News — Black Art

 A white woman observes a Black man sitting with two white children and thinks they’re in danger. She takes their picture and threatens to call 9-1-1. Will other people think that’s a good idea?

Nigeria’s Umaru Dikko was the minister of transport in the civilian government run by Shehu Shagari from 1979 until the end of 1983 when the country’s army overthrew the administration and installed Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as the head of state. The new military government under Buhari jailed scores of government ministers under Shagari’s administration for corruption. Dikko, who criticized the military regime under Buhari, managed to flee to London reportedly dressed as a priest.

While in London, he continued to be an outspoken critic of the military government, which also accused him of corruption and of stealing millions of dollars from a rice distribution program he was in charge of. Dikko denied the accusations. Still, the military government labeled him as “Nigeria’s most wanted man” and devised a plan to kidnap him off the streets of London and bring him back to Nigeria to face trial.

The Independent reported that Nigerian intelligence services and undercover agents (alongside several Israelis who were alleged to be members of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad) tracked Dikko to a house in west London. The joint Nigerian-Israeli team placed the former minister’s house under surveillance. An Israeli alleged former Mossad agent, Alexander Barak, reportedly led the kidnap team, which included a Nigerian intelligence officer, Maj Mohammed Yusufu, and Israeli nationals Felix Abitbol and Dr. Lev-Arie Shapiro. One of the team members was to inject Dikko with an anesthetic.

On July 5, 1984, Dikko was kidnapped outside his home in London, bundled into the back of a van and locked in a large crate addressed to the Nigerian Ministry of External Affairs in the then capital city, Lagos. The kidnappers injected Dikko before laying him, unconscious, in the crate with the Israeli anesthetist by his side in the crate to keep him breathing. Barak and Abitbol were in a second crate. The two boxes were sealed. The kidnappers drove Dikko to Stansted airport to put him on a waiting Nigerian cargo plane to be flown back to Lagos.

Unknown to the kidnappers, Dikko’s secretary had witnessed the abduction. She called the police. The British government subsequently ordered customs officials at airports, ports and border crossings to be extremely observant when inspecting Nigeria-bound vessels. At Stansted, one young customs officer, Charles David Morrow, having heard about the news of a kidnapping, ordered the crates to be opened just when the Nigerian cargo plane was minutes from taking off.

“The day had gone fairly normally until about 3 pm. Then we had the handling agents come through and say that there was a cargo due to go on a Nigerian Airways 707, but the people delivering it didn’t want it manifested,” Morrow recalled what happened to the BBC.

“I went downstairs to see who they were and what was happening. I met a guy who turned out to be a Nigerian diplomat called Mr Edet. He showed me his passport and he said it was diplomatic cargo. Being ignorant of such matters, I asked him what it was, and he told me it was just documents and things.”

Morrow said Nigerian intelligence officials and diplomatic staff argued that the crates could not be opened as they were protected by diplomatic immunity.

Morrow knew that any cargo designated as a diplomatic bag is protected by the Vienna Convention from being opened by customs officers. Thus, he got on the phone to the British Foreign Office.”To qualify as a ‘diplomatic bag’ they clearly had to be marked with the words ‘Diplomatic Bag’ and they had to be accompanied by an accredited courier with the appropriate documentation. It was fair to say they had a Nigerian diplomat – I’d seen his passport – but they didn’t have the right paperwork and they weren’t marked ‘Diplomatic Bag’,” he said.

The final decision was that the crates could be opened. Customs officers called anti-terrorist police, cordoned off the area and evacuated airport staff. They then opened the crate in the presence of the police. They found Dikko unconscious inside one of the crates. Next to him was the doctor who had injected him.

“He [Dikko] had no shirt on, he had a heart monitor on him, and he had a tube in his throat to keep his airway open. No shoes and socks and handcuffs around his ankles. The Israeli anesthetist was in there, clearly to keep him alive,” recalled Morrow.

Customs officials found the other kidnappers in the other crate. “I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head – and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs,” Dikko told the BBC a year after the incident.

At the end of the day, the Nigerian intelligence officer and the three Israelis were all convicted of the crime and sent to prison. The governments of Nigeria and Israel however denied involvement in the crime. The incident marred relations between Britain and Nigeria for two years. “The kidnap caused one of the worst-ever diplomatic crises between Britain and Nigeria,” historian Max Siollun wrote in The Independent of London in 2012. “The Nigerian high commissioner was declared persona non grata in London, and the head of Nigeria Airways narrowly escaped being arrested by British police. Diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Britain were suspended for two years.”

Dikko returned to Nigeria a decade after the incident. He later died on July 1 in London, leaving behind “two wives, 11 children and many grandchildren.”

Born in Wamba, in central Nigeria, in 1936, Dikko had studied at the University of London and worked with the BBC for some time. He was later a commissioner in the northern province of Nigeria (now Kaduna State) and the manager of the presidential campaign of his brother-in-law, Shagari.

After his abduction, he went to law school in London and was admitted to the bar. He reentered Nigerian politics in the 1990s, and before his death, he became chairman of the disciplinary committee of the People’s Democratic Party, led by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro Basilica is located in Yamoussoukro, which since March 1983 been the capital of Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast). It is the largest Christian church in the world, according to Guinness World Records. The basilica is not to be confused with a cathedral, which is the principal place of worship and where the ruling bishop is seated. It was constructed between 1985 and 1989 and is locally known by its French name, Basilique Notre-Dame de la Paix.

Former President Felix Houphouët-Boigny chose the location as part of a plan to transform his hometown of Yamoussoukro into the country’s administrative capital. Although funding for the construction came directly from the President Houphouët-Boigny’s personal funds, the cost of the basilica generated controversy as Côte d’Ivoire was going through a financial and economic crisis at the time of construction. Residents of many of the nation’s major cities were without access to running water, trash was piling up everywhere, and diseases were spreading.

The actual cost of construction is not publicly known but estimates are that it took from $400 to $600 million in US dollars to complete the edifice. The latter figure was more than double the country’s entire national debt. On September 10, 1990, Pope John Paul II traveled to Yamoussoukro, on behalf of the Catholic church, to accept the basilica as a gift. The Pope consecrated the church with the condition that a hospital be built nearby. Construction of the hospital was halted during the Ivorian Civil War and other political and military crises from 2002 to 2011, but was completed in 2014.

Lebanese architect Pierre Fakhoury, designed the basilica in the fashion of the Basilica of St. Peter in Vatican City in Italy. He made the dome slightly lower in deference to the Basilica of St. Peter but added a cross that gives it a taller overall height. The structure can accommodate 18,000, including some 7,000 seated and 11,000 standing, and the esplanade in front of the Basilica can accommodate 300,000 people.

The building was constructed from imported Italian marble, and contains twenty-four stained glass windows, including one with the likeness of President Houphouët-Boigny alongside Jesus and his Apostles. West African Iroko wood was used for the 7,000 pews. Two identical villas sit in front of the structure. One houses clergymen who operate the basilica and the other is reserved for papal visits. The basilica’s circular colonnade is made up of 272 Doric columns.

Regular services are usually only attended by a few hundred people. The only time the basilica was filled to capacity was on February 7, 1994, for President Houphouët-Boigny’s funeral. Only 17 percent of Ivorians identify as Catholic, while Islam remains the major religion of the nation.

Jeresneyka Rose woke up one day to tones of congratulatory messages from family and friends on social media. She was being cheered for striking a deal with Walmart to sell her artwork on the platform.

Worldwide, many businesses strive to have their products listed on Walmart for sale and so the buzz around the sale of her painting on Walmart was understandable.

However, the unfortunate aspect of the move was that her artwork, a digital portrait of late rapper Nipsey Hussle, was being sold on Walmart without her permission. The multibillion-dollar firm sells the artwork in its stores for $14.99.

“People were tagging me on social media to congratulate me on a collaboration that I had no idea about,” Rose told Yahoo Life. “I would have never known had it not been for social media.”

Hussle was fatally shot two years ago in a parking lot in South Los Angeles and Rose created the portrait in his memory. She published her tribute to the late rapper on her social media with an option to download. She, however, added five watermarks to prevent theft. Shockingly, Walmart allegedly removed all but one of them.

“They edited the picture and removed my signature and changed the background to yellow, but my watermark was still in the hair,” Rose told Southeast Express. “I guess they couldn’t get that off, and that’s what saved me.”

Among other things, Rose is exploring the potential of legal action to get her due, noting that this is not the first time an artist’s work has been put up for sale without his or her consent by big corporations.

She told Yahoo Life: “I’m not well-versed when it comes to things like that, but there’s so many other artists out there that this happens to and they never find out — they never get their due diligence, so I just would like to see what the process looks like. I just know right is right and wrong is wrong — and this is wrong.”

Rose, of Colorado, is the founder of Art By Rizzo. According to her, she started taking her artwork seriously after trying out some corporate jobs and noticing that she could no longer fit in. She now makes much of her money from her artwork in which she sells online or at community events in Colorado Springs, her hometown. She told The Express that she was financially hit by the pandemic and that she found Walmart making a profit off her back egregious. 

Rose said she wants to use her predicament to bring to fore how big corporations are exploiting the artwork of small businesses, especially Black-led ones, for monetary gains. 

“It’s not just the fact that it’s one corporation — this happens every day to black artists and people of color and women, and impoverished people that don’t have the resources and funds to fight for themselves,” she said. “We don’t have a standing chance. It’s bigger than me.”

“Art is all I’ve ever known” are the words of the new record holder for the world’s largest drawing by an individual. Dyymond Whipper-Young’s artwork covers 6,507 square feet, beating the previous record held by Italy’s FRA! by 400 square feet.

The Philadelphia-based artist told RNBPhilly that she was recommended by a substitute art teacher in her school for the Crayola-sponsored art project. This project was meant to hype and be a prelude to the company’s new installment titled, “Crayola IDEAworks: The Creativity Exhibition” housed at the Mandell Center at The Franklin Institute. The organizers specifically looked for a Philadelphia based artist to work with.

It took five days, a whopping 63 hours, and only one type of marker; Whipper-Young started with the black Crayola Project XL Markers and used 57 of them to create the giant-sized doodle art piece.

“I believe that creativity is in all of us and with this exhibition and the drawing, the purpose is to inspire people to find their creative pulse,” Whipper-Young said in a video sent to the press.

FRA!’s drawing was in 2020 and it covered 6,100 square feet. Whipper-Young’s work covering the floor of the Franklin Institute has now made history covering 6,507 square feet.

“Everything you see in this drawing is a reflection of what’s in Crayola IDEAworks,” Whipper-Young said in the video. “It has sea, it has land, it has space. You’ll really get to experience those things once you’re in IDEAworks.”

The immersive exhibition, which originally covers 17,000 square feet, allows visitors to do “interactive challenges that hone their skills,” Crayola IDEAworks writes on its website. “The four sections in this area, I, D, E, and A, will feature questions and puzzles that will determine creative strengths.”

Crayola collaborated with the Franklin Institute as the latter aims to “inspire and empower” everyone no matter their age to get in tune with their creativity and feed their curiosity.

On how she got the gig, Whipper-Young said it all started with a direct message from one of the organizers of the exhibition. After a conference call with the Franklin Institute and Crayola executives, the young artist got the gig. She admits she would not have otherwise tried out for such a project if she had to audition for it because she thought “it was too big” for her.

“I always told everybody that if I saw that opportunity, I would never have applied, God dropped that thing right in my lap because I would have thought it was too big.”

According to Whipper-Young, she later realized the size was not even an issue because everything worked out perfectly.

The Temple alum who is originally from Baltimore went straight to art school after elementary school. She was 11 years old at the time. She trained in fine arts in high school and studied all forms of art and now works as an art teacher and freelance artist.

The art teacher is currently working on a sculpture that will feature her famous ‘twerking sculpture’ which she made when she was in high school. She is all for making museum-worthy art but according to her, hers is a cross-section between fine art and Black culture.

Art pieces created by Kanye West when he was a high school student have been bought by entrepreneur Vinoda Basnayake, Page Six reported. Basnayake reportedly bought West’s drawings after seeing the pieces on an episode of PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow.”

“Kanye’s cousin owned the trove, which was created by Kanye during his days as a student at Polaris School [in Chicago],” Page Six quoted a source as saying. The source did not reveal how much the paintings cost but the collections originally appraised on the PBS show were valued at between 16,000 and $23,000.

The drawings, reportedly first created in 1995 when West was 17 years old, include works he did in graphite, gouache on board, and scratchboard. “By age 17, he’s already been studying at these extraordinary artistic institutions,” the Antiques Roadshow appraiser Laura Woolley said, according to Page Six.

Kanye West attended the Hyde Park Art Academy, Art Institute of Chicago, Nanjing University in China and the Polaris School for Individual Education. 

West’s wife Kim Kardashian, it will be recalled, posted on Instagram reminding her followers how good her husband was when it comes to artwork after some fans expressed doubt over the authenticity of a painting she claims was done by their seven-year-old daughter North. The post came with DNA emojis, insinuating that painting runs in the blood.

According to the Independent, the man who first brought West’s artwork to the Antiques Roadshow said he’s married to West’s first cousin, who received the artwork after West’s mother died in 2007. The portfolio is dated circa 1995, the year West turned 18, the report added.