Art and the Canker-Worm Years in Nigeria, 1980-2006; the Implications for Modern Nigerian Art, Its History and Documentation

Abstract

The imagery of the Cankerworm is used as metaphor and analogy to indicate a period of increasing authoritarianism in Nigerian government, official mismanagement, as well as sloppiness in government policies. This paper examines the consequences of the historical trend on modern Nigerian art as well as its history and documentation. Modern art in Nigeria and indeed the whole of Africa is not exactly along the lines of western experiences and this is because it is a derivative of specific historical background different in context, content and types from those of Europe and the United States In spite of the unfortunate postcolonial trend in Africa, modern Nigerian art has been an anomaly of the deplorable tendencies because of its transmutation through identifiable developmental stages, which is, the colonial and the postcolonial.