Capturing Niger Delta’s Beauty, Despoliation on Canvas

Charles Ajunwa

West Towers of The Wings Office Complex, a twin 15-storey architectural masterpiece, on the busy Ozumba Mbadiwe Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, Wednesday attracted arts enthusiasts from all walks of life. 

An exhibition themed, ‘Intersecting The Worlds of Climate Change, The Mangrove And Art’, organised by the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in collaboration with the National Council on Climate Change and Alzarin Crimson, held at the magnificent building located along the beautiful shoreline of Victoria Island. 

The exhibition which showcased master paintings, drawings and watercolour of quintessential artist, Dr. John Ed DeBebs and curated by renowned Oriz U. Onumaje, ends on March 18. 

Before guests started arriving for the exhibition,

DeBebs and Onumaje took journalists around in the morning to inspect different paintings and photographs of the mangroves in Niger Delta depicted on canvas, and carefully arranged in a large room on the 11th floor.

Big and small sets mounted round the hall showed videos of the Niger Delta mangrove ecosystem which spans nine States in Southern Nigeria of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo, and Rivers.

Three core states, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta house the largest concentration of mangroves. The Niger Delta has the most extensive mangroves in Africa. 

Inside the hall, nobody was allowed to record or take pictures of the private art works. 

DeBebs, who was emotional, said his participation in the exhibition came after 26 years that he left arts to answer the call of his Creator. 

“For many years, I’ve not held any public exhibition following what happened to me some years ago when I was in Lagos practicing. In 1995, I was shot. That time, I was functioning fully as an artist.

“That encounter eventually led to me encountering the Lord Jesus Christ through death. Because I was confirmed clinically dead at Tejusho hospital. God intervened and I was raised back to life.

“I got a call into ministry directly from the Lord Jesus. I was not a Christian up till that time, but that experience I saw myself being taken by angels in spirit and flown to heaven and I saw Jesus Christ himself. That turned my life around completely.”

He added: “I gave up my art work. I lay down everything and focused on the work of ministry. Eventually, I planted a church there and continued in it and growing and understanding my call. It wasn’t until three years ago when I began to pick up the brush again.

“I had established my ministry. And it was when my friend Oriz, came with a few commissions on portraits and all of that.

“And eventually, we started talking. I mean, it coincided with the time that I finished building my studio because I always knew I would come back to the studio.

“If I spent so many years attending a PhD, becoming a professor in arts. Then I needed to take time to understand this new experience and call. So after that, I got unsettled. Of course, again, you will need permission from the One who has called you to know whether to go out to pick up that or not. And then when the door started opening, I said, ‘okay, this is it’. That’s when this project really started,” DeBebs enthused.

DeBebs, who had known Oriz from Auchi Polytechnic, said some of his works were developed from photographs he (Oriz) took in the creeks. He pointed out that the paintings are his direct works. “Some others I did when I went to the creeks myself, developed and then finished in the studio.”

According to him, the essence of the exhibition was to project the mangroves that are placed in an ecosystem and the beauty of the water skid in the Niger Delta, especially the mangroves thriving in such rugged environment. 

Onumaje, who curated the art works said Crimson Fusion are the managers of the exhibition. 

“This is the first time you are having one artist on one subject, and the subject we are dealing with today is the mangroves of the Niger Delta.

“Everything we have heard from the Niger Delta before now is about trouble, diesel cooking, pipeline rupture, oil spillage, and environmental degradation. But in all of that, there is the beauty of the Niger Delta and the beauty of the mangroves.

“We are not saying those things don’t exist but what we are saying is, even in that disaster that we all describe every day as a Niger Delta  underdevelopment and things like that, there is beauty there. So this exhibition is to celebrate the beauty of the Niger Delta and beauty of the mangroves.

“Again, climate change is affecting the mangroves. So we need to bring that to the knowledge of the world. We also need protecting the mangroves, conserving the mangroves and regenerating the mangroves. This is a fitting way to get the people who have ears to listen that even with all of that that we have to do, we can celebrate the beauty of the Niger Delta.”

“This concept started from Warri Kingdom, for us to now understand that there is a larger issue with the Niger Delta. Our first documentary, which is on YouTube channel, Mangrove Plus, was built around the Warri Kingdom. But as we progressed with the work, we now extended to Bayelsa. So we did work in Yenagoa, Nembe, and we went back to Warri again. That is the documentary part three that was released yesterday (Tuesday) evening.

“Very close to the refinery, is Odube Creek in Itsekiri, Salakiri is very close to the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the resources we had, when Dr. John Ed DeBebs could not go out to paint, I went into the creeks to take pictures for him to use as references.”

Pointing to a particular art work, Onumaje said “There are bigger and wider ones and you can see how strong the wood is, because it takes in water and releases water in low tide. All the temperatures and all of that. That’s a fish trap. The paddle is carved from the mangrove tree.

“This is a wasted mangrove at the bank of the beach side of the Atlantic. This is in the Escravos area that we are able to depict this way. And this is beauty and despoliation. One of the common birds in the mangrove is called the King fisher.

This roots with fire. This is the typical way you see the roots. But when the sun reflects in, this is what you see, colours. 

Emeka Odiari, acting director Information Services at National Gallery of Art, commended the Director General, NGA, Ahmed Bashir Sodangi, for his innovation and creativity since he came on board. 

Beyond generating revenue, on issue of artificial intelligence, Odiari said “My DG is tech savvy. He likes everything that concerns  tech. He is a very young and dynamic man. He’s brought a lot of innovation since he came on board less than one year ago. Last week Monday, we had training. He’s very particular about training and retraining of staff on ICT. We’re not there yet, but I can assure you that in the next couple of years we’ll meet up with the trends and progress that other countries have made in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is new, but very interesting when you actually get to know about it.”