Afro-Ionic (2014) by Joseph EzeOriginal Source: African Artists Foundation
Joseph Eze was born in Nigeria in 1975. He's since developed an artistic practice of mixed-media collages that comment on the politics, relationships, and troubles of contemporary life.
Many of Eze's works incorporate human figures and layers of text. These texts are often taken from newspapers and magazines. Eze then paints, cuts out, and glues these texts onto the canvas.
Repeated across this canvas are the words 'ionic' and 'profile', but what could these mean?
The word 'ionic' is used to describe a type of classical Greek column, one that's associated with femininity. The slender shape, fluted lines, and spiralling decoration is said to resemble women's dress.
Columns were originally designed to hold up the roofs of important buildings like temples, but are sometimes seen holding up statues and works of art, so they have become strongly associated with ideas of beauty and history.
The design of the fluted ionic column is repeated in the thick layers of white paint, known as impasto, that have been scraped over the canvas.
The woman's head sits on top of the column, like a work of art, and has been painted in profile. Profile pictures have a history dating back thousands of years; even today we show monarchs and presidents in profile on coins and stamps.
So, 'ionic' and 'profile' describe what we see, while evoking thoughts of European culture and classical beauty, high art, and ancient history, values that have been historically the preserve of white Europeans.
Eze's artwork turns expectations upside down, presenting a black African woman as an equal to any European hero of myth and legend.
But Eze's picture can also be read as having sinister elements. On the woman's cheek is the word 'SOLD', pointing to the historic European enslavement and trade of Africans. Suddenly, the disembodied head on a pillar takes on a menacing air.
On her forehead is a newspaper advert in business terms: invoice discounting, cash, bonds & guarantees, import finance. There's a tension in this image between the celebration and the commodification of Black human beings, between art as empowerment and art as objectifying.
Thanks for following this tour of Joseph Eze's artwork Afro-Ionic. You can learn more about contemporary artists working in Nigeria by reading about the Nigeria / Roots exhibition.
