Igbo art
The Igbo produce a wide variety of art including traditional figures, masks, artifacts and textiles, plus works in metals such as bronze.
The relative lack of centralization that characterized Igbo forms of governance has resulted in greater difficulties in terms of the scholarly study of artistic productions.
[4] Anthropologist Simon Ottenberg also ties masquerade performances to a duality, but he sees their function as primarily relating to gender difference and the initiation ritual during which Igbo boys become men.
Additionally, the experience of ritual mask-wearing is related to the alleviation of sexual and social anxieties that result from the boy moving from his childhood home and away from his mother.
[5] Within some portions of northern Nigeria, Igbo communities continue to utilize masquerade events in order to maintain connections with the deceased.
Knowledge of the secret aspects of the ritual are limited to initiated men who then have access to the supernatural tools necessary to contend with pressing socio-cultural concerns.
More recent scholarship, however, perceives contemporary Igbo masquerade performance to be the product of selectively-adapted external influences that perpetuate the traditional aims of the activity.
[7] For contemporary viewers of masks within the context of museums, the inability to see such sculptures in motion as part of performances makes understanding difficult.
[10] Agbogho mmuo, or Maiden Spirit masquerades perform annually during the dry season in the Nri-Awka area of northern Igboland.
Some maiden spirit masks have elaborate coiffeurs, embellished with representations of hair combs, and other objects, modeled after late 19th century ceremonial hairstyles.
[11] Alice Apley says: "It is possible that the inhabitants of Igbo Ukwu had a metalworking art that flourished as early as the ninth century."
The people of Igbo-Ukwu, ancestors of present-day Igbo, were the earliest smithers of copper and its alloys in West Africa, working the metal through hammering, bending, twisting, and incising.
In addition to the famous bronzes, clay vessels were discovered at the Igbo Ukwu archeological site that bear striking resemblance in terms of design to those produced during the twentieth century.
[12] Popular Western perceptions of art as works removed from daily life have resulted in a misunderstanding of the abstract meanings applied to potted vessels in the Igbo tradition.
[13] Ethnographic studies have demonstrated that the production of traditional Igbo pottery has declined as a result of the spread of Western technologies.
Eventually, however, the more widespread acceptance of modern influence coinciding with intense economic development resulted in the extinction of Igbo pottery in some areas.
It was usually practiced by women, who would decorate each other's bodies with dark dyes to prepare for village events, such as marriage, title taking, and funerals; designs would sometimes be produced for the most important market days as well.
Gordon Campbell saysThe Igbo use carved wooden panels as entrance to doorways into the compounds of titled members of the prestigious men`s association Ozo.
Igbo doors are delicately carved with deeply cut abstract designs in striated and hatched patterns that catch the sunlight to produce high contrasts of light and shadow.
[21] In 2020, Nigerian art historian Okeke-Agulu called on auction house Christie's to cancel its planned Paris sale of two Igbo sculptures and repatriate the items in question back to Nigeria.
