Manma is an Omoku masquerade and Omoku is a town in Rivers State, Nigeria.
The artist’s study of Manma is marked with several noteworthy features beginning with the stealth that is present in the masquerade’s walk. A jungle stealth that suggests the imminent breakout into a kind of celestial dance that may find Manma dancing in the air (as it were).
Because the spirit animating the dance has had its ears on the ground for a very long time. A ground that has become too hot with the pains of the Nigerian masses mixed with the revolutionary assurances of #lazynigerianyouth as it transits to a genuine 3rd force and Movement of the People (MOP). Thus the proverbial dance in the air. A dance of conquest above heavily contested sacred grounds.
No wonder the matador like invitation in how Manma has draped the cloth upon his left hand. As though beckoning on a wild bull to make its charge. Who is the masquerade taunting? Could it be an “animal in human skin”? Who would dare to charge at the master of stealth as he confidently steps through from the land of the gods?
Which brings us to the yellow Uli like inscriptions bordering this work by Port Harcourt based artist Mr Wilson Chukwuma (founder also of the Okakhism Art Movement). The inscriptions are a graphic show of traditional aesthetics. An opportunity for the viewer’s soul to hover across the linear penetrations of Uli art. This recalls the contributions of those who have promoted Uli or Ulism as a weapon or tool for cultural re-armament by Generation Xers and millenials and #lazynigerianyouth in general as they seek to end and mend it all.
Mr Chukwuma’s portrayal of this masquerade’s stealth-walk-transiting-to-dance-steps also hints at Manma’s aggressive intent. A fact that easily provokes a cross-ethnic contemplation from Omoku into Ijele, the King of the Masquerades from the Igbo tradition.
For now, do you dear reader, perhaps sense from viewing this piece, that the aggression in Manma suggests a movement that does not intend to stop until it reaches its predestination? Can you feel the possible presence of a flint like countenance behind the shady mask? Are you bold enough to request access to the voice mail of the ancestors? How about taking an oath to animate the masquerade within? That is in your capacity as a companion of your powerful personal “chi”? (African spiritual entities that align with the idea of angels and demons). Will you then perform the act you swore to perform for the innocent children when the masquerade within begins to dance? When your identity as one of the gods is revealed and flesh and bones become costumes and masks to be animated by your vision of freedom and justice.
In order to go further along this bridge that joins the masquerade and modernity at a right angle, we turn now to an interrogation of Ijele via Uche Ogbu’s work titled IJELE MASQUERADE…(Ijele being the king of the masquerades).
