Okoro, Martins N.
Lecturer in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
ORCID id 0000-0003-2789-6874. Email id: martins.okoro@unn.edu.ng
Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.06
Quantum Leap beyond the Frontiers: ‘Currentism’ in Visual Arts Production in the Nsukka School
Abstract
There exists no scholarly publication espousing on the driving force behind the restless aspirations of the Nsukka artists towards searching for and using commonplace materials that the potent environment provides for supports and media for studio art production. Following this, my intent is to discuss the Nsukka artists’ creative inclinations, bordering on styles, ideas, forms, materials and technique. Through hermeneutical analysis, I examine some useful insights in the formal and conceptual principles for which their recent and current artworks are foregrounded. Relying on historical, interpretative and analytical methods of data illumination, I engage some selected unusual artworks executed between 1999 and 2017 by some selected Nsukka artists to authenticate the fact that Nsukka artists have taken a quantum leap beyond the frontiers of the human consciousness and in so doing, have mastered their oeuvres, bringing about great ingenuity and some unprecedented innovations in the execution of breath-taking postmodernist artworks whose formal contents and thematic probing interrogate germane issues.
Keywords: quantum leap, frontiers, currentism, visual arts, production, Nsukka School