When People Know Your People

Echoes from deeper connections por Inês Valle

Figure 1: Saltcellar: Portuguese Figures (ca. 1525–1600) by the Edo peoples, Nigeria. Ivory. 19.1×7.6×8.3cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection.

Inês Valle is a Portuguese curator, who has spent the last eight years working in Europe and West Africa. She produces socio-political art projects that emphasise oral and traditional knowledge whilst also drawing on written sources. In this essay, she reflects on her personal experience of visiting Nigeria for the first time and the impact this had on both her professional work and her understanding of the shared history of Portugal and Nigeria.

“The artworks I saw in Lagos and in the UK bear witness to the long relationship between the Edo People (Benin Kingdom) and the Portuguese, which dates back to the 15th century.”

Figure 6: Inês Valle and Andrew Esiebo, Spaces of Memory (Benin city,2014). Photograph courtesy of the artists.

My first experience in West Africa was traveling across Nigeria — by car, bus, Keke, taxi and Okada. Over 200 million people live in this vast country, and as a young woman journeying alone, I struggled to convince my family that I would be safe. Our compromise came through Instagram: each day I would post a photograph, wherever I was. Knowing my whereabouts kept the peace at home and allowed me to share some of the amazing places and people I was meeting. I vividly remember dodging the crazy Lagos traffic in Emmanuel’s vintage Mercedes-Benz “taxi”, as he gave me my first “guided-art-tours”. He would pick me up very early in the morning from Dolphin Estate, the still-in-refurbishment Boy’s Quarter accommodation where I was staying. He asked me, what do you want to see, what do you want to know? My answer was simple: everything!

We visited many extraordinary places, including the National Museum Lagos, National Gallery of Modern Art, Nike Art Gallery, Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, the Universal Studios of Arts at the National Theatre, the Arts & Crafts Markets and the famous cultural hub, Freedom Park. The days were intense, and we drove with our windows wound down, to cope with the humid breeze and the unrelenting heat, while the urban symphony of traffic, gens and street sellers’ voices fused with the Afrobeat from the radio.

The modernist public sculptures were astonishing. I was thrilled to come face to face with artworks made by Ben Enwonwu, who was named by Time Magazine in 1949 as Africa’s greatest contemporary artist. He was also the first artist African to travel to London by invitation of Queen Elizabeth II, in order to make her portrait in bronze. Today his works are sold for millions of dollars.

When Emmanuel realized I was Portuguese, he decided to show me some hidden gems of Lagos. In warehouses, set amongst the self-built homes of the megacity’s low-income neighbourhoods, we handled historical sculptures and masks. The features of some clearly represented Portuguese sailors and traders from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. My disbelief that these objects were not on public display only deepened when I later learnt from a specialist the rarity of these pieces.

“When Emmanuel realized I was Portuguese, he decided to show me some hidden gems of Lagos.”

At that time, I was living in Cambridge, which meant I had easy access to museum and archive collections of Nigerian artifacts held in Britain. I was able to explore deeper my interest in the presence of the Portuguese in Nigeria and how we were represented in their culture. This research ended up leading to both a collaborative art project with the Nigerian photographer Andrew Esiebo and later an invite to curate an exhibition in Benin City.

The artworks I saw in Lagos and in the UK bear witness to the long relationship between the Edo People (Benin Kingdom) and the Portuguese, which dates back to the 15th century. The period between 1415 and 1543 is known as the Descobrimentos (discoveries) — during this time the Portuguese rulers invested heavily in the exploration of maritime trade routes. The Portuguese sailor Rui de Sequeira first reached the powerful Kingdom of Benin during his search for the East sea-route. On arrival in 1472 to Nigerian coast, he named the region Lago de Curamo, most probably as a homage to the Algarve city of Lagos. Today, Lagos is the largest city in Nigeria and its economic capital.

Official trade relations between the two nations began fourteen years later, during the reign of Oba Ozolua, when João Afonso de Aveiro’s expedition landed at the seaport of Ughoton. The obas of Benin had a strong international vision and ambition, which led them to establish one of the most powerful and wealthy kingdoms in West Africa. The commercial trade was mostly of human slaves, brass, copper, cotton, pepper, animal skins, palm oil, shells (Coris), ivory, red wood and weapons. As trade relations between the countries developed over the centuries, the Portuguese established weapons factories and warehouses at the seaport, and Edo ambassadors travelled to Portugal to learn about our culture, costumes and language.

As a key purpose of the Descobrimentos was to expand the Christian faith, the Portuguese attempted to Christianize every people that they encountered; the Benin kingdom was no exception. We advised the ruler Oba Esigie - a fluent speaker of Portuguese - to become a Christian1. This suggestion was considered seriously by the Oba, who allowed churches to be built in the kingdom, sent the Olokun priest Ohen-Okun to Lisbon and later had his son, Oba Orhogbua2, baptized and educated in Portugal3 .

The social and economic life of both the Benin Kingdom and Portugal flourished as a result of the amicable relationship between the two countries. Lamentably, the wealth generated was increasingly due to the European demand for human slaves. The canals in the Delta region that connected Ughoton to Benin City were called the Slave River due to this

1-J.U. Egharevba, ‘A Short History of Benin’, Benin City, fortune Publisher, 2005. 2-R.E. Bradbury, ‘Benin Studies ‘(1973), Routledge, 2020. 3-‘Talbot Peoples of Southern Nigeria’, Oxford, vol.1, 1926. Figure 2: Seated Portuguese Male. Nigeria, Court of Benin. Brass.12.7x5.1x6cm. 18th century. Gift of Mrs. and Mr. Klaus G. Perls, 1991. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection.

Figure 3: Plaque: Two Portuguese with Manillas. Nigeria, Court of Benin. Brass. 45.7×19.7×2.5 cm. 16th–17th century. Gift of Mrs. and Mr. Klaus G. Perls, 1991. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection.

Figure 4: Queen Mother Hip Pendant Mask (Iyoba), worn by the king during commemorative rites.16th century, Edo peoples, Court of Benin, Nigeria, ivory, iron, copper, 23.8 x 12.7 x 8.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection. Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection of Primitive Art, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1972.

Visitor observing some of the Benin Bronze Plaques, stolen by the Oba’s Palace and in exhibition at the British Museum, London, UK. (2016). Photograph by Inês Valle.

trade. The men and women sold or gifted as slaves were recorded as criminals or outcasts, however history teaches us, many were in fact kidnapped. Their lives were priced low — in 1522, female slaves at the prime age of 17-18 years old were sold for the rate of just two ivory tusks 4. Shockingly, this was considered expensive compared to other slave markets, and so the Portuguese started to reorient their navigation compass towards other African nations.

During my research, I also found out that the Portuguese introduced new crops to Nigeria during this period, such as rice, maize, cassava, sugarcane and even pineapples. Today, some of these products are crucial to the local cuisine and vital for the country’s economy. A good example is cassava, which can be found in any market, or by the roadside, and is eaten in thousands of delicious ways — like codfish in Portugal. Nigeria is the biggest producer of cassava in the world; 34 million tonnes of this tuberous root are grown in the country per year, generating a revenue of $427.3 million in the domestic market and $2.98 billion through exports 5 .

Portuguese traders also represented a new revenue opportunity for Benin artists. By depicting Portuguese figures and references, the artisans internationalized their wares and therefore expanded their clientele. An example of this is the salt cellar (container for salt and pepper) in figure 1. This object was likely commissioned by a Portuguese sailor to offer as a gift back home. The incredible detail in the representation of the four Portuguese men on the piece shows the mastery the Benin artists had in ivory carving. Some experts believe that one of the men may be Afonso de Albuquerque (1460–1515), who had a key role in the Portuguese Descobrimentos. I saw a similar piece at the British Museum, with a lid in the shape of a caravel (ship).

Other pieces depicting Portuguese traders could be found inside the Oba’s palace, such as the small cast brass sculpture of a healthy man (figure 2), which may have been placed in a small royal ancestral altar, and the cast brass plaques (figure 3) that historically were hung on the wooden pillars of the palace. In this last example two Portuguese traders are depicted holding brass manillas.

The artwork that I am most excited to share is an ivory pendant mask (figure 4). Not only is it a rare example of a female figure in Benin’s courtly art tradition, it also contains depictions of Portuguese people. The mask represents Oba Esigie’s mother, who is famous as the only woman who went to war and it is believed that the piece was used in rites to commemorate her, although today such hip pendants are worn at ceremonies of spiritual renewal and purification. On close inspection, the tiara and the necklace reveal carved mudfish and

4-Preston Blier, Suzanne. ‘Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese ca. 1492’, The Art Bulletin, 1993. 5-Harnessing the economic potential of cassava production in Nigeria. https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/assets/pdf/cassava-production-nigeria-report-2020.pdf

More than 500 museum and collections hold Benin stolen artworks. Below is a short selection:

Chicago –Art Institute of Chicago and Field Museum. Cologne – Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. Hamburg – Museum für Völkerkunde, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe. Dresden – Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde. Leipzig – Museum für Völkerkunde. Leiden – Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde. London – British Museum. New York – Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art. Oxford – Pitt-Rivers Museum, Rushmore. Stuttgart – Linden Museum-Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde. Vienna – Museum für Völkerkunde .

Many reports speculate that incomparable collections where removed from former British colonies, only 8,800 files where admitted to be kept, but in reality more than 20,000 files are held in just one building in London. As we know archives can be a seam of evidence of how colonies were really administered, but more importantly they represent a huge gap of documentary heritage of a country. Spaces of Memory (figure 6) developed in collaboration between myself and Andrew Esiebo, is a visual travel to memories, where non-spaces are disclosed through the acute eyes of Benin people about places that were lost or forgotten by time. Stories where myths and facts are superimposed. A kind of a visual palimpsest, a “multi-layered record” in which individual stories are overlaid to historical colonial facts accessible on several State archives both in the United Kingdom, Portugal, USA and in Nigeria.

Figure 5: Interior of Oba’s compound burnt during siege of Benin City, with bronze plaques in the foreground and three British soldiers of the Benin Punitive Expedition 9-18 February 1897. Photograph by Reginald Granville.

bearded Portuguese faces. The mudfish were included because they are creatures of both water and land, and so they represent the dual nature of the Oba (human and divine). Similarly, the Portuguese — who travel across the sea — were considered denizens of the divine realm (land of death) whose presence brought power and richness to the Kingdom of Benin.

These are just a few of the thousands of objects that were looted in 1897 from the Oba’s Palace, during the punitive British invasion of the Kingdom of Benin. After burning and ransacking the region, the British sold riches from Benin in a public auction in London (figure 5). These treasures are now spread over more than 500 collections and museums worldwide.

A year after my first visit to Nigeria, I returned at the invitation of the University of Lagos, to curate a public art exhibition in the city of Benin — at the world heritage site The Igun Street. This project commemorated the centenary of the Nigerian amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates (1914) and featured several Nigeria-based artists, including Benin’s princess, Mrs Elizabeth Olowu — the first women to be given permission by Oba Akenzua II to do bronze casting. The exhibition critically considered the

Inês Valle, interviewing a family in Nigeria for her project Idilé (2016 - ongoing). Photograph by Andrew Esiebo / courtesy of the artist.

commemoration of the amalgamation and the various forms memorializations can take in general. I also continued to collaborate with Andrew on our project that merged memories of Benin’s bronze casting families with Nigerian and Western archival documentation (figure 6).

Of everything, what stuck with me the most was the extraordinary reception I received from the people I interviewed. On hearing that I was not British, but Portuguese, they would tell me stories that had been passed from generation to generation. I was also taught the local street language, Nigerian Pidgin English, which contains various words and expressions derived from Portuguese, like “you sabi do am?” (do you know how to do it?), from the Portuguese verb saber or “pikin” (small) from pequenino.

The relationship between Nigeria and Portugal is a complex subject and one that I hope I will have the opportunity to research further. Undoubtedly, Nigerian culture, old and new, is extraordinarily rich and perhaps now is the time to regenerate stronger cultural relationships with Portugal.

Mrs Elizabeth Olowu’s Living Room (Benin city, 2014), despicting her personal photo archive and live at the Palace during Oba Akenzua II ruler — research field. Photograph by Inês Valle.