Local and Transnational Flow of Icons, Images and Symbols

Abstract

Known studies on the arts and literature of Africa have highlighted the roles that African Arts played in the documentation of the people’s history, culture and general existence. The revelations and history of many communities have actually been made possible by the arts they produced or left behind in abandoned or existing communities. These arts was a major form of writing before the contact with other parts of the world, even after such contact the culture of using art as a language continued though on a reduced scale or intensity than previously used or utilized by the people. Examples of these imageries and symbols are found in the àrokò, a powerful form of information dissemination among the Yorùbá people in Nigeria. They are also found on several of the sculptural pieces, on traditional woven clothes, calabashes, ritual and utilitarian pots as well as on the several traditional mural paintings among the Igbo, Yorùbá and Ibibio in Nigeria. Many of the artists used these icons and symbols to discuss social, religious and historical issues even beyond their local environment. This paper examined the images and symbols found on selected traditional art forms and how selected Nigerian artists within and outside Africa have utilized these images as a potent force and language in the creation of contemporary works of arts. The paper employs iconographic and contextual methods to interrogate and analyse these images as epitomized in their works and also the changes that these images have experienced in their new place of exposure and usages.

DOI: 10.7176/ADS/72-01

Publication date: April 30^th 2019