Integrity Journal of Arts and Humanities

Over the years several Nigerian artists have undertaken socially engaging visual artworks that seek to redress societal challenges and rebuild communities. They engaged in visual art practices that interface with and expose the ills and injustices that the people undergo in contemporary Nigeria. They have interrogated these challenges artistically, employing various media and genres. This trend is typical of Nelson Edewor's sculptures created to mitigate the psychological and social estrangement of the people and the oil-producing companies in the Niger Delta oil-producing region. In his sculptures titled Ivri, produced between 1997-1999, Edewor created sculptural forms of people impoverished by the polluted environment of the Niger Delta. The forms are stylized to express figures drowned by the barrels of oil in a very critical manner. The figures represented by the artist present the story of a people overtaken by the concomitant of a greedy leadership in a cohort with foreigners to scam the people. He explains the organic form of the petroleum oil pipes in the articulation of different poses of human figures in sculpture using mortar (a sculpture material composed of sand, cement and water). This study takes a close look at selected numbers of these artworks by Nelson Edewor that interrogated these social ills in contemporary Nigeria using formalistic and iconographic art historical methods. The article examined their socio-cultural implications to engender civil consciousness among the communities. It is hoped that this would further expose the depravity; and help in check-mating the socio-cultural and economic challenges that are prevalent in the exploration activities of these multi-national oil companies in contemporary Nigeria.