OBIORA UDECHUKWU, INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED NIGERIAN ARTIST AND PERFORMER, WILL SPEAK AT BARD ON FEBRUARY 10
Lecture is CancelledANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Nigerian artist and performer Obiora Udechukwu will deliver a talk at Bard College titled "From Wall to Canvas: 12 Centuries of Uli Art," on Monday, February 10. The lecture, presented by the African and African Diaspora Studies, Art History, Anthropology, and Multiethnic Studies Programs at Bard, is free and open to the public and will begin at 6:30 p.m. in room 102 of the F. W. Olin Humanities Building.
Udechukwu, Distinguished Visiting Dana Professor of Fine Arts at St. Lawrence University, is an artist and art historian. One of the leading figures of the Nsukka School, which follows the Uli painting tradition of the Igbo culture of southeastern Nigeria, his designs are characteristically black, curvilinear, and nonrepresentational. Udechukwu's work has been influenced primarily by Uli body painting and murals, as well as Nsibidi scripts, and often stems from firsthand experiences of genocide and war-related suffering, hunger, and air raids. He feels it reflects a traditional Igbo saying: "Not to speak out is the bane of the mouth, not to listen is the bane of the ear."
Udechukwu has exhibited his work in many countries, including Nigeria, Britain, Austria, India, Cuba, Switzerland, South Africa, Germany, Zimbabwe, and the United States. His work was featured in the group exhibition The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group at the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Udechukwu received a B.A. and M.F.A. in painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he also was professor of drawing and painting.
For further information, call or e-mail Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo, director of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program at Bard, 845-758-7543 or [email protected] or e-mail Myra Young Armstead, director of the Multiethnic Studies Program, [email protected].
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