ABANANYA
ABANANYA
Abananya is Igbo but it also means a lot in Okpe-Urhobo language. It is an Okpe-Urhobo word. The meaning, is where am I going to go with this?
A book by world renowned award winning artist, printmaker and sculpturer, Bruce Ononbrakpeya
100 stories about managing change
Price N4000
Contact: Mudiare Onobrakpeya
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“At the moment,” he says in an interview at his home in Lagos, “I am working on a series which I call Abananya. Abananya is Igbo but it also means a lot in Okpe-Urhobo language. It is an Okpe-Urhobo word. The meaning, is where am I going to go with this? That came out when the Dutch wax that was originally acknowledged as Ankara was somehow being printed here or done wrongly. Then people became disillusioned; they did not like it. So Abananya stood for an inferior clothe. I therefore started to put out cut-outs from it together. And so I developed a style of print-making and painting, which resulted into the series.
“This is what I now call Abananya series, representing now change. Abananya now becomes a metaphor for change. This is what I have been working on now for sometime. A few times I showed a lot of them to Sandra Obiagu, one of the most outstanding curators and matrons of the art; she liked it. A few people also showed up at the Temple Gallery, Lagos where she had a show and they also liked the idea,” he says.
Widely known for his peculiar form of the art, Onobrakpeya says: “The work is about change. It talks about change; change to make the society better. Change in our lives; change to make the art more on ahead. And the art can be used in this Abananya series to espouse change. So, it gave me the idea that change is even more than that.”
Over the years a lot of people had clamoured for change. But as an artist, Onobrakpeya’s idea about this is never sacrosanct. “For me, this issue of change has been there all the time. It is the only thing that is permanent in life and it is entering a new phase. The idea even brought me back to when we were young in school. I began to reflect over the changes that had come into our lives ever since. So apart from creating the pictures which are not graphic illustrations but they are there to help you look back in time to explore these changes, the works also put your mind on who we are and so on.”