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Royal Religion Series

Issue 19

Artist Collaboration

Royal Religion Series

Victor Ehikhamenor
Victor Ehikhamenor, The Day Oba Esigie was Baptised (dithered detail), 2019, rosary beads, bronze statuettes, and diamante fabric on lace, 89 × 68 in. Digital image courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor (all rights reserved).

In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese brought Christianity to the Benin Empire, an ancient kingdom in today’s Edo State, Nigeria. Missionaries were sent from Portugal to establish churches in the kingdom. Circa 1485, a red-roofed, white-painted church was erected not too far from the king’s palace, and was named Holy Aruosa Cathedral, which still stands today. According to records, the church is one of the oldest in West Africa and the only place generations of Obas (kings) have worshipped beside ancestral shrines, which were among those raided and looted by British soldiers in 1897, an event central to Dan Hicks’ Conversation Piece provocation in this issue.

In this church, there is a juxtaposition of the Christian ways of worship and the ancient traditional Benin ways of worship, a hybrid of two disparate religions. There is no clash of doctrines and instead one is enamoured by the coalescence of cosmologies. Subsequent Obas and their chiefs dressed in “traditional” Catholic priests’ fashion. The mixture of what is local and what is colonial resulted in an outfit that is a complete ersatz version of the cassock worn by Catholic priests.

Mixed media. The red-hooded, red-caped form of a person seems drawn in thread against a black background. Small crosses and statuettes hang from the cowl and robe. The area where the face would be is flat black.
Figure 1 Victor Ehikhamenor, The King Returning from Holy Aruosa Cathedral, 2018, rosary beads, bronze statuettes, and thread on canvas, 116 × 71 in. Digital image courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor (all rights reserved).
Mixed media. A red silhouette of a costume seems drawn in thread against a black background. The hood has three tall lobes. Tiny red crosses and a few sculptures hang all over the costume. A silvery grey object with a blade-like form above a circle is to the left.
Figure 2 Victor Ehikhamenor, The Day Oba Esigie was Baptised, 2019, rosary beads, bronze statuettes, and diamante fabric on lace, 89 × 68 in. Digital image courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor (all rights reserved).
Mixed media. A red silhouette of a costume seems drawn in thread against a black background. The hood has three vertical projections. Tiny red crosses are hung all over the costume, especially around the edges. A silvery staff is outlined in gold to our left.
Figure 3 Victor Ehikhamenor, I Am Ogiso, The King from Heaven, 2017, rosary beads and thread on lace textile, 103 × 69 in. Digital image courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor (all rights reserved).
Mixed media. A red silhouette of a person wearing a hood and robe and holding out a sword or other object seems drawn in red and gold against a black background. The person’s arm is brown, and the wrist has a white or silver cuff bracelet.
Figure 4 Victor Ehikhamenor, My Last Dance as King Before Sir Harry Lawson’s Army Arrive, 2017, rosary beads and thread on lace fabric, 126 × 75 in. Digital image courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor (all rights reserved).
Mixed media. A red silhouette of a costume seems drawn in thread against a black background. The hood has three vertical projections. Tiny red crosses are hung all over the costume, especially around the edges. The space where the face would be is silver.
Figure 5 Victor Ehikhamenor, Holy, Holy, Holy King, 2018, rosary beads and bronze statuettes on canvas, 116 × 71 in. Digital image courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor (all rights reserved).

To this day, the Benin monarch, his chiefs, and other traditional title-holders still dress like Catholic priests. The garment now represents royalty and one of the main codes of dressing of the Benin people, of which I am a part. This is my point of departure for this body of works that fuses Catholic rosaries, coral beads, and bronze statuettes (figs. 1–5)."

About the author

  • Victor Ehikhamenor is a Nigerian multimedia artist, photographer, and writer. He has been prolific in producing abstract, symbolic, and politically and historically motivated works. A 2020 National Artist in Residence at the Neon Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada, Ehikhamenor was also a 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow. He has held several solo exhibitions and his works have been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennales, including: the 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Nigerian Pavilion (2017); the 5th Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland (2016); the 12th Dak’Art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal (2016); and Biennale Jogja XIII, Indonesia (2015).
    As a writer, he has published fiction and critical essays with academic journals, magazines, and newspapers round the world including The New York Times, Guernica Magazine, BBC, CNN Online, and The Washington Post. Ehikhamenor is the founder of Angels and Muse, a thought laboratory dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art and literature in Lagos, Nigeria.

Imprint

Author Victor Ehikhamenor
Date 26 February 2021
Category Artist Collaboration
Review status Peer Reviewed (Editorial Group)
License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Downloads PDF format
Article DOI https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-19/cover
Cite as Ehikhamenor, Victor. “Royal Religion Series.” In British Art Studies. London and New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Yale University Press, 2021. https://master--britishartstudies-19.netlify.app/issues/19/ehikhamenor-royal-religion-series/.
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