‘I will
love to reincarnate as artist’
US-based Nigerian scholar and artist Prof dele jegede turned 70
last April. He will be celebrated by his colleagues at the University of Lagos
and Yaba College of Technology, Lagos from tomorrow. To him, good artists
never die, never fade away, but simply become more vivified; a category
which he belongs to at 70. Though disengaged from teaching, he sees the
disengagement as an opportunity to re-engage himself with his studio practice,
Assistant Editor (Arts) OZOLUA UHAKHEME reports.
With the marking of your 70th birthday, you have joined the
elder statesmen’s club. How do you feel hitting the mark?
Where’s the King of Soul, James Brown, when you need him? “I feel good….pa
para para para!” I am nothing but thankful. There are no two ways about that.
The older you get, the more introspective you become. The more exposed you are
to occurrences and developments, which humble you and cause you to be
appreciative of the grace without which your very existence will be naught.
When I was young—let me re-phrase that, because I am still young—when I was
much younger, a 40-year-old man was old, very old; a 50-year-old was ancient;
and a 70-year-old? That was simply antediluvian! I have since realised that
your perspectives on things shift as a result of your age.
I remember in 1995 (when I was 50), a student of mine complained innocuously
about the ways of her very old dad. And then I asked how old was her father.
“50,” she responded. Of course I changed the topic. Hitting 70 (which, by the
way, happened in April) was something that I had no control over. It was not as
if I could choose how long I would live; no one has that power. I had been in a
position that I wished that death had come for me instead of someone else. It
is in that sense that I talked about grace and clemency. Ageing is one thing;
ageing gracefully is another. And that is something that I aspire to do,
especially in terms of the extent to which I inspire my peers and colleagues,
and become a positive role model for the younger generation of citizens and
artists. Living gracefully has nothing to do, in my estimation, with your
sartorial taste anymore than does your height. Rather, it is your personhood:
your moral probity, integrity, principles, forthrightness, professionalism, and
commitment to enlightened citizenship. It has to do with using your
professional and intellectual abilities to positively influence society. And
that is one of my new mantras.
Retiring now at 70, how fulfilling is it to end your career outside
your country?
Retirement
ke! One point of correction, I have not ended my career.
In actuality, I’ve just revved it up a notch. As a vocation, art is not a 9 to
5 job. Rather, it is an organic cocoon: something that you live; a life that
you exude. How can you talk of retirement in that situation? The committed
artist never thinks of retirement. You have heard of the maxim about old
soldiers who never die; who simply fade away. Well, that is not so with old
artists. The good ones never die; they never fade away; they simply become more
vivified. Examples abound. Look around the Nigerian art scene today and you can
construct a strong list of artists, living or departed, vertical or perpetually
horizontalised, who are continually written about in the present tense. While
it is true that I have disengaged from teaching, I construed that as an
opportunity to re-engage with my studio practice. As to where I practice, the
age of globalisation has shrunken the world so significantly that location is
no longer an issue. While my primary residence will remain where I’ve been in
the last two decades, I will also take advantage of the opportunities that my
ancestry offers.
Looking back, how fulfilling has it been teaching in the US?
It has been both challenging and fulfilling. It has also been rewarding.
Like all countries, the U.S. has its strengths and weaknesses. For everyone,
who is career-oriented, motivated, and inspired, the opportunities are
super-abundant. Indeed, the United States remains as perennially advertised: a
land of opportunities. If you are so inclined, you can chart your own path,
create new avenues for personal success, and intuit novel ideas. But, living in
the U.S. can also signal perpetual misery for those who are interested in the
dream but lack the capacity, willpower, or wherewithal to prepare their beds
aright. For many, the U.S. is the proverbial El Dorado. Americanisms permeate
the imagination of many young and not-so-young Nigerians, who are desirous of
capitalising on life styles that Hollywood has so ingenuously marketed on a
global scale. But one of the unwritten canons pertains to the power that
culture exerts on many, who go to the U.S. but are ill-prepared for the
inevitable culture shock that they will have to contend with. Before I retired
from the University of Lagos in 1992, I had worked there as a faculty member
for 15 years. It was from there that I went on a leave of absence to study at
Indiana, where I obtained my doctorate in 1983. And in 1987, I had taught for
one year and curated a major exhibition at Spelman College, Atlanta as
Fulbright Professor.
Although exposure to American culture and the qualifications that I paraded
certainly helped, they were not the primary reason for my eventual emigration,
with my family, to the U.S. in 1993. Two of our children, who were born in the
U.S. were asthmatic. In particular, our oldest son, Tolu, was chronically
asthmatic. There was hardly a week that we did not make an emergency run from
our place at Ikeja to Unilag Health Center for emergency health help, often in
the middle of the night. Those were the nights when the parental adrenalin
countered whatever dangers were posed by hoodlums and men of the night. Tolu
became something of a recurring face at the Health Center, known to virtually
all the medical personnel at that time. The situation was so dire that the
sing-song by our children was that we needed to return to the U.S. Today, Tolu
is professor at a college in Florida.
In retrospect, are there decisions you would have taken differently
now concerning your career growth—studying art, media job, teaching at
UNILAG—and checking out to US?
With full 20-20 hindsight, it is very easy to second-guess decisions that I
took in the past, which have obviously inflected the trajectory of my
professional growth and personal development. I have no reason to do that. As
one, who has continually advocated the application of contextualism in
analyses, I could not envision reversing any of the major decisions that I took
in the past without asking for corresponding reversal of the context within
which such decisions were taken. On the contrary, I took these decisions with
deliberation and embraced the outcomes with pride and enthusiasm. My
studentship at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was the culmination of sheer
determination of a young lad, who single-handedly set and attained the loftiest
dream of attaining a university degree in the face of adversity. That decision
was significant and momentous in my life. In terms of my career, I coveted the
opportunity to work at the
Daily Times when I was a third-year student
at Ahmadu Bello University and worked assiduously towards that end. I was giddy
with excitement when I interned at the
Daily Times in the summer of
1972. At the end of my NYSC in 1974 (as a pioneer corps member), my career as a
cartoonist had been launched with a series of cartoons in
Lagos Weekend
and
Sunday Times. You could not have enticed me with anything not to
accept the offer, which the
Daily Times gave me, as Art Editor in July
1974.
As students in Zaria, some of us had determined to spruce up the exhibition
scene in Lagos after graduation. Kolade Oshinowo, Shina Yussuff of blessed
memory, David Dale, and my humble self became quite active in the exhibition
circuit. I also took up critical reviews in the
Daily Times during
this period. I left the
Daily Times because I was simply enamored of
academic life. Besides, I figured I could continue to do my cartoons from
anywhere without being in the employ of the
Daily Times. I joined the
University of Lagos as Junior Research Fellow in January 1977 and was thrilled
to be directly involved in organising certain aspects of Unilag’s FESTAC 77,
which the Center for Cultural Studies undertook under the directorship of Prof
Joe Alagoa. Hankering after additional degrees was something that you would do
as an aspiring young man. So, by 1979, I was on my way to Bloomington.
I should note, with extreme pride, the stable and blessed marriage that I
have had. This, indeed, ranks as perhaps the best decision that I ever took. Of
course, Joke, my wife of 40 years, took all evasive actions way back in 1972
when I first laid eyes on her and embarked upon the customary pursuit of a love
that made itself elusive. But the more unconcerned she appeared the more
determined I was to prove that I was worthy of her hand. Although she always
contests my claim that it was my cooking that eventually sealed the deal, it
seemed that she ultimately took pity on me, especially after learning of the
day that I almost got crushed by a “tipper” as I made a dash across Ikorodu
Road trying to catch a Somolu-bound
danfo to her place at Akoka. No
matter. Joke remains my adorable friend, partner, wife, and counsellor. She is
a woman of unparalleled strength, something that I became even more appreciative
and respectful of in the wake of the cataclysmic shock that the loss of our
son, Ayo, unleashed on us in 2011. Without Joke (who was herself
grief-stricken), my story would have taken a tragic turn.
Are there any memorable experiences at the early stage of your stay
in US?
I learned pretty quickly that the United States is at once opened and
closed. It is through its openness and transparency that I was able to secure a
job based solely on my academic and professional pedigree. It was the same
system, one that places premium on excellence and healthy competition, that
ensured my rise within the academic system. I became, at two different times
and in two states, chair of two art departments. This could have been achieved
only through a transparent academic culture. But I also learned that if you
were, like me, thoroughly immersed in your cultural heritage, you would have a
steep culture shock to contend with. Thankfully, my immediate family provided
the succor that I needed. It could get easily dreadful and lonely for those who
do not have that kind of support. I learned that racism, both overt and covert,
is alive in this country. I learned that a considerable degree of naiveté
permeates the American social fabric with particular regard to how people from
Africa are generally perceived or related to. I once ran into an American
couple at the mall. Once I confirmed my African pedigree, the next question by
my new mall friend was whether I knew his wife’s boss, a certain Stephen who is
also an African, from Tanzania! But my overall experience has been nothing but
positive.
What are the post-retirement plans?
There is a caveat to this retirement thing: it pertains only to my job as
professor. The plan, thus, is to roam; to produce, explore, and become creatively
pontifical. This I will do without being bound by geographic demarcations. A
two-day conference (July 23 and 24), which Kunle Filani and his team organised,
comes under the aegis of the Society of Nigerian Artists. It is gratifying to
be accorded this honour and I am beholden to all who are involved in this
gesture. In July 2016, I will be having a solo exhibition at Terra Kulture.
This is the immediate project. Along the side, I will, where practicable,
participate in a few group exhibitions across continental divides. The primary
goal is to immerse myself in my studio life and savour the pleasure of
professing my art. Of course, opportunities to contribute essays, deliver
lectures, and consult for a diverse array of organisations, abound both in Nigeria
and the U.S.
Having lived and studied in US for so long, what is the performance
level of African artists in Diaspora on the global scene?
Laudable. So much has happened in the last two decades that has catapulted
artists of the African Diaspora to the stratosphere. It is probably not that
helpful to adhere to the old, rigid idea of compartmentalising artists on the
basis of media singularities or geographic location. In the 21st Century,
the boundaries have become so pulverised that what emerges, at times, is
essentialised more by notional specificities or idiosyncratic givens than by
traditional media. From Southern Africa to the Maghreb, from West Africa to
East Africa, there is a catholicity of creative expressions that was either not
fully made manifest or was simply non-existent a mere two decades ago. As part
of this robust emergence of African art on a global scale, we should recognise
the origination of vibrant, collateral fields that have quickly become
formidable in the curating, analysis, and historicisation of the artists and
the various genres that exist. Auction Houses such as Bonhams and Arthouse
Contemporary, for example, have broadened access on a global scale. A cursory
look at the list of Diasporic scholars of African art reveals the dominance of
some of Nigeria’s best scholars.
If you were to come to this world again, would you be an artist?
My answer is unequivocally yes. Additionally, I would, with the benefit of
hindsight, amplify my interest and talents in theater and music. But I would
still marry Joke.
