My Ken Saro-Wiwa Painting

kensawaro
  • My Ken Saro-Wiwa Painting
  • 48” x 42”, acrylic on stretched canvas, 1995

 

 

This painting is my response to the execution of nine Nigerians in November 1995. Their deaths were “authorized” by the Nigerian dictator, President Sani Abacha, who has since died in September 1998.

 

The painting didn’t start out being about this subject at all. It came about when a New Zealand painter, Mary Archibald suggested I begin a painting with my name in the middle and go from there. For me crossing out my name reminds me of the sort of graffiti teenagers used to write in bus shelters. They’d cross out someone’s name and add someone else’s – usually to wind them up! The words “since using your shampoo my hair has come alive – Medusa” I borrowed from a Collins desk diary daily quote.

 

I’m giving the fingers to Sani Abacha and Shell for their parts in those executions.

“Go Ogoni go” refers to the tribe to which Ken Saro-Wiwa belonged.

 

I imagine the tall figure in the bottom right as a contemporary Medusa having a shower, holding out a shampoo bottle washing her hair and snakes coming out all over the place… the snakes represent the US $5 billion that Sani Abacha stole from the Nigerian people, in cahoots with shell.

 

For me this painting asks a number of questions, two of which are: how would you like to be executed for your beliefs? And what if the earth is loaned to us in trust by our children? I also agree with the British poet Roger McGough’s observation that the way we mis-treat the earth anyone would think we owned it!