NIGERIAN LEG - Covid19 African masks collaborative visual art practice-led/based project

Abstract

Annotation:

NIGERIAN LEG: Covid19 African masks collaborative visual art practice-led/based project

This practical project formed part of the “Covid19 African masks collaborative visual art practice-led/based project” which was a collaboration between art academics from African Tertial institutions from six countries. These were from University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, Kenya Technical University, Kenya, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Nigeria, Kwara State University, Malete, Nigeria, Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe and the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The main objective of this collaborative project was first to strengthen Visual Art as hard core research in addressing social concerns and issues and showing how it can be made useful in commenting and disseminating contemporary social views. Secondly, the project aimed to educate the participating students, and share ideas among the participating academics towards Practice-led and Practice based research in Fine/Visual/Creative Arts.

Similarly to the other sub-projects this project was facilitated by one of the Nigerian team leaders at the Fine Art department of the Yaba College of Technology through participatory action with learners and two other collaborators, the second Nigerian team leader from Kwara State University as well as the main initiator from the university of South Africa. The conceptualisation and creation processes were facilitated through virtual discussion via google meet, and WhatsApp video calls, voice calls and text messages. Prior conceptualisation and creation processes three questions were distributed to the willing participants as data collection instruments by the students who were the co-researchers under the countries’ team leaders. The responses were anonymously collected by the co-researchers via informal interactions in their environments. The responses were interpreted culminating into the artworks generated in the respective countries’ exhibition presentations.

1. How does wearing a mask as a result of Covid19 make you feel or what emotions does this evoke in you?

2. If you were to refer to the experience of wearing a masks as something, what would this Monster be? A thing (animal or object), an event (war or car/train/plane crash) and natural disasters (tsunami/storm/volcanic eruptions etc).

3. Covid19 has really changed the world, what positive changes come to your mind?

Thus, the practical production represented interpretations of the responses to these questions, and the co-researchers’ expression of their experiences and emotional feelings associated with the wearing of masks as a result of Covid19.

These art creation projects had to make use of used and unused masks worn as a protective measure against Covid19. The Nigerian leg activities were related to a sphere of basic creative production elements that were explored with the co-researchers (participating students) as mechanisms of creative development that attended to the research discourse. The co-researchers were predominantly early developing learners in the general arts course. This project was meant to be a seed for continental collaborations that may be developed into further academic association collaborations. Here the navigation and process of developing the creative artefact functioned as contribution to knowledge. The project was set on how visual art research can facilitate academic research procedure, and since practice-led/based research has been accepted as legitimate visual art research there is a need for academics to collaborate in finding new ways of doing and refining this type of research, hence this project’s significance.

The Nigerian group decided to exhibit their MONSTER in the form of chains made from the masks, and they represented the restrictive measures that were imposed worldwide to prevent the spread of Covid19, and suffocation associated with the wearing of masks. The restriction was portrayed in the form of a spider web created with masks chains, and this was an interactive installation where viewers were challenged to walk through the web jumping over the crisscrossed chains which filled-up the whole gallery, and sometimes jump over bodies lying on the ground helplessly hypothetically strangled/overwhelmed by the chain metaphorically representing restriction and deaths emanated from Covid19. Plastic materials were also used to wrap the helpless bodies, and to make human figures which were captured/trapped in the web again symbolising the restrictive nature of Covid19. Plastic materials were also symbolising suffocation and discomfort associated with the wearing of the masks, as well as the protective clothes that were worn, and bags which were used to seal the dead bodies.