By Oriiz U Onuwaje Oriiz views design as more than decoration. He sees it as a tool that shapes and stabilises power, identity, and continuity. Throughout history, people have used objects for more than beauty. They use form to pass on memory, organise authority, and make hidden systems visible. What we now call design innovation […]
African societies built memory so deliberately that no one could erase it. By Oriiz U Onuwaje Oriiz shows us how African societies deliberately built memory right into their surroundings. They used design thinking as a way to survive, weaving authority, lineage and continuity into bronze, ivory and wood. What we now admire as art started […]
By Oriiz U Onuwaje Oriiz presents Rhythm as a means of keeping traditions alive, showing how people remember and share what they cannot easily put into writing. Across Africa, rhythm acts as an archive, a form of governance, and a social bond, carrying memory in a way everyone can access, repeat, and protect. Rhythm is […]
By Oriiz U Onuwaje Oriiz presents a simple truth for today: rhythm is evidence. Rhythm preserves a people’s story, reveals intelligence, and brings order. The beat is more than music for dancing; it captures life itself. Dance does more than entertain; it bears witness. Before museums and libraries, Africans kept their heritage alive by repeating […]
Originally featured on The Sun The Harbinger: A window into the soul of a people: 8,000 Years of Art in Nigeria, reminds readers of a truth often ignored in mainstream narratives, Nigerian art did not begin with colonial contact nor did it pause because of it. Instead, it has continued, quietly, defiantly, intelligently, across centuries. […]
Originally featured on The New Telegraphng There’s something quite audacious about THE HARBINGER”, a landmark four part book series written by Oriiz U. Onuwaje. This book is not just about documenting 8,000 years of Nigerian art history, a window into the soul of a people; it aims to reframe the nation’s art as single, continuous, […]
Originally featured on The Art Hub In The Harbinger (Crimson Fusion, Lagos; 2025), Oriiz U. Onuwaje challenges the long-standing notion that African artistic genius is accidental or fragmented. Instead, the book argues for African art as the product of a continuous and deliberate intellectual tradition stretching across millennia. Drawing on examples such as the Benin […]
The Harbinger is the first of four messengers, announcing an 8000-year revelation.
Through charged ideas, sharpened memory, and stunning images that anchor our heritage, it prepares the mind for the scale, the weight, and the intelligence of what is coming.
