Skip to main content

Real Reason Why This Statue Of Fela Kuti In Lagos Is Headless

The 2017 edition of the festival was a special edition as it marked the 20th year anniversary of Fela’s demise, and the Lagos State government commemorated the legend by erecting ‘The Liberation’ a statue of Fela at Allen Roundabout, Ikeja, Lagos.

To the surprise of several people, the statue erected was without a head and this raised a lot of suspiscion and comments from fans of the late Afrobeat legend.

Responding on behalf of the family, Fela’s daughter and social commentator, Yeni Kuti has justified the design of the monument, saying it was the expression of how the artist felt about the late legend.

She said: ‘Before people on social media will start to say the Fela has no head or it has no hand and so on, it is art and before you abuse us, let me answer quickly. It is art. How an artist feels is how he feels because if he had put a head and the head did not look like Fela, everybody will say the head did not look like Fela so now you cannot abuse the head because it is not even there.’

The visual artist who designed the effigy, Abolore Sobayo said the work was an expression of how he feels about the late Afrobeat legend, saying that it was designed to generate discussion about the emancipation of the people. While justifying the fact that the art work had no head, Sobayo said the design came out of extensive research on what Fela represented through his music, and how to use same to correct some of the things he complained about years ago that are still happening.

‘For me as an artist, art transcends beyond beauty or aesthetics. For me, art should generate discuss; art should ask question and art should provoke our thoughts. For me, the creation of the Liberation Statue is to represent the essence of Fela by using his costume. For me, I believe that this should serve as a conscious to our subconscious that twenty years after Fela’s demise, most of the things he talked about are still happening. For me, this work should come to us not just as a beautiful work, but it should come to us as something that will ginger us to look at the positivity in our lives; positivity in the values of his music; for us to start to emancipate our people positively. Going forward, I have been able to use symbolism as a medium to represent Fela through his costume and to represent his essence,’ Sobayo said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

President of Iran Declares End of ISIS

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran on Tuesday declared the end of Islamic State in an address broadcast live on state TV. A senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani, also declared the end of Islamic State in a message sent to the country’s supreme leader Tuesday which was published on Sepah News, the news site of the Guards. Videos and pictures of Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside of Iran’s borders, at frontline positions in battles against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been posted frequently by Iranian media in recent years. On Friday, Iranian media published pictures of Soleimani Kamal in eastern Syria, a town which Soleimani said Tuesday was the last territory retaken from Islamic State control in the region. The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, has been fighting in support of S...

EPL: Kelechi Iheanacho might be available for sale in January – Leicester City boss, Puel

Leicester City manager, Claude Puel, has hinted at the possibility of selling Nigeria star Kelechi Iheanacho four weeks before the winter transfer market opens for business. The Foxes have six strikers in the first team consisting of Iheanacho, Vardy, Ahmed Musa, Slimani, Okazaki and Ulloa, and the former Man City starlet has found game time hard to come by after making only two starts in the Premier League from a possible fifteen. Speaking to Leicester Mercury, Puel said: “Kelechi had an injury and for the moment, we have competition. “I am happy with Jamie for example. Kelechi or other players cannot play on the side. “It’s difficult for them, but for me also to manage all these players because we have six strikers so there is no place for all the players.” Iheanacho penned a five-year contract with Leicester City in the summer for a fee in the region of 25 million pounds.

Tech How Alibaba turned an obscure, made-up Chinese holiday into a $17.8 billion shopping extravaganza that's bigger than Black Friday

Alibaba raked in over $8 billion in sales in the first hour of its made-up marketing holiday, "Singles Day." Singles Day has its roots in an obscure Chinese holiday for students who had not married yet. Alibaba CEO Jack Ma capitalized expertly on the holiday, and now, Singles Day dwarfs traditional American shopping holidays like Black Friday, and is much larger than Amazon's "Prime Day." Alibaba turned Singles Day, the Chinese holiday for the single-set, into a huge economic opportunity through a savvy marketing blitz. The company raked in well over $8 billion during the first hour of this year's sale, largely through its online shopping platforms, Taobao.com and Tmall.com as well as a glitzy gala. Students at Nanjing University first celebrated Singles Day in 1993 as an appreciation of, you guessed it — being single. They picked November 11 (11/11) as an ode to the loneliness of the number one. But Single’s Day was never meant to be a somber aff...