Compared to the majority populations living in northern and southern Nigeria, the many and diverse groups flanking the 650-mile-long Benue River and their fascinating arts—are far less known and studied. Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley on display at the Fowler Museum from February 13 to July 23 2011, is the first major international exhibition to present a comprehensive view of the arts produced in the region which include some of the most abstract, dramatic and inventive sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. The exhibition features more than 150 objects used in a range of ritual contexts with genres as varied and complex as the vast region itself. According to Marla C. Berns, the Fowler museum director and lead exhibition curator at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the figurative wood sculptures, masks, figurative ceramic vessels, and elaborate bronze and iron regalia—in an exhibition that demonstrates how the history of central Nigeria can be "unmasked" through the dynamic interrelationships of its peoples and their arts.
The Benue River Valley occupies a geographical and historical "in-between" zone in Nigeria, too far south for Sudanic Arab chroniclers to have visited and too far north for coastal European traders and explorers to have penetrated before the mid nineteenth century.
The peoples and arts of the Benue are thus less studied than the more accessible ethnic groups of northern or southern Nigeria. Yet they can claim to equal importance as one of sub-Saharan Africa's great artistic legacies.
Diverse and remarkable artworks from central Nigeria include full bodied maternal images, sleek columnar statues, helmet masks adorned with naturalistic human faces, horizontal masks designed as stylized animal human fusions, imaginatively anthropomorphized ceramic vessels and elaborate regalia forged in iron and cast in copper alloys. These objects and meanings and purposes that were vital to the ways Benue Valley groups faced life's challenges and to the dramatic ritual activities conceived to solve them.
Produced in association with the Musee du quai Branly in Paris, Central Nigeria Unmasked features many works that have never before been on public display. Important loans come from major collections around the world, including those of the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, Berlin's Museum of Ethnology, Musee du quai Branly and the Fowler Museum at UCLA as well as a number of significant
American and European private collections. Central Nigeria Unmasked takes you on a journey up the Benue River to introduce the major artistic genres and styles associated with more than twenty-five ethnic groups living along its lower, middle and upper reaches. According to Berns, the broad regional view highlights the distinctiveness of particular community traditions and the ways artists have innovated freely within the parameters of local styles. Yet, more importantly, through their often surprising resemblances, artworks associated with neighboring peoples can bear witness to historical communication and interaction across communities, something not often unmasked in exhibitions on African art.
After its world premier at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the exhibition will be featured at other museums such as the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art and Stanford's University's Cantor Arts Center.
Ojiugo Nnenne