LAGOS (Sundiata Post) – Nigeria’s doyen of arts, Elder Demas Nwoko, will on Sunday, 23 October, unveil his book entitled Concrete Thinking.
Published by New Culture Publications, the book launch is part of events marking ‘Design Week Lagos’ and is to hold at Konga Place, 4 Oba Elegushi Road, Off Lekki-Epe Expressway, Ikate, Lagos. Time is 4:00pm.
It will be chaired by the Fadesewa of Simawa, long term associate and collaborator of Demas Nwoko and former Director of Lagos State Council for Art and Culture, His Royal Highness, Oba Gbenga Sonuga.
In a statement made available to Sundiata Post, the trio of Joseph Moemeke, Chibu Oloyebua and Ayodele Arigbabu said, “In seven decades of active participation in Nigeria’s arts, design and culture spaces, Demas Nwoko’s critical interventions have been strident and consistent. His new book, Concrete Thinking, has been in the works for as long as he has been active, being the summation of his writings and thoughts on various concerns within the domains his work has straddled over the years.
“Nwoko should need no introduction – a consummate artist, cultural producer and designer, whose life mission has been for real independence in Nigeria’s journey as a nation state, as expressed in the definition and redefinition of her national orientation through her cultural output. Nwoko’s generation it was who were handed the nation as young adults and had the first go at shaping her as they deemed fit right from the decade of the nation’s independence from colonial rule.
“From his trajectory through the Nigerian College of Arts Science and Technology, Zaria (now Ahmadu Bello University) where he studied Fine Art and contributed as a leading light in one of the most significant art movements in Nigeria’s art history – the Natural Synthesis movement – driven by the so-called Zaria Rebellion, to his illustrious multidisciplinary career as a painter, sculptor, set designer, lecturer in dramatic arts at the University of Ibadan, and subsequent robust output as an architect and builder, his contributions to nation building through his creative output and his philosophies, as concretized in his signature philosophy and practice under the New Culture brand, has been well documented over the years, in journals, magazines and festschrifts, but is being brought together in a comprehensive tome for the first time in Concrete Thinking.”
Sundiata Post notes that Demas Nwoko started out as a painter and after traversing the entire gamut of the arts branched out into architecture. He is probably the only Nigerian artist that is also a qualified architect. He is a Fellow of the Nigerian Insitute of Architects.
He is also a Fellow of the International Federation of Interior Designers (IFID).
A founding member of the University of Ibadan Theatre Arts department from where he retired, Demas Nwoko, in addition to his degree in Fine Art from ABU, Zaria, studied at the French National School of Fine Art and Architecture in Paris called Ecole des Beaux-Arts on full French government scholarship.
He also studied theatre arts at The International Theatre Institute (Institut International du Théâtre) ITI UNESCO in France. It is the world’s largest performing arts organisation, founded in 1948 by theatre and dance experts and UNESCO.
