Textile artist Nike Davies-Okundaye worked as a construction laborer and carried water and firewood to survive. The art of adire gave her global fame and she is now educating generations of women in Nigeria.



There was no way Nike Davies-Okundaye could look the other way. For after all, she too had been a victim in her early teens.&nbsp;



Too many women were being pushed down the traditional path of marriage and child-rearing in her country.



Born in 1951 in Ogidi-Ijumu, a small village in western Nigeria known for its spectacular rock formations and traditional art industry, Davies-Okundaye resolved to fight this practice four decades ago.



“By the age of 13, they wanted to marry me off because my father had no money. I had to run away from home and join a traveling theater. I said I didn’t want to marry and wanted to pursue art,” recalls the internationally-renowned Lagos-based artist.



Not wanting to become one of six wives to a minister, Davies-Okundaye found her escape through adire, the name given to the Yoruba craft of tie-and-dye where indigo-dyed cloth is made using a variety of resist-dyeing techniques. Growing up in a predominantly art and craft household, Davies-Okundaye is a fifth-generation artist who decided to take the craft seriously due to poverty.



“I had no money to go to school and the first education parents give you is to teach you what they do. So, when I finished primary six and I had no support to go to secondary school, I said to myself, ‘let me master art so I can teach other women to also use their hand to make a living through their own artwork’.”



Davies-Okundaye was forced to work in the male-dominated construction sector, carrying concrete in pans to builders in order to save one shilling, just enough to buy a yard of fabric to create what she called wall-hanging art.



Her goal was to use the traditional wax-resist methods to design patterned fabric in a dazzling array of tints and hues. The adire design is the result of hand-painted work carried out mostly by women and through that, Davies-Okundaye saw a way to help women to become economically empowered. After all, her first break in life came as a result of that.



“There was no other job I was doing apart from adire. I was lucky the American government came to Nigeria to recruit an African who will teach African Americans how to make traditional textiles or crafts in the state. That is how I was lucky and got picked.”



Davies-Okundaye was the only woman in a class of 10 men who were flown to Maine in northeastern United States in 1974. That is where her whole outlook on life changed.



“Before I went to America, I used to carry three drums of water every day and carry firewood to be able to survive. It was like a breakthrough in my life when I reached America. I said ‘is this heaven?’ I was the only woman in the class and all the men were learning women’s looms and I kept telling them ‘this is for women’ and they said ‘yes, in America, what a man can do, a woman can also do’.”



This was in stark contrast to what she knew to be true in Nigeria at the time.



“If your husband is an artist, you are not allowed to do art. In the 1960s, if your husband has a PhD, you are not allowed to also have a PhD. You had to give room for your husband to be your boss.”



She decided to beat those age-old stereotypes.



As one of 15 wives to her then-husband at the time, Davies-Okundaye, with her newfound knowledge gained in America, started a revolution at home. She encouraged the other wives to create their own art business using adire.



“I said ‘if you learn this, you can earn a living by yourself and get your power because your money is your power’ and that is how they also started learning it. I didn’t stop sharing the knowledge there. I gathered girls on the streets who were selling kola nuts and peanuts and started training them. I said ‘if this textile can take me to America, let me teach other people’,” says Davies-Okundaye.



And that has been her calling ever since. Davies-Okundaye is the founder and director of four art centers, which offer free training to 150 young artists in Nigeria in visual, musical and performing arts.



One of the centers is the largest art gallery in West Africa comprising over 7,000 art works.



“They used to get the police to arrest me because they said I was trying to teach feminism in Nigeria because I went to America. They said I was going to corrupt our Nigerian women but I believe God sent me to liberate a lot of women who have the passion for what makes them happy but are afraid to do it because of what people will say. I say do what makes you happy always!”

Nike Davies

The Art Of Survival: The Art Of Adire Gave This Textile Artist Global Fame, She Now Educates Generations Of Women In Nigeria

The South African musician on how he finds culture and creative inspiration in the West African country.

Last summer, South African rapper and songwriter Senzo Vilakazi, who was in FORBES AFRICA’s Under 30 list in 2018, and better known by his stage name Kwesta, swapped his microphone for a notebook and pen 10,000 kilometers from his country of birth.
He was in Senegal on business, but recorded his thoughts in prose and memory.
“Then I just ended up staying for a couple of days because of the richness of the place,” says Kwesta.
He was captivated by the history of the West African country, and Gorée, a small island located away from the main harbor of Dakar, where slaves used to pass on their way to America.
Kwesta, who has traveled the world and performed in numerous African countries, was astounded by how much of its culture the island had managed to preserve years after slavery was abolished.
<blockquote>“I was really in love with how they have preserved their past. It is not like any other place that I have been to,” he says.</blockquote>
As soon as he landed, he was struck by the history of the island.
“It has a certain warmth; as soon as you go into it, it is almost certain that you can feel the lives that were lost there. It is a very difficult space to describe, a very inspirational and a very creative space. The people there are [so much into] culture preservation it is crazy,” says Kwesta.
On his short break, he went on a cruise ship, and visited the famous fort known as Slave House, which even former South African president Nelson Mandela once visited. The fort housed African slaves en route to the west.
“Six million slaves died there and over 20 million were shipped through the island,” says Kwesta on the facts gleaned from his trip.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/travel/2018/07/10/executive-travel-ola-orekunrins-india/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Executive travel: Ola Orekunrin’s India</a>
The imagery of slavery has stayed with him.
“They are just so proud [citizens]! They try to teach you about their culture. That is what I found quite interesting compared to South Africans because people here are very much westernised. I wish I could be able to bring back that pride and culture [they have],” observes Kwesta.
“Even as rappers, I always feel like we are trying to imitate the American style of rapping,” he says.
He also noticed the stark contrast of the landscape – the hospitality sector on one side and shanty towns on the other.
“When I was in my hotel, I could basically see the richness of their vegetation and on the other end, I could see their low-cost houses, which was such a weird thing to observe, because you could see the difference in the economies.”
Who would have thought the rapper’s favorite travel destination would be right here in Africa.

Youth Day Celebration concert in South Africa

Executive Travel: Kwesta’s Senegal

Imagine a pinup calendar that revisits history through color, and woven in a manner that depicts your past and future in an amusing way. Confused?
Well that is what the future looks like for South African performing artist Athi-Patra Ruga, known for his flamboyant performances and tapestries that challenge social norms.
Growing up in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Ruga knew at a young age he would become an artist, taking lessons, after school, at Belgravia Art Centre. He then received a scholarship to the Gordon Flack Davidson Academy of Design in Johannesburg.
“I had always known my body would be a site for telling stories. I feel the drive to tell stories, [I] overcame my fears – about it never been done before,” he says.
When he cut his teeth in art, he dabbled in fashion designing, incorporating fashion and art into one.
“Fashion has the power to dictate our movements physically and socially, to [a] great consequence. I have never seen it as a huge leap as both those mediums are concerned with the body,” says Ruga.
His current body of work is Queens in Exile, addressing issues of belonging and identity. However, it is his piece on the queens of Azania that put him on the cultural map.
“I feel it sparked something in the audience that [binds] our generation together. Witnessing the betrayal to the constitution I was raised with and also rainbowism, a utopian construct, played out in the country that is economically the most unequal in the world,” says Ruga.
Ruga was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year in 2015 and has done work for luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton. Believing the world is alive with possibilities, he held on to the hope he would one day travel the world.
“I had always dreamt of going to the south of France and now for the past five years, my husband and I have been going to Toulon for the Hyères festival,” says Ruga.
The Eastern Cape has produced some of South Africa’s great political leaders, from Nelson Mandela to Steve Biko, so it is little wonder Ruga’s work has strong historical references.
“History has the ability to arm us as a dispossessed youth, with knowledge that our forefathers went through the same things we are going through and we need that knowledge to arm us to find sophisticated ways of mobilizing for economic and cultural currency,” says Ruga.
He desensitizes “uncomfortable” topics using vibrant colors. His work is represented by the WHATIFTHEWORLD gallery in Cape Town, and in Paris, by InSitu Fabienne Leclerc.
There is also a lot of story-telling in his work which comes from his father being a journalist.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-36739 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-768x1024.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />
“I come from a family of people who enjoyed telling stories and I gravitate to that tradition of storytelling in my art,” says Ruga.
His industry is faced with numerous challenges, but Ruga chose early on in his career to not focus on the negative.
“I’m honestly not concerned with focusing on challenges, that’s not how I got here. It is the attitude that defines how I will overcome that is ultimate. Our education system is something we all need to face and improve as that leads one to art and in return empathy for others,” he says.
Ruga encourages upcoming artists to venture into different spheres such as photography, art and designing as they are lucrative.
He says there are more than enough role models across the continent one could look up to such as Nicholas Hlobo, a South African contemporary artist who creates sculptures and explores ethnicity, masculinity, and sexual identity. He too looks up to him.
Despite the global exposure and success at home, Ruga is convinced the best is yet to come.
“I always feel my big break hasn’t happened yet,” he says. That will be a story for another time.

Athi

Challenging Social Norms Through Body Art

You can speak volumes without saying a word. It’s true of artist Faith47 whose murals in unexpected urban landscapes the world over shift conversations without a syllable being uttered.
The Cape Town artist has broken through the local art barrier with her murals like Taming of the Beast in Wuhan, China, to Rhapsody in New York and Capax Infiniti in Portland.
She has exhibited and worked around the globe including in Sweden, Miami, Montreal, Puerto Rico, Vienna, Malaga and in London where her most recent Aqua Regalia exhibition was held. The exhibition will be in Rome this year and the USA in 2016.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29911 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2015/02/Faith1-300x193.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="193" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith1-300x193.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith1-600x385.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith1-768x493.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith1-1024x658.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith1.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Her works jump out of walls, ethereal, dreamlike and intuitive. They’re also statements and mirrors on a world of potential, promise and also of failings, hubris and darkness.
She says: “It’s the feeling and reflection brewing under the surface, infiltrating my dreams and waking space. Dark energies, sad visions, ecstatic revelation, mythical aspirations…
“I don’t subscribe to the belief in good and evil; the complexities of our situation are so intricate. I stand in awe of the fact that we exist at all. Anything I create is just a speck of dust.”
Street art after all is surrender. Each piece must be released to the certainty of impermanence. It’s a canvas Faith47 likes precisely because it can’t be tamed or curated as she says: “When I die it’ll all disappear and paper will turn to dust.”
It’s why she doesn’t buy into the notion that public art or street art is cleaning up spaces. More like it adds layers and texture to contested urban spaces and places where one person’s ugly, grimy or nuisance can be someone else’s livelihood, home, heart and beauty.
“I reflect on these things but they’re not my main objective. I’m more interested in visions etched in stone that can possibly touch hearts,” she says.
It’s not whimsy or chance though that has made her a global success. She has maximised global networks, built connections and collaborated where she has felt the greatest resonance with her work.
“I find the world very networked and accessible, this was an intentional discovery. The Internet has a great way of creasing out annoying borders drawn on maps. Plus, I work harder than almost everyone I know,” she says.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29912 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2015/02/Faith2-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith2-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith2-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Faith2.jpg 820w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Still street art has a mystique and anonymity. For Faith47, it’s “being anti the cult of celebrity”. It puts the artwork center stage and removes filters of nationality, class, race
and gender.
Faith47 reveals that she loves pine nuts and Murakami. She’s a mom and is married to fellow street artist DALeast. More than this, her art speaks for her. As she says: “I investigate the wisdom of old. I don’t listen to things that don’t matter. I listen to the void.”

Tag: Artist

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Art Of Survival: The Art Of Adire Gave This Textile Artist Global Fame, She Now Educates Generations Of Women In Nigeria

Executive Travel: Kwesta’s Senegal

Challenging Social Norms Through Body Art

Street Sm(Art)

A Creative Power