front cover of Postcolonial Modernism
Postcolonial Modernism
Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria
Chika Okeke-Agulu
Duke University Press, 2015
Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive "postcolonial modernism" that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.
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Rethinking Cosmopolitanism
Africa in Europe / Europe in Africa
Salah M. Hassan and Chika Okeke-Agula, special issue editors
Duke University Press, 2020
Contributors to this issue reconfigure concepts of art, culture, and politics through the lens of cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the historical and cultural entanglement of Africa and Europe at the intersection of decolonization and modernity, the contributors emphasize the potential of cosmopolitanism to shape possibilities for coexistence and living with difference among all people. Visual and textual essays address the causes and consequences of migration between Africa and Europe; the classification of artistic practices whose roots are not confined to any particular nation; and mid-twentieth-century debates on decolonization, modernity/modernism, and identity through a cosmopolitan viewpoint. Examining cosmopolitanism through theoretical perspectives as well as visual art practices, contributors to this heavily illustrated issue fill in the gaps in contemporary understandings of cultural and political dynamics between Africa and Europe.

Contributors. Hans Belting, Susan Buck-Morss, Jareh Das, Naminata Diabate, Fatima El Tayeb, Salah M. Hassan, Achille Mbembe, Sandy Prita Meier, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Tejumola Olaniyan, Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Berni Searle, Bahia Shehab, Brett M. Van Hoesen, Selene Wendt, Siegfried Zielinski
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