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.

Oriiz in this work positions Nigerian art not as nostalgia or archaeological curiosity but as living evidence of a people who have always used creativity to understand power, spirituality, identity and survival.

The book reads like a cultural witness statement, connecting ancient traditions to contemporary artistic expressions seen in today’s galleries, studios and global exhibitions.

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 bronzes, Nok terracottas, Ifẹ portraiture, Igbo-Ukwu metalwork, masks of the Niger Delta, and the 8,000-year-old Dufuna canoe, Onuwaje critiques how Western institutions have isolated these works from their cultural lineage. Displayed as disconnected marvels, they are admired but stripped of memory and context.

The Harbinger seeks to restore that lost continuity. Positioned as the first volume leading to the forthcoming A Window into the Soul of a People: 8000 Years of Art in Nigeria, the book reframes African art history as an unbroken intellectual and cultural rhythm rather than a series of coincidences.

This work stands as both a corrective to inherited narratives and a call for Africans to reclaim authorship of their own cultural memory.