Paper short abstract:

Other than cast Igbo ethno-aesthetics and heritage in light of fetishism, they can be appropriated in innovative ways to serve contemporary mundane needs through craft and econo-art as has been recently demonstrated by some artists and groups east of Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

The acclaimed dynamism of culture would presuppose that cultural resources and expressions would take on new essences and meanings in the mill of time. This has not been the case with much of the arts and materiality of most post-colonial peoples. In most cases, as in Igbo land, what transpires in the theatre of the post-colonial is a seeming effacement of local idioms after a jostling in hybridity. This has been the case with much of Igbo arts and crafts which seem to be fizzling out in recent times. This is often due to lack of heritage education and negative effects of Pentecolstalism. Over the years, Igbo arts and materiality have not been critically explored as anvils on which new vision of the society and its identity can be forged both in graphic and economic terms. Beyond the shadow of fetishism now cast over vast cultural resources in Igbo land (including uli), this paper argues that this can be done, not by flogging esoteric paradigms and tendencies that only narrow the appeal of, and access to, these resources, but by reinventing them to meet contemporary needs and aspiration of the people as tools for cultural re-armament and socio-economic development. Using the efforts of The Art Republic at creating new crafts through the agency of uli and other transformed materiality, the paper concludes that craft and econo-art, as effective culture-carriers, are flexible grounds where culture and heritage can be renegotiated, not just to reaffirm or re-enforce identity, but to cultivate to sustainable end to hunger for creative people.