Nothing Between the Legs, 2013.
About:
Photo Ruthie Abel
RA: Let’s talk about the fabrics in your work.
OM: My first breakthrough as an artist was when I was so down. In 2011 I could hardly feed myself. I couldn’t afford to buy materials, only pen and ink. I was just trying to keep myself busy. I had a neighbor who was a tailor and I saw scraps of fabric and thought “let me just attach it,” and that’s how my style began. The director of AAF saw my work in a small craft shop. I tried to explain, it wasn’t even work, it was just my frustration. He made me stay with it. Five of the works at Art Twenty One sold before (a recent show) opened.
Oga at the Top, 2013.
RA: What are you working on now?
OM: I have been working on issues of identity and the loss of culture of African society. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a classic book on how Europeans invaded Africa and imposed their way of life. Thirty years later, things keep falling apart. When I came here for my residency I met artists from other parts of the world and I realized that loss of culture is not particular only to Africa. So I shifted my research to an issue that the cause and effect is African: excessive acquisition of material things and the implications of consuming without producing or investing money in the proper way.
There are a lot of crimes — kidnapping and prostitution and things that make money fast. There’s a trend in Nigeria now that almost all of the governors have private jets. This is money that is supposed to build infrastructure. Everything boils down to materialism and consumerism. I am using the Lagos fashion industry as a case study. Everyone is so fashion-conscious.
When birds of different feathers flock together, 2013.
RA: And fabric is a metaphor for fashion?
OM: Most of these fabrics, the color and motif are African. But 80% are printed in Holland. Nigeria is one of the world’s highest producers of crude oil. But we have no refineries, we rely on the west to refine it and sell it back to us.
(from interviews of Ruthie Abel with Nigerian artists in Huffington Post, December 30, 2014. Photo of Makada copyright Ruthie Abel)
Makata showed his work last year in Gallery 23, Amsterdam, KNSM Laan.