Visiting Sculptor Lukman Alade Fakeye Goes With The Grain

Valerie Richardson Photo

Lukman Fakeye at the Yale School of Art.

Lukman Alade Fakeye set up his tools and a block of African mahogany wood in a large workspace on an upper floor of the Sculpture Department of Yale’s School of Art. It was the first day of a week-long residency as the School of Art’s Fall 2022 Hayden Visiting Artist, during which time he would be creating a new sculpture and speaking with classes and individual students. Fakeye is in the sixth generation of his family’s lineage of Yorùbá woodcarvers, working within a larger tradition that extends back hundreds of years. 

Fakeye’s visit, which began on Monday, coincides with the opening week of an exhibition of Yorùbá wood carving at the Yale University Art Gallery: Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition.” Yorùbá woodcarving is noted for its complex compositions, refined forms, and intricate surface detail, and the exhibit — which runs through Jan. 8 — is the first one dedicated to the workshop of the Nigerian artist Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè (ca. 1885 – 1975), who is considered one of the greatest sculptors of the Yorùbá tradition. 

As graduate students in the School of Art came into the room around 10:30 a.m., Fakeye sat down with his tools and wood and prepared to begin the carving. He explained that there are five stages of traditional Yorùbá woodcarving, which take the artist from blocking in the basic forms to the final stages of refinement: sisa, onalile, aletunle, didan, and finfin.

Lukman Fakeye, Professor Aki Sasamoto, and Yale School of Art students.

Fakeye had presented these processes in greater detail in the talk Exploring Yorùbá Woodcarving,” which he gave at the Yale University Art Gallery this past March, along with James Green, the Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation Associate Curator of African Art, and Cathy Silverman, Assistant Conservator of Objects and Furniture.

On Monday, as Fakeye began to work, he answered the students’ questions. He described how he began learning the art of woodcarving from his father, uncle, and other relatives at a very young age. His father’s studio in Nigeria was attached to their home, and their lives centered around creating art. Every morning, he would wander into his father’s studio and stay there all day.

Akin Fakeye, father of Lukman Fakeye.

Some of the students wondered whether his work adhered entirely to the Yorùbá tradition or whether he, as an artist living in the 21st century, brought his own ideas and sensibilities to the process. Fakeye said there was some of both, but he also said that his work benefitted from such things as greatly improved technology in making carving tools. This led to another conversation about tools with a student who had also done carving, in marble.

Many students wondered about the themes depicted in his art. Is Yorùbá art about traditional myths? Politics? Daily life? Is it used in spiritual ceremonies? Fakeye said it could be all of those things. He pointed to a completed early sculpture of his that sat nearby and showed how it contained traditional elements that Yorùbá people would easily recognize. 

Sculpture of warrior and horse by Lukman Fakeye.

The artwork depicted a warrior on horseback, heading home from a war, He had a gun in one hand and a sword across his body. Behind him was a flute player to entertain him, and a bird sitting on top of the warrior’s head. The bird served as a messenger for the warrior, to dispatch messages back and forth to the villagers, and as a spy. (Many of the Bámigbóyè works on display at the Yale University Art Gallery were used as masks during traditional Yorùbá spiritual festivals.)

Ben Hagari Photo

As 11 a.m. approached, the floor around Fakeye was already littered with wood chips, and the block of wood was beginning to roughly show a head and other elements of a human form. The students from the earlier class left, and other students wandered in, as they would continue to do throughout the week. 

Valerie Richardson Photo

Aki Sasamoto, Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture, spoke about the importance of visiting artists in the program, especially one from such a long and important tradition as Yorùbá woodcarving.

In planning a workshop of this fashion for an artist-in-residence, we wanted for students to meet Lukman as an artist in action. Unlike a lecture or a technical workshop of tool handling, students get to meet Lukman as a person, as an artist, and as a carver from the Yorùbá lineage, all at the same time,” she said. When the practicing artists in our graduate program go to visit the Bámigbóyè exhibition at the Yale Art Gallery, they will have a lot of questions about the Yorùbá tradition of woodcarving, and they will wonder how the works are made. We hope some insights from interacting with Fakeye as he works will answer these questions and enrich the experience of the show.”

Ben Hagari Photo

Graduate student Malik Jalal, who has served as Fakeye’s host for the week, said, I have been a student of African craft. I am a blacksmith and have looked to the traditions of West Africa to ground my interests, especially Yorùbá craft traditions. To have this youthful man bring his ancient tradition to us with such generosity and appreciation was immensely profound for me.”

Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition is on view now at the Yale University Art Gallery and runs through Jan. 8, 2023. An opening for the exhibition takes place today at 5:30 p.m. Fakeye will lead a drawing workshop at the Gallery on Friday, Sept. 16, at 1:30 p.m. (space is limited).

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