Feminist Studies

Abstract:

This essay reads expressive work by Peju Alatise as an experimental Afro-matriarchal visual language emerging from Nigeria. Initiating a conscious confrontation of neo-colonial patriarchy in contemporary African art, Alatise develops a radical womanist voice to question the monologue of Afro-patriarchal pronouncements around which globalization is emerging from the former western colonies in Africa. The essay positions Alatise in historical perspective perpendicular to her body of work, highlighting her contribution to the vocabulary of emergent Afro-matriarchal aesthetics germinating in the Third world. The playful imaginary leap in Alatise's work is unpredictable, as her characters jump across traditional boundaries of painting, sculpture, installations and performance arts. The transdisciplinary creativity coming from Alatise's resistance is not simply reactive: she espouses cultural initiatives grounding a difference that is independent of patriarchal cultural hegemony. Her work is therefore a proactive engagement engendering the foundations of an Afro-matriarchal discourse in Nigerian art, while contributing to a genre reexamining the colonial politics of women configuration of space.