Nduwhite Art Consults

Paparazzi at Ahamefula 2011...the begining of the end.

2011-12-30T09:12:00.000-08:00

Ahamefula...the begining of the end...11-11-11

2011-12-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

How long is now…is a phrase that is stuck in my mind as I think of the “occupy Wall street”, how long will we occupy the street, just like the earth quakes in Washington, how long will we run and evacuate for safety, as the Irene sweeps our streets away…I am sick of wondering and hoping that things will be better, I just thought of my friends in Egypt and how long we stood there on the streets day and nights, my brothers and sisters in Tunisia and fleeing sisters and mothers in Libya as our fathers and sons take to the street with guns and roses….how long will we fight for true freedom? I have always said that true freedom is a true surrender…away from self.

Time is ticking every time you read a word in this note, even as you just blinked.
How long will we hope?
Trust?
Fight?

Persevere?

Dreams?

When we can’t stand on the pedestals of our fathers to even celebrate our said freedom? We run from the fears of Apocalyptic nightmares that has become day-mares…soon we will blow ourselves away again, time is really not on our side any more…we run for safety in our armored cars and walls dreaming of nights in day time…why do we prefer darkness for protection, why hope time will change their minds?
When time is no longer on their sides, as they have changed their method too; Quantity is the idea now. I mean quantity death is important…HELL needs filling as their clock is ticking; we need to fill HELL in time…because time is no longer on our side too.
We have brought hell in time to ourselves…our fathers can’t sit in the open air any more, else our children will kidnap them for a good ransom…our times have changed, time is running, this is only the beginning of the end.
I pity my children, they may not know peace, because we have sown seeds of contempt and bombs that will explode in time…

00:01

00:00

Baaaannnng !!!...

BANG !!! BANG !!! BANG!!!

……………….We the timed claim responsibility for the BANG !!!

They started it first with all the conspiracy of humanity and the dream of a global city free of hunger and poverty, masquerading us with tales of redemption and wars fought with pen and dark interest……..all is about interest.

Close your eyes and cry, close your eyes and see…see all the trills of fashion and trend as we all run through the run way, dominating the street with our brand name, as soon as the name is mentioned, we also must change the style because our fashion sense requires constant trill and fascination, so we must constantly develop new ideas to meet the desires to look like run way figures.

I just bought a recent android phone other with my master card, before my phone arrives the phone company just announced the release of another latest design and I am one step behind again, behind the latest phone, when will I ever have the latest phone at least for a week, brand names are all competing, emulating, innovating and rebranding styles, idea, concepts and even names to keep the trill in time.

Soon cars will run with water…they say if you can see it you can have it, we have electric cars, cable cars and then the flying cars we will call them flying cars…my pity will be for the birds, as we will soon develop traffic between this cars and the birds of the skies…black light for black birds and black cars, red light for red birds and red cars, blue for blue birds and cars, finally my pity goes to the parrot with multiple colours…please stop don’t imagine it.

BANG !!!......CAR-BIRD CRASHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!

And then comes the Ambulance…damn ! multi coloured Ambulance cars, one for the birds and the one for humans, cool ending…more bang, bang , bang and…
Bird-car-ambulance crassssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
God you are a cool smart guy…as you watch us help you end it.

Do we still have time?

Stop !

We are progressing at least you agree with me like my father told me in my third life;

UP

SIDE

DOWN

I was UP once and created a SIDE effect on my mother’s belly and will soon be DOWN inside mother earth if there is anything like mother earth?…don’t pity me because this is the end of all things and all men…the question here is on which side will you be?
Like our world today.

UP

SIDE

DOWN !!!

Safety is now the most expensive commodity on the stock, everyone is selling and everyone is buying, fear is the merchant and “ the afraid” is the consumer …looking across our shoulders is now fashionable, soon our airline will replace the airbags with Air ” B” Proof Bags !

Someone should take my advice or leave it, after all it is free .

It is just the beginning of the end…politics is a career now, economic prophets have failed us as they couldn’t interpret the writing on the wall…then came the melt down…crack down and economic depression.

So what can be predictable in our time? Safety, economy, politics, religion, fashion, style, trend, today or time?.

Maybe time…let’s take all the clock in the world today and break or remove their batteries, but tomorrow will still come?…time is what is between everything from happening at the same time.

Listen…as it messes with my head…tick,tick, tick, tick tick…I will grow old and out soon…I hate the thought of this, mostly when i imagine all that my surgeon friend is doing to help me keep all the forms, like a three dimensional cubic monster…I pity my face because I will soon outgrow it, and my breast, damn ! I don’t want to think about that.
Ooopps, just let the illusion continue.

My face will be like the masquerade that we chased in the village…I need some fixing before they find out !!!

Surgeon!

My breast.

God I hate to think of it…just ignore the idea please.

And my bikini…damn, do I confuse you…my names is changed and my voice as soft as the velvet petal of the rose…he loves me so…and we now live together.

I am living my dreams in pursuit of happiness…long dreams in time, as long as I don’t upset your head…and if I do Upset it then it is same idea.

UP

SIDE

DOWN !

Try and get me off your head, maybe to the side and possible down…it is just our time yes the age of information, imaginations, liberty and slavery.

Believe me…ignorance is freedom and knowledge is slavery…if you doubt me ask him !

Yes him ……Adam!

I am sick of sin like the devil…when will my redemption come ! where and how? I even have programmed prayers, call my phone and I will pray you one…it is not just a callers tune anymore…
today,this is how we pray, remember the advice, Pray without season? So I do that when you call…I am tired of bothering myself about answers for our world…maybe you bother about that for a while, for me I am okay with the tunes.

If we all ring the prayers…maybe we will change the times and extend the time to the beginning of the beginning…and live in innocence and ignorance…because I just read the notice:

The Light at the tunnel has just been turned off!

Back to the dark age, wow maybe that is where we are heading to…oh my God, we are already there…courtesy of the power holding company of Nigeria.

Just before the Apocalyptic war…when the children of light and the children of the dark will collide on the streets of where?

Or don’t you think the war has begun already…from the street of Egypt to Wall street in New York …which side are you?

SIDE!.

The painful thing is for some of us our side has been chosen for us before the war began, and you can’t change side anymore…just fight for victory for your SIDE.
Ensure your side wins or else you will go DOWN.

That is the point….Choice made Up, gives you a side and you are Down with it.
So now you are agree with me about our world today…..
UP…SIDE …DOWN

Maybe that is where time is taking us all to, where everything that has been up before went down to and will go down to soon again and again…I am afraid because I have taken a Side, yes this is my side.

Choose your side or they will choose it for you…think about the end of your side, cos this is the beginning of the end.
And when the Armageddon war begins, what digit will your bear…take out 5 from 11 today, we will have 6 left…interesting?.

11-11-11 – 05-05-05 = 06-06-06…..the beginning of the end.

Digit…my phone number are digits, my ATM card digits, password digits, car code digits, door code digit, digit, digit, I see it everywhere today…where is digit taking us to?…I ask once more at the end, whose digit will you bear?

This is the beginning of the end !

We must part now part in time, to meet in time at the end of the end…for time is what is between everything from happening at once !

Nduwhyte on 3rd Ward Open Call

2011-06-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

Nduwhyte on 3rd Ward Open Call

God Created birds and built tree but man built cages.

2010-05-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

This work is centered on the attempt of humanity to be free and control it existence, the desire of man to create a world based on his ideal, passion and dreams which in some cases turns around to work against him…

We have built illusions and dreams beyond true freedom; we are losing values and morals by the seconds, we have created illusions and dreams that will continue to elude us, separate us, alienate us, destroy and kill our sense of humanity.

We have caught ourselves in our own webs, webs of drugs, prostitutions (child prostitution and trafficking) abortions, rapes, social unrest, environmental pollutions, global warning, cultural conflicts and social irresponsibility, political crimes, economics power tussle ( globalization ).

We fight more wars than ever before, we work hard than before, know more now than before. Knowledge and information are in full circulation than ever before, yet true knowledge has eluded us, the more we search the less we know.

True knowledge is true love for self, true love is divine, divine is perfection, perfection is God, true revelation is beyond knowledge, it is true surrender to the unmoved mover.

It is an installation piece, when assembled it will create a rectangular box that stands 203.2 cm tall and 104.14cm x 99.06 cm width.( Square). It has inscription from the book of Ecclesiastics and an extract from my poem...The Quest, ( Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu 2007unpublished). Etc.

This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all ; yea ,also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil , and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead…then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Ecclesiastes. 9 : 3

Mankind is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source,

Broken from the source,

In search of independence,

Blinded in knowledge,

Free in ignorance…( The Quest, Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu 2006.Unpublished)

The cage is bearing birds making attempts to escape, the birds represent the natural things and Gods gifts to man to explore instead we choose to exploit them.

On top of is a picture of the Vitruvian man, drawn by Leonardo Dan Vinci in 1490,it was first of all a theory propagated by Marcus Vitruvius, a Roman Architect in 1 BCE. He authored this treatise on architecture entitled De Architectura.

This famous drawing of Leonardo confirmed the theory of Marcus that man is the balance and the center point of the earth as quoted in the beginning of book III, in his discussion on the building of the temples:

Similarly, in the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole. Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man can be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it…
(Marcus Vitruvius, De Architectura, Chapter 1, p 3)

It is from here that the concept of the vitruvian man emerged, Leonardo’s drawing that provided the first drawing of human proportion supports Marcus treaties of balance and man… Here he provides one of his simplest illustrations of a shifting ‘centre of magnitude’ without a corresponding change of ‘centre of normal gravity’… i.e., the centers of ‘magnitude’ and ‘gravity (Keele 252).”

While the Encyclopedia Britannica online states that Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe."

If as a argued above that man is the cosmography of the microcosm, then what ever we do here reflects on the balance of the earth.( Nature) the human body is a symbol of the essential symmetry , and by extension , of the universe as a whole.

So our world survives essentially by what we do and when we do them, on a close study of the vitruvian man, I believe that a triangle can be created from the wide spread hands to the tip of the closed legs…giving us a sense of balance like a drawing of food chain, the trinity and the pyramid of Egypt an ancient architecture of human wisdom beyond the physical purpose of sheltering but prolonging.

So if a triangle stands for us a source of divinity, human relationship in a symbiotic community and ecosystem in a balance, was Marcus and Leonardo leaving an invisible line for our generation to discover…and that I have come to the enlightenment of the Triangle…just like a touch light, creates a triangle as it travels…I have seen the triangle in the light.

And if i say today, that this same treaties has represented for us a lot than we have closely observed…and that today I have discovered the invisible lines in Leonardo Dan Vinci drawing of the Vitruvian man as a triangle that balances all things.

As renaissance enough as this was it still has it contemporary representation in the major discipline of man.

In medicine, is symbol used by medical professional in United States, Saudi Arabia India and Germany…it also represents alternative medicine and the holopathic approach to wholeness.

Economic Influence: The Italian 1 Euro coins…chosen by Carlon Azeblio Ciampi because of it high symbolic meaning of “man as a measure of all things”

Scientific Pursuit: It appears on the patch on the suit worn on the right shoulder of the American Extravehicular Mobility Unit ( EMU) used by NASA and as a patch of honour, called the EVA patch, awarded to spacewalkers for use on the uniform jumpsuit as an indicator that the individual has completed a spacewalk.

Even in technological products like Mac Os representing accessibility and gnome desktop computer interfaces.

We should not be in a hurry not to notice the picture of the earth below the Vitruvian man…I am seeking to provoke response and the consciousness of mans regarding his activities, what we do and how we do them affects our world…if the earth hangs on a balance on man…then I believe that if we go back to the drawing board, to the blue print, we may be able to save our dying world. Today we are faced with all kinds of challenges , i.e. ; Global economic meltdown, global warming, shocks and waves of technological demands, increased demands of energy and alternative energy , deforestation; depletion of energy and natural resources resulting to breakdown in the food chain (may I remind us of the pyramid for preservation in Egypt and that the same principle was used to preserve groundnut in Kano years back, so what with the triangle? ), deforestation, and the sea over flowing it boundaries i.e. Lagos Bar beach.

Finally, the tree in the middle represents nature and man’s gift, just as Albert Einstein once said “all religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward enabling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom” and yet we have caged ourselves in our pursuits…we must turn to the blue print, to nature and seek the true way to exist.

Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu

2010

Ahamefula II,09 09 09...of our times and generation.

2009-09-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

Ahamefula; is about our times and generation, it is about movement, it’s about revolution, emancipation, human development and discoveries, civilization clashes and neocon upsurge, cultural conflicts, moral and ethical bias, spirituality and the society, apocalyptic nightmares and the hopes for a new enlightenment. This exhibition is mirroring the beginning of time and man. How and why is entangled in the game of time how we believe that we can rule time, besides the sympathetic truth that time has been set to rule man, how much that man has done in the beginning and now manipulating time and how that we end up entangling ourselves.
In the beginning of time man was to live eternal, man was to live as long as time, if we desire eternity as humans, who gave us these desire: the desires of eternity. Man desires to live beyond time even in our death (the pharaoh’s greatest desire).
Who left the desires of eternity in us? There must be a connection between our desires to be eternal and eternity, but whose desire was time fulfilling and whose desire was man fulfilling when he dies.
If in the past, man’s greatest desire was to live in time, through time and beyond time, how smart are we now; now that we have consciously made time so fast, we are living in the greatest times of man, the fastest era in the history of man, we are experiencing the X age, internet Age, when man travels in virtual space in seconds speeds to their destination, we have technologies that transfer information in less seconds, we communicate with the fastest telecommunication system in time…

My interest to work on time has driven me to study fashion trends, scientific developments, technological advancements, societal norms, believes and values; we are living in the age of imagination already, human experiences have gradually moved from static to spatial, we live more inside ourselves, we live in a society that encourages self gratification, self satisfaction, self and self…community is gradually vanishing from our vocabularies…our times are selfish, we live in an age of selfishness…
Time like I have always said is what stops everything from happening at the same time…time is what is between today and tomorrow, time is what is between life and death, time is what is between you and meeting and time also between us parting…time was before we came, time is taking us to the unknown…where is the unknown of time, will time remain unknown when we get to the unknown?

National Youths Service Corps Workshop, Abuja

2009-03-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, March 18, 2009 approximately 1,000 recent graduates of Nigerian universities attended the program which is aimed nation-building and orienting the mindset of the youth to develop a better appreciation and patroitism was held at the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) orientation camp in Kubwa, a suburb of Abu

Dr. Tom Adaba who was the special guest speaker spoke on the theme of the workshop" MAKING NIGERIA A BETTER NATION BEGINS WITH YOU "he admonishes corps members not to bedetered by the bad examples some of our past and present leaders, but to see themselves as agents of cange and to believe in themselves in whatever they are doing.

While, the U.S. Embassy Counselor for Public Affairs, Ms. Atim Eneida George who was the guest speaker used the opportunity to encourage her audience to participate in Nigeria’s development.

She admonished the assembled Nigerian youth to get involved in strengthening the country’s institutions. Her talk titled “The Power of Citizen Driven Development” addressed the importance of association, advocacy, agency, compassion, and sweat equity as tools for development. She stressed that the freedom of association, which is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human rights as well as the U.S. and Nigerian constitutions, forms the bedrock of civil society, an essential ingredient in the democratic dispensation.

Also the initiator of the project, a cultural diplomate and art consultant; Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu found a way through the heart of the corpers in his words: I can hear someone say who is this guy…or who are these people…I am one of you, we are one of you.

I am one of who worked extra hours to pay his school fees…because there is no social system in my country.
I am one of you who was thrown out of the exam hall because I couldn’t pay my school fees,

I am one of you who walked to school every day because the mass transit I was told that was provided to carry me as a student has been sent out to raise fund for the school system,

I am one of you, who bought handout and textbooks every semester because I was told that if I don’t buy them I will fail not because I did not attend classes or read them.

I am one of you, that got involve, in juvenile trouble and activities, because the society says that if I don’t I am a Jew man.
I am one of you slept in the school hostel with other eight roommates…because the money allocated to the system to build new hostel was carried away in Ghana must go.
I am one of you, who have been there,… done this,… done that…
I am Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu…a cultural diplomat, initiator of the project re-imagine Nigeria!
Re-imagine Nigeria is geared towards re-educating, redefining, redirecting and repositioning Nigeria’s image, it also seeks to involve young creative individuals in a collective effort geared towards using our culture, which is the essence of a people to instill in us a deeper appreciation of our national identity.
In all the ruins around us every day, as I listen to the news, as i walk across the street and stop to take a bus at the bus stop, I still see butterflies flying, Then I stopped to ask what is in the caterpillar that makes you think it will become a butterfly…the butterfly is inside the caterpillar…what is in our great nation Nigeria that has stopped us from flying is inside us…what will makes us fly again is still inside us.
Every day we hear in the news terrible things about our beautiful nation Nigeria…hear me this day that all the damages that is going on…will not stop if you and me do not raise up to the challenge…we are experiencing , political instability, financial crises at global level, social unrest, social irresponsibility and image slandering.

Most of us are tied of the negativities and anomalies…as much as we desire change it is not automatic, never will and never can,the change we need today…must start with me and you.
Remember that pure water sachet bag that you just drank and dropped indiscriminately…I tell you my friend you have just added a 25years environmental pollution to this great nation.
Remember, how you walked to that bus stop and people are on the line, but you maneuver your way to the front…you just deprived someone his opportunity.
But today, I need you to remember that we are not what we did and where we have been is less important as where you are going…if we must re-imagine Nigeria, if we must fly and again, if we must build on our creative capital, intellectual capital and human heritage.
All that we will be needing is a little commitment to the national pride, patriotism, a change of view, change of mind, a little empathy, sensitive and involvement…just stop, take a new look, think anew, renovate and re-imagine Nigeria.

Thank you.

In the begining of time( a site installation by Ndubuisi Nduwhite Ahanonu)

2008-12-21T07:53:00.001-08:00

"In the beginning of time"; is about our times and generation, it is about movement, it's about revolution, evolution, emancipation, human development and discoveries, civilization clashes and neocon upsurge, cultural conflicts, moral and ethical bias, spirituality and the society, apocalyptic nightmares and the hopes for a new enlightenment. This "Site installation", is mirroring the beginning of time and man, how and why man is entangled in the game of time, how we believe that we can rule time, besides the sympathetic truth that time has been set to rule man, how much that man has done in the beginning and now, manipulating time and how that we end up entangling ourselves. In the beginning of time, man was to live eternal, man was to live as long as time, if we desire eternity as humans, who gave us these desires; the desires of eternity, man desires to live beyond time even in our death( the Pharaoh's greatest desire).Who left the desires of eternity in us? There must be a connection between our desires to be eternal and eternity, but whose desire was time fulfilling and whose desire was man fulfilling when he dies.

If in the past, man's greatest desire was to live in time, through time and beyond time, how smart are we now; now that we have consciously made time so fast, we are living in the greatest times of man, the fastest era in the history of man, we are experiencing the X age, internet Age, when man travels in virtual space in seconds speeds to their destination, we have technologies that transfer information in less seconds, we communicate with the fastest telecommunication system in time.[ Our cities operate 24/7 in time, we work more times than we ever have before, we spend more time outside ourselves, stretching beyond our abilities to reach our desires in order to control time -time is like a shadow sleeping in wait, waiting for you, waiting for you to breathe your first fresh air, slowly ticking from the day you strolled into these space called life.
Our times have changed greatly and our generations has metamorphosed into a spider web, we the webs, … and creating millions of network of human desires and passion to live beyond the frail web we made. we get entangled into our own web of technological, economical and social traps that we set, waiting for our prey, who are not watching to stroll into these webs, we are experiencing the greatest Age of human revolution, evolution, emancipation, assimilations, development, networking of human and national relationship, neocolonism and global citizenry. Yet we bring along with us, our personal interest, national mandate, manipulations of humans capacity and capital.[Photo][Photo][Photo]Yet we are doomed more than ever before , never in time before are we experiencing depression like we are doingtoday-Young generations of our times are now involve in suicide which use to be common with the older generations . With the entire modern games gadget to keep us away from loneliness yet we are getting lonelier and alienated from each other. We are losing the force for living; no connection beyond gadget or internet connection which is virtual, man is dying by time, by the elements of time by the seconds of time...

In the words of Domenico Quarantar, Curator for Pixxelpoint (For Gods Sake) "technology violates our privacy like only God used to be able to… technology is an element and product of our time, developed over and within time, it imparts is glaring in our time. We can not replace this true force that drives man, we can't replace Him with our virtual game; games of time.If time was set by man, why can't man control time with all that we have achieved, "just for one moment I beg you man, pause time for a second" then why try if you can't.Time has conquered our greatest achievement, time has out done our greatest record, and time has exceeded our greatest height.Our generation is experiencing the fastest time in history, a period when time is fast and short, has the ticking increased without our attention? Maybe someone fastened time without our knowledge? We have even increased in our ticking of endeavor. Why I am talking of time as if I am not lost in time…I came met time and I will and leave if I wish in time…follow through my poem, I will meet you at the end of time, I mean at the end of the beginning.

God created the earth

and took a vacation
Mankind was in control
directing the shows

the shows of woes

of agony,

despair,

of hopelessness,

of mirage

chasing blues and dream

of the illusions of reality,

the pain of suffering in the womb,

dying before been born

with popping eyes of

like owls eyes in hell.

Mankind is in part divine

a troubled stream from

a pure source broken

from the source,

search of independence,

blind in knowledge,

free in ignorance,

obscene like cancer,

bitter as the cud

stinking like a rotten meat,

drying up like a raisin in the sun,

vanishing like a vapour,

a smoke or a cry

as fleeting as a sound a smell or taste

this I know, but more than this I know.

I know because I hear his silent sufferings.

I foresee his funeral-destiny,

his deep pains of pride like a devil sick of sin,

his unseen agonies and suffocating sense of woe

like a crushed goat,

his resistance and his confusion,

his self tarp like a fly caught in a spider web.

Man, what torment,

What pity,

that you have refused to listen

to the singing birds,

the twinkling stars,

the sound from the crystal rain balls,

the cry of the newborn

that knowledge can not reach him in this life,

love.

What blindness,

that you have refused to see,

the flowing glass streams

the blossoms beauty of the stars

the unending generations of silver lines in the sky,

the magnificent colours of the rainbow.

See mankind,

see, you imbecile worm of the earth

sink of uncertainty and error

let love rise in your soul

ike the sun (your soul the depository of truth)

for He is long returned

And in control.

RE-IMAGINE NIGERIA!

2008-11-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

When I delivered a paper in Lagos on the 16th of August 2008, at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Titled: Re-imagine Nigeria, I began the first few lines with….”Obama is on the spotlight because he believes he can, today, YES WE CAN, has become a style, fashion, language and song in all the human minds that who believe in change and posterity.
Obama’s song, yes we can is been sang by all, because he did not sing alone like the birds do. We are singing YES WE CAN, because, he first of all said, Yes I can. He imagined he could, he believed he could, he saw himself in his mind’s eye as the President of the United States of America. Today, he can proudly say “Yes I have”.
May I invite you to take a journey back home to our beautiful country, and imagine all the possibilities if we can only believe and say : YES WE CAN, yes we can make it better than we met it.
Imagine a new Nigeria with National pride, imagine our Nation with great tolerance for each other, a nation with of social responsibilities…national consciousness, patriotism, education, innovation and creativity, a new state of mind, curious open mindedness in a population that welcomes the challenges of a global world.
Our story can only be told better by us….and our History-being His story, will be told when we had finished walked this path, the greatest part of our story, will be what we did for posterity and humanity…for we are not here for service to ourselves alone but for our neighbours. Our grand aim is to use culture and creativity to reinstall in Nigerians a lasting and trusting national pride and rediscover new elements of our cultural diversity.
Imagine, a Nigeria where we are rated the number one in the world brand index because of stable economy, sustainable democratic system, exposed tourism rich cultural value…cultural value is the basis of a nation’s strength, and I tell you ours is in our diversity. The cultural diversity of our country is the reason why I can sit beside another man that does not speak my language, and discuss politics, and the 7 point agenda of my president, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
It is this strength of the cultural diversity of our beloved nation that will make me stop, on a busy day, to help that little boy on the other side of the road cross over, or pick up the abandoned baby on the roadside, without waiting for him or she to speak his or her first word, so I may confirm whether he or she my is tribe or not. It is in the strength of our diversity, that I was born in the north, grew up in the north and here I am again in the central north.
My beloved country men imagine a country, where CNN is streaming that young talented Nigerian who is a whiz kid, prototyping and building his own computer, where that Nigerian engineer is helping solve global issues at the International level, where a Nigerian is the head astrologist leading the next trip to the moon, imagine on Prime Time, the world’s global warming solution is discovered by a Nigerian scientist, where the most expensive art piece is the work of Ben Enwonwu or the likes of him, and a Nigeria with the greatest creative capital in the world.
Creative solution is creativity, creativity is natural, nature is what is common to a set of people, culture is simply a way of life or a belief of a people…our culture is a part of us, we need to harness these unending resources of ours. This is the most important aspect for Culture in a globalised world.
When you look at the artworks on display, we have successfully conducted a form of diplomacy. The way we present ourselves to the outside is increasing becoming more important to our self image and relationship with other countries. Artists are our best communicators and basically the greatest innovators of our time. This makes our project “Re-Imagine Nigeria” an important promoter of the nation’s image, culture arts and as an arena for cultural experiences. We must take a proactive attitude as society develops. To make a difference, it is vital that they are developing and renewing in order to attract the public at large. The message is look around, think a new, re-define, re-imagine and re-innovate Nigeria.