A French sculptor, Prune Nourry and the department of Fine & Applied Arts of the Obafemi-Awolowo University in Ile-Ife in collaboration with families of the Chibok girls, have unveiled artworks in honor of the still missing Chibok girls.
The exhibition which was unveiled on the 19th of November,2022, was a major project inspired by the ancient Ife terracota head, and was titled, “Statues Also Breathe”.
The collaboration therefore seeks to raise awareness about the plight of the girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria in 2014, while highlighting the global struggle for girls’ education.
However, after meeting the Chibok families to conceive the project, Nourry was entrusted with portraits of their missing daughters, which she used as inspiration for 8 heads sculpted in clay – creating portraits of the high school girls imaged in the style of iconic ancestral Ife head of the region.
From these 8 original sculptures then molded, 108 heads were casted in clay sourced from Ile-Ife, by potters from a female potter’s community in the Yoruba town of Ilorin and students of Obafemi-Awolowo University.
On September 30th of 2022, a 1-day workshop was held at the university, in which 108 students sculpted and transformed each head into unique sculptures using portraits of the missing girls.
A delegation of mothers of the Chibok girls and girls who managed to escape Boko Haram captivity were also in attendance, honoring and remembering their friends and loved ones depicted in the sculptures. A documentary movie is exhibited with the sculptures in the Statues Also Breathe show, as it enables all the collaborators to include their own voices and unique perspectives be they teachers, students, or parents of the missing girls, everyone is a participant in the creative process.
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The foundation of the project is built on conversations with mothers of the 8 models and their desire to ensure the world does not forget the girls; each element of Statues Also Breathe works towards bringing continued attention from the wider world. Also, a podcast that provides listeners with an intimate look at the events that took place before, during, and after the kidnapping, as recounted by the women who experienced it firsthand and the people who contributed to making their involvement in Statues also breathe possible. Lola Omolola, founder of Female IN (FIN), is the host.
The project was first unveiled at Art Twenty One in Lagos, Nigeria, then continues its journey through Africa, Europe, America and Asia.
Ife terracotta works constitute a large and diverse corpus that includes sculptures and vessels depicting human, animal, and otherworldly subjects.
These works vary in size from nearly lifesize, full-length figures to tiny figurines only six inches high, and range in style from extreme naturalism to abstract forms.