crushing bottle caps and using copper wires to suture and stitch the elements into one dazzling, reconfigurable epic piece serves as a powerful metaphor for human life. This book presents Anatsui as a visionary of incomparable imagination, also situating his work within a broader historical context—specifically, the postcolonial modernism of midcentury African artists and writers, the cultural ferment of post-independence Ghana and the intellectual environment of the 1970s Nsukka School. By recovering these histories, the authors show how and why Anatsui became one of the most formidable sculptors of our time.

As featured in the New York Times, ARTnews, Colossal, Metropolis and New York Magazine’s The StrategistA groundbreaking A-Z survey of the work of over 300 modern and contemporary artists born or based in AfricaModern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art. Advisory Panel: Alayo Akinkugbe, Kavita Chellaram, Raphael Chikukwa, Julie Crooks, Tandazani Dhlakama, Oumy Diaw, Janine Gaëlle Dieudji, Ekow Eshun, Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, Joseph Gergel, Danda Jaroljmek, Omar Kholeif, Rose Jepkorir Kiptum, Alicia Knock, Nkule Mabaso, Lucy MacGarry, Owen Martin, Aude Christel Mgba, Bongani Mkhonza, Riason Naidoo, Paula Nascimento, Simon Njami, Robert Njathika, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Hannah O’Leary, Sean O’Toole, John Owoo, Brenda Schmahmann, Mark Sealy, Yasmeen Siddiqui, and Joseph L. Underwood

Bound to Colour.

High quality images selected from the the US-based Nigerian artist' sketch books dating from 1963 to the present. This book is a critical study of the drawings of influential Nigerian artist and poet Obiora Udechukwu. It argues, quite compellingly, that the radical fusion of lyrical formalism and socio-political critique in Udechukwu's drawings is a direct outcome of his lifelong commitment to the graphic, pictorial and rhetorical properties of line. From drawings of war and famine he made as a young man in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) to the sophisticated abstract compositions of the past two decades, Udechukwu has systematically eliminated the boundaries between image and text, literary and visual poetry, and the results are drawings of tremendous lyrical power. Featuring more than 500 drawings, many in color, this beautifully designed book provides an unprecedented account of drawing as an ideational tool and powerful vehicle for the expression of an artistic-poetic imagination. Authored by an award-winning, internationally recognized art historian and critic, this book is a fitting homage to the originality of Udechukwu's drawings and illustrious career.

Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive "postcolonial modernism" that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.

Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive "postcolonial modernism" that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.