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Nduwhite Ahononu Ndubuisi from Nigeria, a founding member of the Mundus maris Association, is participating in the Biennale of Dakar, 2010, with his latest installation.
Among his many activities, including as a cultural embassador for Nigeria, Nduwhite has previously worked with youth in the Niger Delta. In collaboration with Mundus maris he organised a workshop with the peace clubs of several secondary schools in and around Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria, to introduce the young people to reflecting on their surroundings and research results through drawings and water colours. He and the youth later participated through their works in the international exhibition in Amsterdam, organised by our association. See more details here.
This marked also the beginning of a collaboration between the new Oloibiri Resource Centre, currently under development in Port Harcourt with the help of Mundus maris, and the Mundus maris group at the Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Hilden, Germany, where joint activities will take place in 2011.
Among Nduwhite's earlier paintings is 'The Sea In Us' (oil on canvas, first displayed in Amsterdam). At the Biennale, he is showing a series of new works coached around a synthesis between traditional motives and modern expressions. Among others, themes are the origin of man and tales of moonlight. These works are shown in exclusivity in Dakar. See the official Biennale website here.
He will use his stay in Senegal during the Biennale to work also with local members of Mundus maris, other artists, visit fishing villages and get inspiration for how to best continue developing the international network of schools in West Africa and Europe to combine art work with promotion of sustainable relations among people and between people and nature. Stay in touch to see updates of this page as the events unfold.
From the moment his works had been accepted for display at the Biennale, he thought that it might be good to put the finishing touches on his works using materials gathered locally on the beaches of fishing villages in Senegal. The Soumbedioune landing place of small-scale fishers and on-shore fish marketing provided a perfect setting to be in touch with some of these ground realities and collect the last ingredients to finish his installations. Moreover, the closeness to the former slave island Gorée and the current conflicts over access to the resource, between industrial and small-scale fishers and, sometimes, even among artisanal fishers, reverberates in the inevitable historical associations conjured up by the settings in Dakar and surroundings. It brings up associations of dreams of freedom when reality confines choice, but also the untamable will to take ones fate into ones own hands.
Nduwhite captured some of these feelings torn between history and contemporary situations. The sequence takes us through some of the steps from the preparatory set-up of his installations to the opening of the Dakar Biennale 2010, on 7 May, with media coverage and the first group of visitors during inauguration day. The title of his installation is 'God created birds and built trees, but man built cages'.
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One of several media services about Nduwhite's work can be consulted here in the form of an interview was originally posted at African Colours. He is obviously happy to attract lots of media attention, not only in his native Nigeria, but also internationally, though he regrets that his work, more directly related to the Mundus maris Initiative, was not included in the final choice of Dak'Art 2010. See his blog to read more about his works.