Seminar organised by the CRG African Language Archives

Communicating the state of Nigerian youths through sculpture: a pragmatic analysis of the ceramic sculpture seed yams of our land, by Dr. Gloria Tochukwu Okeke

This study offers a pragmatic analysis of the ceramic sculpture Seed Yams of Our Land, examining how indigenous Igbo knowledge of yam and yam cultivation informs the construction of meaning within the artwork. Interpreting the sculpture metaphorically, the study employs relevance theory to investigate how the depicted yams symbolically represent the condition of Nigerian youths and the broader socio-economic implications of these representations. The sculpture serves as a visual stimulus, while contextual interpretation is guided by data from semi-structured interviews with one hundred (100) Igbo respondents across the five core Igbo states, alongside the researcher’s introspective insights as a native speaker. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the study reveals that the sculpture metaphorises the dual realities faced by Nigerian youths, their latent potential and prevailing challenges. The healthy yams signify themes of growth, hope, heritage, renewal, and resilience, which are essential to the developmental journey of contemporary youth. However, like seed yams, these youths require appropriate nurturing, mentorship, and resources to actualize their potential. Without such support, they risk degenerating into the symbolic equivalents of decayed yams - burnt, fragmented, or infested, thereby posing a loss to themselves and society.

Dr. Gloria Tochukwu Okeke is a visiting fellow at the African Studies Centre Leiden. Her current research focuses on how meaning is derived from the sculpture Seed Yams of Our Land through the interaction of new visual stimuli and the preexisting encyclopedic knowledge held by Igbo speakers. She is particularly interested in how contextual factors shape the interpretation of what the sculpture communicates. From this research, she hopes to reposition the analysis of sculpture from the pragmatic perspective and clearly show that context aids in arriving at the meanings of artworks, specifically sculptural works. Gloria plans to present the outcome of this research as a seminar at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and finally as a journal article in a reputable journal.

A call to remembrance: how the past, present and future emerges, by Twasiima Bigirwa 

In our shared experience, even as it varies in some ways, the world we know continues to distort and change; demanding of us to form anew. In some ways, it feels almost untenable to continue on this way; the wars that have never ended, the oil spills into the ocean; the sea cries too, people hunted, still … books banned, truth silenced. It would be easy to say this is who we have always been. And, in a sense, perhaps there are layers of truth to that. For it is true, that the world as we experience and know it now, has been shaped by the kind of violences that have disrupted us almost entirely from ourselves. And yet (also), perhaps, we can still decide to be something else. To do this, we need us; you and I and all of us. We need poetry and dance and song and truth and resistance and beauty and love and people and art and magic. This presentation centering the experience of Africanness will focus on a call to exploration, not in a bid to arrive at definitive answers, but rather to immerse ourselves in alternative imaginaries, of what else can emerge through us. It will speak to the need of the African recovering their whole self; which is too tethered to reclaiming our languages; honoring our ancestries and grounding ourselves once more in spiritual practices that are indigenous to us.

Twasiima Bigirwa is a Ugandan born African writer. She is the author of three collections of poems; ebyeshongoro bya Debra (songs of Debra), okwetonganira kwa Stefie (Stefie’s speech) and ebirooto bya Josie (Josie’s dream) books which offer political and social commentary that reflect the state of our worlds and our lives in it. Through her writing, Twasiima reflects on and explores the questions of identity; the lingering effects of colonialism on Africans; the need to reclaim language and spirituality; amongst other quests on the journey of reclaiming selfhood. She is interested in exploring through her art the ways history has been shaped and altered, with the ultimate intention of reconstructing from the colonial imagination. Twasiima writes in English and Runyankore. In 2023, she embarked fulltime on her creative pursuits. Prior to this, she had worked for several years within the development sector. She has extended experience serving as a community mobiliser, organiser and believes deeply that the work of movements that exist on the peripheries of society are crucial to our collective liberation. Twasiima has an LL.B. from Makerere University and an LL.M. from Georgetown University – Law Center. 

Programme

14:00-15:00 - Communicating the state of Nigerian youths through sculpture: a pragmatic analysis of the ceramic sculpture seed yams of our land, by Dr. Gloria Tochukwu Okeke

15:00-16:00 - A call to remembrance: how the past, present and future emerges, by Twasiima Bigirwa