ABOUT | exploring-ukenedo

The Transfigurative Art of Chamberlin Ukenedo

Chamberlin Ukenedo's art may be seen as transfigurative and yet concrete.

His dynamic use of shapes and colour depicts the everyday in terms that evoke a sense of possibilities, an energising potential latent within human experience but often unappreciated.

This site is constructed by adapting ideas from the concentric rectangles nsibidi symbol from the Ekpe society of South Eastern Nigeria and mandala and yantra symbolism from Hinduism and Buddhism.

These forms are related in utilising as symbolic vehicles the relationship between the centre and the periphery of geometric shapes .

The visual form used in unifying these inspirational streams on the home page is Sanctuary, a painting by Victor Ekpuk. Sanctuary echoes the concentric rectangular construction of nsibidi, that semiotic culture being foundational to Ekpuk's work, even as the artist elaborates on the ancient forms in ways that evoke their capacity for cognitive stimulation beyond the more basic shapes of the older forms.

Images of Ukenedo's paintings are superimposed on Sanctuary. Each image links to a larger picture of the same image alongside a verbal engagement with the image. Following those links, one journeys from the 'face' of this orientation of Ukenedo's work, to adapt an expression from Orisa Ifa esuneutics, interpretive theory and practice, to its interior, and within this interior, to its heart.

But where is this heart?

In the meeting point between art and viewer?

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Exploring the Art of Chamberlin Ukenedoo

Website Construction as Art, Scholarship and Spirituality

Today, the 27th of January 2013, I reached a landmark in my life.

What landmark and why is it so important?

This landmark is the completion of the first stage of the website I am constructing to present my response to the work of the artist Chamberlin Ukenedo.

It is a landmark for me because it brings together several creative streams in relation to my central goal, a progressive engagement with the ground of being, enabling me to actualise the practice of website construction as art, scholarly endeavour and spiritual pursuit.

The visual template in terms of which the work of the artist is presented evokes the convergence of these creative streams.

The artist's works are superimposed on each vertex and various points of progression of the construction of concentric rectangles that composes Victor Ekpuk's painting Sanctuary.

Clicking on any of the images takes one to another page where the image is presented in an expanded form alongside a later to be developed critical exposition of the image.

The presentation of Ukenedo's work using this template is organised in terms of nine segments.

The first segment is titled "Home" and is linked to the expanded presentation titled "Entry".

This is followed by "About", which presents a general overview of Ukenedo's work. For the moment, a brief explanatory note is in place. The longer overview will be added later. This section is not reached through any image on the rectangular passageway but stands alone.

What follows is a sequence of presentations titled Mandala 1 to Mandala 8, each of which links to another page with large images of Ukenedo's paintings and the expositions of the images that will be added later.

The entire organisational structure, the choice of Ekpuk's "Sanctuary" as the central organisational form , the use of particular pages as primary entry points linking to other pages with larger images and expositions of the works, along with the names given to the subpages, represent the convergence of esuneutic and presentational schemes from African and Asian cultures, in relation to mystical theory and techniques from Africa, Asia and the West.

The term 'esuneutic' is my own choice in relation to what is known in Western derived scholarship as 'hermeneutics', which, from my understanding of the discipline so far, is the study of the principles and practice of interpretation in relation to the entire range of human experience.

I am developing the discipline of esuneutics along similar lines and have chosen to privilege a term derived from the African Yoruba/Orisa spirituality in the figure of the deity Esu rather than hermeneutucs, which is related to the figure of the Greek deity Hermes.

This facilitates my building a body of knowledge centred on my more immediate affinity with the Orisa tradition and geographically and ideationally proximate systems while providing a vantage point from which to expand understanding of other interpretive systems.

The term esuneutics comes from a paper by Obododimma Oha, where he describes himself as getting it from the Nigerian centred literary listserve Krazitivity.

One may also develop other names to represent an African centred interpretive discipline related to various African cognitive systems. The figure of Agwu in classical Igbo cosmology for example, is particularly rich in terms of the ideas and images associated with his cognitive agency, as described in Angulu Onwuejeogwu's Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology.

One could do something similar with Asian and other systems. The interpretive strategies represented by the subtle and complex scope of Kashmir Shaivisim, from earlier works like the Siva Sutras of Vasugupta to the works of Abhinavagupta in philosophy, religion and aesthetics, to the recent achievements represented by such figures as Mark Dyzchowski, lead me to consider developing the concept of Sivaneutics to describe these strategies, but how will one account for the other fantastic Hindu exegetical tradition of Srividya, or for the range of methods represented in Indian thought, such as the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara? Does one describe classical Indian thought in terms of Tantric and non-Tantric streams, to suggest what is perhaps one possibility? Is that realistic in such a context of close mutual implication?

What about the complex magnificence of Tibetan Buddhism or the minimalist depth and variety of Zen Buddhism? What about the sublime weaving of cognitive threads in Jewish religious thought?

Is it not more realistic to simply apply to the interpretive strategies developed by these cognitive bodies the generally accepted term "hermeneutics" even though the immediate etymological associations of the tern derive from ancient Greek religion and the history of the discipline in modern scholarship seems to have its roots in Biblical interpretation, associations and histories rooted in a particular soci-cultural complex?

I don't have any answers to these questions, and such answers may best be addressed through ongoing engagement with the relevant issues. For the moment, though, I focus on esuneutics as a central organising principle while recognising that it represents only one of a number of possible interpretive schemas and their associated cognitive properties rooted in particular socio-cultural histories.

In this context, I use the term esuneutics in representing the relationship between serendipity, learning and creativity within a context that approaches various discrete phenomena in a manner that seeks to understand their interrelationships within the broadest possible compass of direct and indirect relationships, leading ultimately to a conception of cosmic order derived from the most minute to the most expansive forms.

This aspiration is related to the term esuneutics on account of a family of interpretations of the figure of the deity Esu as facilitator of such cognitive possibilities, as developed by Awo Falokun Fatumnbi, George Wilson, as a link between all elements in nature in his, by Henry Louis Gates Jr as the guide to unravelling the knots of the Ifa divination system in The Signifying Monkey, and the implicit associations implied by these interpretations between Esu and Joseph Ohomina's oral interpretation of each of the Odu of Ifa , its central organisational and interpretive categories, as a semantic nexus of a particular possibility of being, that, taken together, constitute the totality of all possibilities of existence.

Along the lines of these aspirations towards the unity of the one and the many, the minute and the vast, the immediate and the remote extending through a string of associations from the most immediate to the most distant, I use Ekpuk's Sanctuary as an organisational template for Ukedeno's work because I understand that painting of Ekpuk as bring together interpretive and organisational techniques in African, Asian and Western cultures.

The closest association of of Ekpuk's Sanctuary is with the concentric rectangles motif of Nsibidi symbolism, as superbly expounded by Jordan Fenton in Take it to the Streets : Performing Ekpe/Mgbe Power in Contemporary Calabar , associated most closely with the Ekpke esoteric order of South Eastern Nigeria, which has metamorphosed in the African Diaspora in the Americas into Abakaa order and its associated Abakue script as described, among others by Robert Farris Thompson in Flash of the Spirit.

In a forthcoming essay, tentatively titled "Birth of a Discipline: The Study of Africana Esoteric Orders" I will present my understanding of an esoteric order, particular African orders, in terms of social and epistemic categories. I will reference but not elaborate on the highly developed scholarship in Western, Jewish, Islamic and Asian esoteric systems.

The epistemic aspect is more relevant here as indicating progressive penetration into possibilities of knowledge represented by the concentric rectangles Nsibidi motif, in which the structure may be understood, since, according to Fenton, Nsibidi symbols undergo varying interpretations reflecting the individual approach of the interpreting Ekpe initiate, in terms of the various spatial structures of the sacred Ekpe meeting house and its contents, understanding of which relates to a broad range of ideas, abstract and practical, associated with the order.

I elaborate on the interpretive possibilities of this visual symblism in another forthcoming essay, tentatively titled "Building a House of Knowledge : Exploring Africanas Esoteric Orders"

Within this scheme, therefore, to move from the periphery to the centre through successive inter-enclosing rectangles is to penetrate deeper into understanding. Ekpuk's work, which is significantly inspired by Nsibidi evokes this structure and its interpretive possibility in not only creating a similar structure but highlighting its cognitive potential by superimposing the rectangular progression with a sea of enigmatic scripts suggesting interpretive possibilities unique to each person engaging with these conventionally unreadable scripts since they are not identifiable with any known script, and makes the structure culminate in a centre glowing with bright red situated against an immediate background of white, this central visual tableau itself highlighted by its centring within mutually enclosing bands of black and white created by the rectangular progression that compose the entire structure.

The evocative power of this painting in relation to spatial, visual and associated cognitive progression makes it ideal for suggesting such possibilities in other contexts, hence I have used it in facilitating a process of penetration into engagement with Ukedeno's work.

I have been sensitised to the cognitive possibilities of such visual scenarios represented by Ekpuk's Sanctuary as reinforced by Fenton's exposition of the Nsibidi is concentric rectangles motif by my exposure to Asian mandala and yantra theory and practice, geometric forms, abstract as in the yantra, abstract and figurative as in the mandala, that generate cosmographic views through using similar visual forms, deploying either a square or circular structure or both.

The balance between Ekpuk's Sanctuary as an organising template and Ukenedo's face work in each of the primary entry points of faces, to adapt the concept of oju from Yoruba esuneutics, in which the face is evocative of concealed possibilities and as used in the concept of oju odu or face of idu, the entry point into the complex depths of odu, is presented against a background absent of any forms except the falling blue drops evoking illumination and the eternal, as drops of rain evoke fertilisation, this time in terms of knowledge and eternity as indicated by John Mibiti in his African Religions and Philosophy .

This framing foregrounds the interplay of images, and suggests that character of the site as an invitation to a contemplative experience, facilitated by the absence of any visual stimuli. Anyone who is moved to suggest any responses to the works of art to be placed in the text on the site is welcome and they will be credited for their contribution.

The first point is titled "Home" and presents what I am presenting as primary visual coordinates of Ukenedo's artistic production so far, in terms of one way of interpreting his range of images. These primary coordinates are presented in each successive entry point while the other paintings change. This suggests a dynamic pattern with a particular configuration that does not change in its overall structure being the work of one artist.

The final primary template presents the first one in "Home" but on a different arc of integration reflective of the journey traveller coming home ahd seeing it for the first time, as T. S. Eliot describes such transformative returns. Each segment that elaborates on the entry points is called "Movement" in inspiration from Christopher Okigbo's Labyrinths where the poetic segments are described in terms of musical movements, here used to evoke continuity and progressive culmination.

Will this visual system serve as a template that takes one to the stars, in terms of unifying microcosm and macroscosm? The world constructed by the individual human mind and the universe of associations that may be understood as resulting from the artistic progression thus developed? A microcosm itself interfacing, intersecting with, part of and perhaps mirroring in fractal symmetry a harmony like that of Indra's net in which each jewel within each vertex of the web that embraces the cosmos reflects ever other jewel?

In relation to such aspirations, this visual construction represented by the site is a mandala/yantra, a construction inspired by and directed at pursuing understanding as reaching its apotheosis in mystical summation of the cosmos reached through a synergy of disciplines, aesthetic appreciation and intellectual exposition being the two central approaches at play in this instance.

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First Contact

On Saturday, 19th January 2013, I was fortunate to stumble on Facebook on the work of the artist Chamberlin Ukenedo.

This art enthrals me by its harmony of contraries, being both surreal and three dimensional, visionary and concrete, sublime yet rooted in the everyday, evocative of conceptions ranging from Nigerian to Asian cultures and expressive forms yet emanating from one artist in Nigeria.

My favourite sections of two wonderful poems in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings are :

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

....

And I must follow it

....

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and and errands meet

And whither then? I cannot say.

This poem evokes most poignantly the ever expanding vistas of lucky discovery represented by the journey of exploration I entered into from my first chance encounter with the art of Victor Ekpuk, the latest of which has been my unanticipated encounter with the art of Chamberlin Ukenedo.

This is a section of the second poem:

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though we pass them by today,

Tomorrow we may come this way

And take the hidden paths that run

Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

....

Home is behind, the world ahead,

And there are many paths to tread

Through shadows to the edge of night,

Until the stars are all alight...

The sense of wonder that permeates this journey of discovery is evoked for me by these lines written by Tolkien, steeped in the magical world of the Western fairy tale.

What, for me, are the evocations in my journey of discovery of the paths that run towards the Moon or the Sun, the paths to tread through shadows to the edge of night until the stars are all alight?

These are the novel cognitive configurations that may emerge through the appreciation of art, the experience of the convergence of vistas of being within the calabash of the mind, there to be alchemised, transmuted, under the transformative power of the conjunction between the arresting power of shape and colour that is the work of art and the crucible of consciousness.

The stars are alight, the moon and sun emerge to the mind with a more vivid force, as both external forms and internal illuminations under the cleansing power of the reshaping of space into a new configuration by the hand of the artist.

This is the context of my research into aspects of Nigerian and African Diaspora and world art radiating from the associative nexus constituted by the work of Victor Ekpuk. This research builds upon my earlier interest in Ekpuk, expanding it under the inspiration of a recent exchange with Toyin Falola about studying Ekpuk's work in which his response motivated me to develop a comprehensive statement of how such a study should proceed in an ideal sense, in widening concentric circles of association from the work's aesthetic, technical and historical associations.

In the context of that study, I began research into the semiotic culture, the culture of expressions and meanings, of the Ekpe esoteric order of South Eastern Nigeria whose nsibidi expressive form in its scripted expression has inspired Ekpuk in his use of script as a central element in his work. That study has further led me to a fascinating encounter with the work of Jordan Fenton on the strategies of exploration involved in relation to the various possibilities of meaning in nsibidi.

In the course of writing an essay developing a response to this discussion of esuneutic interpretive strategies, I chose to develop my ideas with the help of the art of Uche Edochie whose art Fenton describes as drawing on nisibidi. I see Edochie's paintings as emphasising the contemplative vitality of this semiotic form. The contemplative power suggested by Edochie evokes the invitation of nsibidi to what Fenton describes as embedding within one's own cognitive space to enable it yield multiple possibilities of meaning resonant with one's personal experience. This esuneutic progression emerges within the matrix of one's life in relation to the cognitive ideal represented by the cognitive growth of the Ekpe initiate, a development that one may adapt to oneself even if one is not so initiated. This is a journey of increasing expansion of understanding leading to an integration of multiple knowledges within a unifying centre. This journey may be described in terms of travelling within the enclosures of possibility symbolised by a summative symbol of Ekpe. This symbol is composed of concentric rectangles unified by a central line. This structure of successive rectangular enclosures emblematises the increasing penetration into the innards of possibility embodied by Ekpe as a union between the empowering presences of nature represented by the numinous agents of the forest and human society, to sum up my adaptation of Fenton and Edochie.

On Uche Edochie's Facebook page to which a Google search led me, I saw in an album of 2009 two enigmatic and most thrilling images. A group of butterflies emerging from a cavern, the butterflies colourful in their delicate splendour as the cavern glows with a soft but thrilling luminescence from which the delicate aerial beauty of the butterflies is set in motion against a background of soft blue. The other image is a bridge seen from above at dusk, cars streaks of light on the elastic curvature of the bridge, their occupants unseen, anonymous as they race to their destinations within the great busynes that is the life of the city, as high above this view of humanity in motion an eye is bonded with the space overlooking the scene.

Who could be creating these strange, compelling works? Uplifting and visionary, figurative and yet surreal.

I saw they were from the Facebook page of Chamberlin Ukenedo.

I went there and saw more wonders. My education was really expanding. I was going deeper into the possibilities of expressive forms I was introduced to by the the wonderful nsibidi spiral of Ekpuk's "Good Morning, Sunrise" at the Inscribing Meaning exhibition at the Smithsonian some years ago, forever intriguing in its masterly summation of the meaning of the Ekpuk work in relation to its technical construction. The spiral is described as an nsbidi symbol meaning the sun but which could also refer to journey and eternity, within a balance between colours that creates a sense of animation in the painting. The mutually reinforcing ensemble of visual display and verbal exposition is made even richer by a brief discussion of nsibidi and a powerful image of Ekpe members in stately procession displaying the nsibidi designs on their bodies and their clothes.

I was forever hooked to Ekpuk's art from then on. Now, with Chamberlain, I could observe a related evocation of dynamism as suggested by the image of the energetic and open ended circling of the nsibidi spiral emergent in Ekpuk's art. This spiral traces a path through successive motions that recapitulate each ascent in a new key, on a new arc. This recapitulalive renewal is allied to the notion of motion in relation to solar illumination. It is also associated with a confluence between the temporal and spatial structuration implied by the idea of journey and the transcendence of these spatial and temporal frames in eternity.

In Chamberlain's art, I experience a dynamism I relate to the conception of nature as animated by a creative force that enables being and becoming. This concept is eloquently evoked by the Igbo concept of ike, translated by Achebe as "energy" in the Igbo characterisation of this force "ike da ni awaja, na awaja", which he translates as "power flows in many channels". A similar idea is also demonstrated by the Yoruba idea of ase, described as a performative power available to all sentient beings. A related idea emerges in the Chinese concept of chi, which sums up this family of ideas in depicting chi in terms of the dynamism of water. An implications of such ideas for art is suggested in classical Chinese art by the depiction of the vitality of natural forms in ways that suggest the individuality of the expression of life force, of the creative possibilities of nature within each form.

Inspired by such ideas and mesmerised by the sheer power of colour and line in Ukenedo's work, I plunged into the mysteries his work represented for me. The enigmatic woman racing towards a shadow on a wall, as the entire scene shimmers with dynamic lines and subtle colours; the man peering into a drum, his legs emblematised with whorls, rings, dancing circular lines that give his form a sense of power and value beyond the mundanity in terms of which humans often see themselves and each other , the human being visible everywhere in his sameness, here that sameness is transfigured while maintaining its existential form, its character as solid three dimensional reality within which something unique is dramatised; a young woman crawling painstakingly towards a goal, her body blazing with patterns, with juxtaposed circular inscriptions that vitalise her form and give it a sense of both power and grace; two people wrestling as the air around them shimmers with what could be seen as coruscations of energy, the energy they give off imaged in the coiling shapes that emblazon their forms, as the entire space is configured by luminous abstract shapes.

Wow.

Who is this creator? What motivates him? What tradition is he working in? Why his fusion of abstract and figurative form? How does a person come to see or present the world in this way? Do these works suggest that we do not all inhabit exactly the same reality , that the reality of some might be more expansive than those of others? Am I seeing a transfiguration of basic human experience of the kind described by the mystic Thomas Traherne in his Centuries of Meditations in which human forms are suddenly perceived in terms of an emanation of luminosity, of a dynamism emerging from the source of being?

I contacted the artist on Facebook.

He told me that the flowing lines and circular abstractions that shape much of his work were not uli or nsibidi symbols but forms he developed from observing onion peels and other natural forms like trees, used in this instance to suggest dynamism, a sense of high powered energy, even frenzy. Do you belong to any school? 'I dont do schools" was his response. "My works are not influenced by any artist".

How do you create those effects in your work?

"My current medium is acrylic markers and print ink."

"may i ask why you favour those sweeping movements of the lines?"

"I luv creating visual texture when am not doing impasto.Impasto is painting with thick n heavy paint to create a rough surface [and] visual texture [is]Making a flat object have dept'

"how do you achieve such depth?"

" It depends on the tool and medium u use. Then understanding of light"

"so, you don't describe yourself as not belonging to any artistic school?"

"???

I dont do movement[s].

There is a school for those u learn frm evry school"

"i like dat

so you say your love of flowing, wavy lines derives from your experience with peeling onions?"

" Yes. And wood surface[s]. Like timber"

"wow"

"Maybe textile somewhere along my schooling too"

" i see some designs on the body of one of your works

a woman crawling

dat looks like spirals

de kind related to nsibidi and uli [classical Igbo women's body and wall art]

so you say dere is no connection with those forms?

just curious

you know one is trying to navigate one's way

so i want to make sure i get you right"

" I know about uli. But its not a major influence. U called it spiral lines. There were no signs or symbols. Just liquid lines that brings out my forms and create frenzy images

I think i shuld go n read about uli and the rest"

"fantastic

im pleased im better informed

it seems your not studying at UNN might have helped your individuality

please what is the full name of IMT ENUGU?"

"It didnt just happen. I left art school in 1998

I studied painting in imt enugu

Institute of management and technology"

Chamberlin sent me this brief summation of his exhibitions:

Chamberlin ukenedo is from amucha njaba local govt in imo state. A graduate of painting from imt enugu.
Group exhibition
1996....real light exhbtion national museum enugu
1997...dance of lyrical lines at british council enugu
1997...imt faa school exhbition

2002...Artist saloon at the american embassy

2003...dots in motion. A drawing exhibition with ibe ananaba at quintessence gallery ikoyi lagos.2011 guest artist with vanessa nzediegwu and lagos state

Ukenedo, his wife Ella and one of their children

Uche James Iroha

(http://www.themojogallery.com/asitis/artist-

uche-james-iroha.php)

seeker of underlying patterns of order

Within these bonds are sources of power

Spatial configurations

evoking

filial configurations

the feminine,

the masculine,

the emergence of one out of two,

the archway into ultimate creativity.

Geometric configurations

projecting

filial harmony

the continuous emergence of cosmogenesis

from

the dynamism between one and two

from

the explosion

the meeting of

the intense projection of the rod of power

and

the lake of bliss