One Idea, Six Movements: Ozioma Onuzulike’s Suyascape Series
In the Anya Fulu Ugo exhibition held at the conference hall of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Library Complex, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 2015, in honour of two art veterans of the Nsukka Art Department, one work stood out not only for its evocative formal configuration, but also for the unusual title that metaphorically connects the diverse transformative processes involved in its creation to the violent and traumatic landscape of the human condition. Titled Hammering/crushing/slaking/wedging/kneading/slamming/ramming/pinching/cutting/buffeting/punching/perforating/shooting/firing/roasting/stacking/bundling, this ceramic mixed media installation by Ozioma Onuzulike (1972-), presently Professor of Ceramic Art and Art History at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, is the sixth version of the Suyascape Series which form part of his ‘Casualties Project’ started in 2001. Evaluation of works that make up the Suyascapes Series reveals the artistic possibilities inherent in an idea when it undergoes creative mutation in what Chike Aniakor calls the antipodes of the mind.1
The violent rite of passage which characterizes the production process of the Suyascape Series ritualizes the memories that gave rise to the ‘Casualties Project’. Ozioma Onuzulike narrates how the Nigeria-Biafra Civil war which lasted for three years (1967-1970) activated his empathic engagement of human suffering through the clay medium:
My country Nigeria fought a devastating civil war which ended just two years before I was born in 1972. While growing up under my father (a veteran Biafran military police officer) and
