Uli Philosophy and Mysticism

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive1 Processes and Systems
“Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge”
 Uli Philosophy and Mysticism

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
“Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge”

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Between Line and Cosmos

Uli philosophy and mysticism is an exploration of the cosmos and an effort to

penetrate its essence through ideas and practices inspired by the visual
lyricism of Uli and Uli inspired art and their theoretical and literary
associations.
Classical Uli is a style of visual art, “employed in a complex system of body
painting and the creation of wall murals,” originating from the Igbo women of
South-Eastern Nigeria, as Okwui Enwezor observes in “Uli at the Skoto
(Glendora Review, 1.2. 1995. 23-24.23) and adapted to varying uses by artists
of both genders.

The distinctive character of Uli may be described as its lyrical deployment of

lines, “used not only to fill space but also to empty it out [ the line moving ]
the eye across the surface [ creating ] a wealth of contoured images and
patterns which combine the more spontaneous elements of painting with the
draughtsmanship of drawing,” Enwezor continues, qualities actualized in the
abstract depiction of diverse subjects, from concrete to abstract referents,
from terrestrial to celestial phenomena, from plants to cosmographic
conceptions, “a vast catalogue of signs, symbols, and patterns [ constituting ] a
distinctive representation of the Igbo universe,” (24) all distilled in terms of
dynamic configurations of abstractions, visual explorations around which are
constellated a world of literary expressions.

A Story of Origins

Nkechi Odaro was farming in a clearing surrounded by forest, in the village of

Ojoto among the Igbo of the sub-Saharan rainforest, when, to her amazed
eyes, the entire landscape was suddenly transformed into a radiance of lines
in an infinite variety of shapes, emanating from a source beyond
comprehension, extending into the distance beyond sight and yet spiraling
back to converge within that inexplicable core, herself both one of those lines
and the totality of its glorious simplicity and amazing complexity, the entire
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weave one white line containing within itself all the possibilities of the
rainbow, extending itself and curving back towards itself, having traced all
possibilities of existence in its arc, the cosmos manifest through the drawing
of a line, that, having expressed all the potential of existence in its
revolutions, twirls back towards its beginning, reabsorbed in the one who
draws, essence, expression and creator unified as one simple light.

Her efforts to represent her momentary but transformative experience

through images inscribed on her own body, to suggest its intimacy, and on
the walls of her home, to reference its externality, using the pigmentation of
what became known as the Uli shrub, is the birth of the art of Uli.

The body is the house of the self, yet without the house would the self exist?

The art of Uli was born in this tension between the house and its dweller, the
visible and the invisible, spaces negative and spaces positive, the line and the
abstractions it projects, the empty and the full.

Visual Summations of Uli Philosophy and Mysticism

Uli philosophy and mysticism, as I am developing it through the cosmological

value of the founding myth I have constructed above and through the image
expositions and meditations that follow below, is a body of ideas and practices
inspired by those ideas of lyrical linearity in relation to balance between
different kinds of space, further cultivating the potential of the visual and
ideational complex of Uli in its classical and post-classical expressions.

These conceptions of lyrical linearity in relation to balance between positive

and negative space, are correlative, in this context, with both the character of
the cosmos and of the human being as embodied mind in his or her
engagement with existence in terms individualistic and collective,
spontaneous and systematic.

Two paintings, Obiora Udechukwu’s Our Journey and Joseph Eze’s

Contemporary Uli Series No. 4 : Udude ( Spider), may be seen as summative
evocations of Uli philosophy and mysticism.
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 Obiora Udechukwu’s Our Journey

1993. Acrylic on canvas. 200 x640 cm

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Detail of Victor Ekpuk’s Good Morning, Sunrise

2004, Acrylic on canvas. 48 x48 inches

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Obiora Udechukwu’s Our Journey

Udechukwu’s Our Journey is a rendition of the spiral visualized in Uli as

representing the unfurling of the royal python, Eke, in Igbo cosmology,
evoking continual progression creating the unity of the circle of life at
terrestrial and cosmological scales of being.

Victor Ekpuk’s Good Morning, Sunrise

The significance of Udechukwu’s adaptation of the Uli spiral may be

reinforced through conjunction with Victor Ekpuk’s recreation, in his painting
Good Morning, Sunrise, of the spiral symbolism of the Nigerian Cross River
origin Nsibidi symbol system, described as including, among its repertoire of
meanings, the sun, journey and eternity, ideas richly resonant with
Udechukwu’s unfurling spiral tracing out a path of journeying in terms of the
visual and associative unity of spiral and snake symbolism, of coiling and
uncoiling motion perceived in terms of individual and cosmic creative
rhythms.

The unfolding spiral navigates and unifies space, space constituted by various
zones conjoined through the motion of the unfolding form as it traverses
configurations neither terrestrial nor celestial, existing at the intersection of
imagination and concreteness, resonating, within the expansive kaleidoscope
of colour and abstract figurations, with solar systems and galaxies, with the
efforts of the mind to construct islands of order, of understanding, within the
tantalizing infinity of the unknown.

The compelling power of these receding cognitive vistas is evoked by the

sheer beauty of the composition, awash with sublime colour contrasts,
luminous disjunctive complementarities defining the undulations of strangely
beautiful shapes.

What is the purpose of this journey unfolded by Udechukwu’s spiral? What

terrain does it travel through, how is it propelled and what is its destination?

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Joseph Eze’s Contemporary Uli Series No. 4 : Udude ( Spider)

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 Joseph Eze’s Contemporary Uli Series No. 4 : Udude ( Spider)

Joseph Eze’s Contemporary Uli Series No. 4 : Udude ( Spider), may be perceived,
within the context of Uli philosophy and mysticism, as evoking responses to
these questions.

“What is my place in the scheme of things?,” the beautiful face prominent in

the painting seems to ask. “My role, as a human being, in the complex network
represented by life on earth within the cosmic whole,” a totality suggested by
the tendrils, like roots and plants, entwining within the painting, along with
abstract shapes reminiscent of leaf designs and of the human abstractive
capacity generally, as images evocative of the moon lofty in the night sky are
positioned within these formations and in the spaces between them, a
constellation imaging the spider’s web in its suggestion of embracing all
possibilities within a matrix.

“What is my place in the scheme of things?,” the beautiful face prominent in

the painting seems to ask. “My role, as a human being, in the complex network
represented by life on earth within the cosmic whole,” a totality suggested by
the tendrils, like roots and plants, entwining within the painting, along with
positioned within these formations and in the spaces between them, a
constellation imaging the spider’s web in its suggestion of embracing all
possibilities within a matrix.

“How may I position myself in recognition of my animal ancestry and its

transcendental possibilities, so my hands may reach God’s sky as my feet
touch the goat’s earth, as an African poem puts it?,” the contemplative seems
to wonder, an aspiration evoked here by a humanoid form with a
protuberance between its legs, suggesting a tail, a figure in dynamic balance
within concentric circles among which spheres seem to oscillate, geometric
harmonies creating a soundless music at an intersection of time and
timelessness, being and becoming.

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“Beauty is a road to inwardness, a straight line drawn by God,” the Uli mystic
may declare, as the beautiful face of Eze’s painting amplifies the visual
rhythms of the painting’s human and non-human configurations.

“As we contemplate these harmonies may we be led within to the essences

beyond, and hopefully, even to the ultimate rhythms at the intersection of
being and becoming,” such a thinker may aspire.

A Meditation on Patterns

Art as philosophy, art as a style of thinking, the creation of intimacy between

the perceiver and the perceived through the contemplation of beauty, ancient
strategies of engaging with the cosmos, the Uli philosopher and mystic
develops this in their own way.

The exploration of the intersection between art and life in terms of the
presence of varied forms of beauty in all aspects of existence, from mud to the
dirty water of gutters to falling rain to strangers passing in the street to the
radiance of the rising sun to the palpitations of life in the deep green of leaves,
this is the pursuit of the Uli thinker.

The Uli mystic may contemplate the rhythms that make up the contours of the
tree, the shaping and reshaping of clouds, the ripples of the stream, the
patterns of the water in a bowl, always seeking to penetrate, through
sensitivity to the beauty of lines in their myriad shapings of possibility, to the
dynamic essence from which the various actualizations of being arise.

What is the nature of the line that stretches from the patterns of the leaf to its
branches, to its trunk, to its roots, emanation of the life force generated by the
meeting of earth and sun that is the tree?

Contemplating this question in the light of the magnificent uprightness or the

dynamic twistedness of these unifiers of earth and space, the one inspired by
the essence of lines seeks to penetrate to that core.

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The pool of rain water on the road mirroring the immensity of the sky, the
ocean in its relationship to waters great and small, what are the conjunctions
between these lines of vision and the relationship between self and cosmos?

To the Uli mystic, the universe is a concourse of doors leading into infinity.

From the Primal to the Present

In the beginning : emptiness.

From emptiness a point.

From the point a line.

From time to time, the Uli mystic returns to that emptiness, to the point
between the nothingness before being and the emergence of all, between the
potential of every moment and the expression of that potential, in meditation
or prayer drawing vitalizing water from the well at the roots of time.

Call upon the abyss by any name of your choosing.

It has no name but palpitates in anticipation of your call.

A powerful darkness.

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