The Nsukka School, what Simon Ottenberg called the Nsukka Group, refers to artists that emerged from the Fine and Applied Arts Department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the 1970s. The art school, pioneered by artists like Uche Okeke, Chike Aniakor, Chuka Amaefuna, and others, emerged in the post-civil war university campus because the artists, artist-lecturers, and students were collectively committed to creating a new visual language that reflected their experience and perception of the cultural and political context of postcolonial Nigeria, representing a pivotal moment in the history of modern and contemporary art in Africa.1
The commitment of the artists to create a decolonized modern African art was introduced to Nsukka by Uche Okeke. Okeke and his colleagues at the Art Society (an art club established by students of the Nigeria College of Art, Science, and Technology, Zaria, northern Nigeria in 1958) had propounded the idea of...