To mark Nike Okundaye’s 64th birthday, the Nike Centre for Arts and Culture, in collaboration with Friends of Nike Okundaye and Centre for Indigenous Knowledge, Development and Sustainability, is instituting an annual lecture. The inaugural edition will take place on May 23, the day the artist and gallery owner turns 64, at the Nike Art Gallery, Lekki.
The organisers have said the event, which is to feature cultural dance, folklore, palm wine tasting and a host of other activities, will start at 1pm.
‘Indigenous Knowledge as a Catalyst for Nation’s Growth’ is the topic for the lecture whose speakers include Oba Olusino Adekoya, the Legusen of Ode Ule Kingdom of Ogun State, and Princess Jumoke Owoola.
Nike Okundaye is a Nigerian batik and textile designer, considered to be the foremost designer on the west coast of Africa. Brought up amid the traditional weaving and dying as practised in her home town of Ogidi, Kogi State, North Central Nigeria, she has become known for a modern approach to traditional themes in her colourful batik and paintings. For many years, she has been passing on her technique to the younger generation and has given workshops on traditional Nigerian textiles to audiences in the America and Europe.
Finding that the traditional methods of weaving and dying that had been her original inspiration were fading in Nigeria, she set about launching a revival of this aspect of Nigerian culture, building art centres that offer free courses for young Nigerians to learn traditional arts and crafts.
The story of the renowned artist, teacher and mentor started in Osogbo, a city with a rich tradition of art and culture, when she was six and by 1968 she had already staged a solo exhibition hosted by the Goethe-Institut in Nigeria.
She has gone on to lecture at several American universities as well as facilitate workshops in many other places in the world and has been honoured globally.
Despite this intimidating credential from one whose education was largely informal and whose talent was hereditary, the artist has no airs about herself.
“I will say it is God’s gift,” she told TheNiche at the Lekki centre last year. She was referring to her humility and the fact that she has continued to do the work she has always loved to do.
The artist also holds God’s gift responsible for her ageless beauty, but is quick to add that it also depends on diet and physical activity.
“It depends on what you eat and the exercise you do. My exercise is the work I do. I cannot see myself sleeping for eight hours straight; it is impossible. I always work from 10pm to 3am at night,” she said.
The Nike Arts Centre based in Lekki, also has presence in her Ogidi-Ijumu hometown in Kogi State, Osogbo in Osun State, and in Abuja, where she teaches and mentors women and young people in textile design, clothe weaving and art generally.