About
Forget everything you think you know about African art...
And embrace all that you don’t yet know about the art, culture and creativity of West African artists today. Major new sculptural installations, painting, drawing, photography, textiles, video, sound and fashion ask us to consider global questions of trade and commerce, cultural influence, environmental destruction and identity. Challenging and humorous, curious, noisy, elegiac and eclectic – this is the dynamism of West African cultures today. These form a huge, city-wide exhibition, spreading across Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume (Platt Hall).Over the Olympic summer, we are celebrating the global and the local, exploring the links between Manchester and West Africa as part of the London 2012 cultural festival.
There are more We Face Forward exhibitions and events at The Manchester Museum and the National Football Museum and a packed programme of We Face Forward family activities at various venues.
And We Face Forward reaches far beyond Manchester’s gallery spaces. The music programme, curated by Band On The Wall and The Manchester Museum, includes world renowned acts such as Afro-Cubism, Femi Kuti, Angelique Kidjo, Diabel Cissohko and Kanda Bongo Man and reflects the incredible diversity and brilliance of musical styles from West Africa.
Artists
Georges Adéagbo (Benin), El Anatsui (Ghana/Nigeria), Hélène Amazou (Togo / Belgium), Lucy Azubuike (Nigeria), Mohamed Camara (Mali / France), Cheick Diallo (Mali / France), Aida Duplessis (Mali), Em’kal Eyongakpa (Cameroon), Aboubakar Fofana (Mali / France), Meschac Gaba (Benin/ Netherlands), Francois-Xavier Gbré ( Ivory Coast / France), Romuald Hazoumè (Benin), Abdoulaye Armin Kane (Senegal), Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), Soungalo Malé (Mali), Hamidou Maiga (Burkina Faso), Nii Obodai (Ghana), Emeka Ogboh (Nigeria), Abraham Oghobase, Amarachi Okafor (Nigeria / UK), Charles Okereke (Nigeria), Nnenna Okore (Nigeria / USA), Duro Olowu (Nigeria / London), George Osodi (Nigeria / London), Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso), Ibrahima Niang AKA Piniang (Senegal), Nyani Quarmyne (Ghana), Abderramane Sakaly (Senegal / Mali), Amadou Sanogo (Mali), Malick Sidibé (Mali), Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon / Belgium), Barthélémy Toguo (Cameroon / France), Victoria Udondian (Nigeria), Séraphin Zounyekpe (Benin)Musicians
AfroCubism – featuring Eliades Ochoa of Buena Vista Social Club and Toumani Diabaté (Cuba / Mali), Diabel Cissokho (Senegal), Angelique Kidjo with Manchester World Voices Choir (Benin / UK) ; Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra (Nigeria / UK); Endless Journey – featuring members of Mamane Barka and Etran Finatawa (Niger); Kanda Bongo Man (Congo / UK); Jaliba Kuyateh & The Kumareh Band (Gambia); Seckou Keita Band (Senegal / UK)
During this exhibition, I was invited by the whitworth arts gallery, Manchester for a five weeks residency to create new work for the show. The residency was supported by Islington mill where I lived and work between 22nd of April - 1st June when the exhibition opened.
This new textile work made for We Face Forward takes the
Whitworth Art Gallery’s textile collection as its starting point. The
collection ranges from textiles made in Manchester for export to the
West African market in the eighteenth century, to fabrics by
contemporary makers in Mali who supply DKNY with hand-spun cotton.
Combining materials and narratives from Lagos and Manchester, Udondian
weaves myths and histories into her own textiles, creating her own
hybrids and questioning how stories become histories.
Victoria Udondian, Aso Ikele (1948), 7m X 7m,2012
This peice is also a presentation of a possible history. find the history below....
History of Aso Ikele(1948)
About Aso Ikele (1948)
The name, Aso Ikele, meaning ‘cloth used to protect the home’ in the Yoruba language, originates
from the Yorubaland in Nigeria. Given the provisional date of 1948, parts of
the textile may be much older and some sections much more recent, but presented
only with the material itself, and the history of its probable homeland, we can
only conjecture about its true origins and exact date.
The textile is divided into three panels, the left and right panels
longer and more colourful, and the central panel almost exclusively woven with
a white border. Each panel has a centrepiece from which each woven section
appears to radiate. These central sections are certainly much older than the
surrounding sections, and appear to be produced by a different hand to the
outer parts. Of particular interest is the burlap centre-piece on the left-hand
panel. This section is inscribed with text, which may possibly have some ritual
significance. The fabric has been repaired several times, implying a regular
use, but for purposes unknown.
As Venice Lamb and Judy Holmes have attested in African Weaving (Duckworth 1975), ‘Nigeria has a tradition of
weaving and dyeing of textiles which was of international importance long
before the first European reached the shores of West Africa in the fifteen
century’. The techniques and patterns of Aso
Ikele are undoubtedly drawn from this rich history, but its sections imply
a long period of making and remaking, utilising sections of older fabric.
Possibly the first European to see the early sections of Aso Ikele might have been the German
archaeologist and anthropologist, Leo Frobenius, who visited Ife in Nigeria in
1910. Although only in the region for barely three weeks, Frobenius’ study was
the accepted and only written view of Ife for some 50 years. His expedition’s
primary purpose was to enrich the collections of German museums, and an account
written in 1959 described Frobenius as ‘merely extract[ing] possessions by a
combination of browbeating and exploitation…’ Frobenius was also the inventor
of a spurious myth, proposing that a lost European civilization was the
root of African culture and social structure.
One possible route by which Aso Ikele may have come to Manchester is with
Frank Willett, who was Keeper of the Department of Ethnology and General
Archaeology, at the Manchester Museum from 1950 to 1958. The majority of the
Nigerian textiles in the Whitworth Art Gallery come from Willett, who made his first
visit to Nigeria in 1956. If the textile was brought to the UK by Willett, no
documents exist and it is unclear if the outer sections would have been in
place then.
Careful analysis of these outer
sections reveals buttons and labels, demonstrating that the outer section is in
fact entirely made of clothes.
