The Female Drummer/Àyánbìnrin

Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative Colours of Africa, a collaborative project with Google Arts & Culture, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them.

The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.

Colour:Royal Blue
Country:Nigeria

Artwork Rationale:

The colour blue in Nigerian indigenous cultures is the colour of love. Before a king ascends the throne, he often has to wear the royal indigo blue. In Yorùbá, this is called ẹtù. In northern Nigeria, the colour is also used for the chief or the king. Same in eastern Nigeria. In the north, they sometimes even pound the blue into the turban when they marry a new wife. The whole face is sometimes blue to show love to the new bride. During their Durba, they sometimes wear the shining blue colour into the turbans to show love to the people at the festival.

I used blue for this painting titled 'The Female Drummer/Àyánbìnrin' to illustrate both the love you see here between the drummer and her lover and the love desperately needed in the time of the coronavirus lockdown. In Yorùbá societies, the talking drummer is usually at the front of the palace sending messages to the king through the medium of the drum — messages that the visitor themselves might not understand. The unique thing about this painting, done during the lockdown, is the use of the female drummer instead of the typical male ones seen in traditional Yorùbá art. My work involves female empowerment — I have trained disadvantaged women, widows, and young women for many years on fabric art — so I am always happy to put women at the forefront of my artistic philosophy. (Photo credit: Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, 2020)

What it means to be African

Being an African today means being proud as a woman and an artist. In the olden days, they limited us to the kitchen. If you were an artist, no one wanted to marry you. But today, it is a pride for an African woman like me to be an artist. That’s my pride and dignity.

Biography

Chief Nike Monica Okundaye, popularly known as Mama Nike, was born in May 1951 in the quiet and hilly village of Ogidi-Ijumu in Kogi State of Nigeria. Okundaye is a multi-talented individual with a wide range of creative skills. As a village girl she was a stage dancer and later became an actress, featuring as a lead actress in a local Yoruba film, “Ayaba”. She has also participated in many documentary films including “Kindred Spirits”, sponsored and produced by Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC and CNN feature documentaries African Voices and Inside Africa.
Okundaye is also an accomplished professional artist: a painter, a textile artist, weaver and embroiderer with national and international awards. Okundaye is a social entrepreneur and a well-known philanthropist championing the cause of the neglected Nigerian rural women using art as a communication tool.
Okundaye is the founder and managing director of Nike Center for Art and Culture in Osogbo, where she offers free training to Nigerians in various forms of arts. So far, over 3000 young Nigerians (mainly violated and abused young women) have been trained in the centre and are now earning a decent living through art. Many African countries now send their students to study textile art at the centre.
Okundaye also founded several Nike Art Galleries (in Lagos, Osogbo, Ogidi-Ijumu and Abuja) as well as weaving centres and the Nike Art and Culture Foundation, which fosters Nigerian cultural heritage.
In May 2006, Okundaye was awarded Ordine Della Stella Della Solidarieta Italiana, one of the highest Italian national awards of merit by the government of the Republic of Italy in appreciation of her efforts in using art to address and solve the problems of Nigerian sex workers in Italy.