This Nigerian artist redefines African art

DW (English)

Nigerian ceramist Ngozi-Omeje Ezema creates unique art pieces which seem to float in the air. She wants to show that African ceramics is not just about pots. Now, she is the first African artist with a solo show at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne.

Transcript

00:00Thousands of clay elements that make up one piece of art.

00:04These are the creations of Ngozi Omeje Ezema in Munich's Pinakothek de Modena.

00:09The ceramic artist hails from Nigeria.

00:11Why do her vases look as if they had shattered to tiny bits in transport?

00:16This size of work, you would have imagined how frightening

00:21to ship them from Nigeria to this place if they are just one solid wall.

00:27When Ngozi Omeje Ezema first began working with ceramics,

00:31she did in fact turn out massive clay vessels.

00:34But they are limited by their sheer size, and so she felt limited in her creativity.

00:40I once fired, though I wasn't patient enough.

00:43I wanted to finish quickly so I didn't allow the work to dry properly.

00:48The body broke, so you see that kind of experience.

00:52She had that kind of experience more than once.

00:56But with the myriad of tiny terracotta elements, that can't happen.

01:01But unpacking and hanging them up does have its pitfalls too.

01:05It took the artist a week of working at dizzying heights

01:08to get her boundless vases into the proper shape.

01:11Boundless vases to me is a way of expanding the boundaries of ceramics and a way of breaking free as a woman.

01:23We possess enormous potentials that shouldn't be limited by what we are expected to do.

01:30We can climb to the highest.

01:32As a little girl, she modeled shapes in wet sand.

01:35There was no clay in her East Nigerian village.

01:38Her sister supported her ambition to study art.

01:41At the University of Nigeria in Ensuka, she finally got an opportunity to work with clay.

01:47Now she teaches there.

01:48In her studio close to campus, she sketches the designs and makes the individual clay leaves.

01:53The medium I'm using is a fire clay and it's high-temperature clay, less impurity.

02:02The leaves were rigid.

02:04This one with hand, it gives it different forms.

02:07They are never the same.

02:09It's painstaking work.

02:11It took a month for her to finish one big vase.

02:14As a mother of four children, she can't do it alone.

02:17She's hired helpers.

02:20Her kids also like to come to the studio and help out.

02:24What's left for the artist to do herself?

02:29And then the installation, I have to wait on my own.

02:36Ngozi Omeje Ezema's original technique has brought her success at biennales in Africa and East Asia.

02:43Her themes come from her own cultural background, but they're universal nonetheless.

02:48The elephant, for instance, turns up again and again.

02:52Her father was nicknamed Elephant.

02:55He died in 2013.

02:57She's still trying to come to terms with it.

03:00You know, the strings gives life to the elephant.

03:03The idea was to allow the audience to co-create with me by cutting down the strings.

03:09But if I allow others to cut this down and be able to bear it, then I'll be able to bear the passing of my father.

03:17Back to the vases.

03:18The Munich exhibition is her first in Germany.

03:21For the curator too, the solo presentation of an African artist is a first.

03:26Her approach is highly unusual.

03:33I don't have anything to compare it with.

03:36In a way, she's coming from the tradition of her country, this African approach.

03:41But still very different, completely modern.

03:48And that's why we see her at the vanguard of contemporary artists.

03:56Ngozi Omeje Ezema has made the big leap to Europe.

04:00A cause for celebration.

04:02Her art is also a plea to adopt a new contemporary view of Africa.

04:08Seeing this as an opportunity also to get to outer world, apart from Africa.

04:15It is also to create an awareness that African art is not necessarily just the pot.

04:23It's not just smaller pots or smaller vessels.

04:27It seems to predetermine what can only come from Africa.

04:32Her floating vases are a direct assault on the cliché of African ceramics.

04:37It recalls anything from beehives to swarms of leaves.

04:50But then I heard that it's clay.

04:53That's very impressive.

04:55I think it's sensational.

04:58It complements the space very nicely and I think it's great to see an African artist here.

05:02It's amazing.

05:04Just how the scale of the works comes across in this space.

05:08It's really a great new idea that we haven't seen before.

05:12Ngozi Omeje Ezema hasn't reached her own creative limits by any stretch.

05:18She's dreaming of a vase that fills an entire room.

05:22She may soon be able to make that dream a reality.

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