Woodcarving... A dying indigenous African art tradition
culled from Guardian Newspaper (Nigeria), Tuesday, April 21, 2009 By Anote Ajeluorou It is instructive that painting dominated the Africa Art Exhibition entitled Voices from Within: African Art Expressions, which held in Enugu and came to a close last week Thursday. Out of the over 300 major artists across Nigeria that had their works on display, 85 per cent of them had works in painting. While it must be said that they were very impressive works of art, woodcarving took a small portion of the stands competing with ceramics and metal works to make up the remaining 15 per cent. But this was not surprising as it has been the trend for a very long time now. Contemporary African art has, unwittingly, become synonymous with painting in recent times. Clearly, Africa's indigenous art form, which was essentially in wood, ivory and bronze carvings have given way to painting. Even the Benin woodcarvers have shrunken to mere roadside carvers mass-producing cheap commercial crafts devoid of an...