Women Issues Communication Services Agency
... empowering women to succeed
... empowering women to succeed
The Wise Contributors to WICSA
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In Lagos, Nigeria, Nkechi Nnaji had been “circumcised” when she was five. At age twelve, in the
mid-1990s, she came to the attention of activist Joy Keshi who, with colleagues, became concerned
about the girl’s lifelong suffering. The amputation of her genital organ had entailed serious
complications that overwhelmed her childhood.
Nnaji never fully recovered. While her peers were in school, Nkechi was living in and out of
hospitals. The financial, physical and emotional torture she had undergone “left an indelible mark in
my mind,”Keshi remembers, “and I vowed then and there to do what I could to stop female genital
mutilation.”
Moving from thought to action, Keshi, a marketing communications specialist, founded “Women’s
Issues Communication Services” in Lagos to advocate for women and their target audience using the
arts. For many years a senior advertising executive in Nigeria’s leading agency, Keshi was convinced
that creative visuals, able to modify people’s opinions of goods and services, could change attitudes
towards harmful traditional practices as well.
With this insight, Joy approached well-known artist Sam Ovraiti to enlist his help in formulating a call
for artworks. The idea was to produce a traveling exhibit emphasizing “The Suffering. The Sorrow.
The Setback” associated with FGM in Nigeria. In October 1998, the exhibition hall of the Leventis
Foundation Marina in Lagos housed the first show, with moral support from the Goethe Institute. It
attracted visitors from all walks of life -- medicine, business, diplomacy, media and government.
Of artists who responded, most were men, deliberately wooed because, after all, without male
backing the problem can’t be solved. Yet many contributors were skeptical. In their twenties and
early thirties, the painters and sculptors were expected to supply their own canvas and stone. Yes, it
was an important issue, but they had to make a living. Who would buy or, especially, want to look at
motifs on such a theme? As artist Godfrey Williams-Okorodus said, “Most were willing to participate
but in a restrained way. When my colleagues saw how much effort I invested [in producing "Defiance
of Pain 1 and Defiance 2" they laughed. Why take such pains when you’re going to paint over the
canvas anyway?” Little did anyone foresee that one fifth of the original artworks – the rest remaining
in Nigeria -- would be displayed for the next six years in Germany, with short detours to Italy,
Switzerland, Austria, and the UK where, on November 22, 2000, the canvasses would enhance the
British Parliament at a multi-partisan celebration of the report leading to the Female Genital Mutilation
Act of 2003. The paintings would subsequently travel on to the USA where visitors could view them
at Harvard, Cornell, Brandeis and several other universities.
But returning to the early days, it soon also became apparent that the male volunteers knew very little
about FGM. So Joy coached them in several weekend seminars, enabling them to interpret the theme
in various media. Some were so moved by the graphic nature of the procedure and the excruciating
pain that one, Wande George, depicted the harrowing experience in his painting The Child Weeps.
Other artists, however, chose to highlight the topic’s complexity, filling their canvas with stories in
which, for instance, resistance is tried but fails (Menassah Imonikebe. “What If I Refuse?”).
The painters also learned that Nigeria is home to all conceivable forms of cutting practices, extending
from infibulation to clitoridectomy as performed by the Igbo tribe on baby girls in their first month of
life. In another variant, some ethnic groups in Nigeria also remove the clitoris while the woman is in
labor with her first child, believing the organ fatal should the infant’s head touch it. These and other
motifs would find their way into finely wrought, narrative images on canvas and chiseled in stone.
mid-1990s, she came to the attention of activist Joy Keshi who, with colleagues, became concerned
about the girl’s lifelong suffering. The amputation of her genital organ had entailed serious
complications that overwhelmed her childhood.
Nnaji never fully recovered. While her peers were in school, Nkechi was living in and out of
hospitals. The financial, physical and emotional torture she had undergone “left an indelible mark in
my mind,”Keshi remembers, “and I vowed then and there to do what I could to stop female genital
mutilation.”
Moving from thought to action, Keshi, a marketing communications specialist, founded “Women’s
Issues Communication Services” in Lagos to advocate for women and their target audience using the
arts. For many years a senior advertising executive in Nigeria’s leading agency, Keshi was convinced
that creative visuals, able to modify people’s opinions of goods and services, could change attitudes
towards harmful traditional practices as well.
With this insight, Joy approached well-known artist Sam Ovraiti to enlist his help in formulating a call
for artworks. The idea was to produce a traveling exhibit emphasizing “The Suffering. The Sorrow.
The Setback” associated with FGM in Nigeria. In October 1998, the exhibition hall of the Leventis
Foundation Marina in Lagos housed the first show, with moral support from the Goethe Institute. It
attracted visitors from all walks of life -- medicine, business, diplomacy, media and government.
Of artists who responded, most were men, deliberately wooed because, after all, without male
backing the problem can’t be solved. Yet many contributors were skeptical. In their twenties and
early thirties, the painters and sculptors were expected to supply their own canvas and stone. Yes, it
was an important issue, but they had to make a living. Who would buy or, especially, want to look at
motifs on such a theme? As artist Godfrey Williams-Okorodus said, “Most were willing to participate
but in a restrained way. When my colleagues saw how much effort I invested [in producing "Defiance
of Pain 1 and Defiance 2" they laughed. Why take such pains when you’re going to paint over the
canvas anyway?” Little did anyone foresee that one fifth of the original artworks – the rest remaining
in Nigeria -- would be displayed for the next six years in Germany, with short detours to Italy,
Switzerland, Austria, and the UK where, on November 22, 2000, the canvasses would enhance the
British Parliament at a multi-partisan celebration of the report leading to the Female Genital Mutilation
Act of 2003. The paintings would subsequently travel on to the USA where visitors could view them
at Harvard, Cornell, Brandeis and several other universities.
But returning to the early days, it soon also became apparent that the male volunteers knew very little
about FGM. So Joy coached them in several weekend seminars, enabling them to interpret the theme
in various media. Some were so moved by the graphic nature of the procedure and the excruciating
pain that one, Wande George, depicted the harrowing experience in his painting The Child Weeps.
Other artists, however, chose to highlight the topic’s complexity, filling their canvas with stories in
which, for instance, resistance is tried but fails (Menassah Imonikebe. “What If I Refuse?”).
The painters also learned that Nigeria is home to all conceivable forms of cutting practices, extending
from infibulation to clitoridectomy as performed by the Igbo tribe on baby girls in their first month of
life. In another variant, some ethnic groups in Nigeria also remove the clitoris while the woman is in
labor with her first child, believing the organ fatal should the infant’s head touch it. These and other
motifs would find their way into finely wrought, narrative images on canvas and chiseled in stone.
Through the Eyes of Art: Confronting FGM By Tobe Levin and Joy Walker
Dr Tobe Levin
To see the exhibition catalog, please click here