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The meaning of art continues in retrospect and so fully yields up in subsequent meditation. But that is secondary to falling in love with something about its essence. It would seem that knowing certain components of its association provides a proportionate scope; but I suppose that it must first communicate to one in a decisive manner before criticism can be undertaken. That is what forms the prospect of a reading community. Or the interpretive community, as it is so propounded. But what happens in the case of artistic objects? Must one be so versatile (initiated that is) to see and feel the humanist intimations?

Before me sit three artistic objects: a seashell, a mask, and a calabash. I am pondering the magnitude of their congenial relevance to an entire race; and the panoply of some universal obduracy. Whether taken separately or [all]together, there is a whole lot of work to be done about social memory, indulgence, and identification – having all too emphasised identity so that it has almost lost its momentum and footing within the same advocacy. But that will be a discussion for another consultation. In any case, here is a consequence – or let us say repercussion – of self-imposed amnesia towards our origin and evolution.

Largely significant is the giant display of two large animals compressed in a forwards and backwards view. This is sculpted on a self-communicating cross-cultural symbol itself: the mask. Mask, masque, and masquerade are three significant words signalling the valuation of socio-cultural worldviews in dramatic interplays inextricable from them. In Africa, there are copious mask narratives for scholastic indulgences, with representations for our harmonious differences. And because the art speaks for itself, we keep coming to this long-standing existential condition: the world is partly underdeveloped by supremacist impulses. Whether into colonies or any other layer of dismissive irregularities, the division persists. And the world has not fully been able to reconcile intent with interest, if you deepen the factors.

There is something awfully miserable about power. It stems from the continued impetus to demonstrate an escape from presumable threats. It runs on an atomic energy only accentuated by knowledge. When one group decides to embark on the conquest of another, it is grounded in the knowledge of the other’s incorrigible loose ends. The conquistador is no less threatened, that is; therefore, they resort to taking the destructive initiative. History and politics have undergirded this view for centuries. And such like gives room for all too explicit cases of colonisation. Now, because our world is wheeled by controversy, there is nothing incontrovertible about our perceptions. That is, the position could have shifted; all we have, therefore, is a relative disposition. However, I am inspired by the allegory and the fable about the human condition.

In Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the protagonist Santiago eventually catches Manolin, and he is immersed in a soliloquy on brotherhood. That scene features a meditation on power, competition, and privilege. He ponders how the fish, his brother, is able to hold on for so long, enduring the agony of the harpoon while resisting the overwhelming tenacity of his captor. Santiago discovers that the only advantage he has over Manolin is his weapon: without that implement, the encounter was meant to be a show of resistance. Spirits refusing to succumb to the fatalist incident of predestination. In the end, Santiago catches Manolin and ends up struggling with other predators until something pathetic happens. Jean-Paul Sartre writes: “If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.” Man’s conquest of animals, and nature is the paradox of a broken, defeated spirit.

What is it about our ecological co-existence that refuses the hybridisation of hierarchical energies? Today, assaults have been visited on our primordial green, pursuant to the dream of urbanisation and industrialisation. The pollution of air, water, and earth has left us with unbearable repercussions. Life is intractably depleting in a hard and fast sequence; and while certain institutions promise to hold it together, the conditions themselves are too porous to niche the possibilities in human potential at all. Under the present atmosphere, man teeters between exploitation and devastation, with the hazard continuing in elusive proximity to his own numerous crises. The full glare of existentialism today would be civilisation at a pathetic glance. And that is the credo of the modernised world: to exterminate the green and all primordial bodies at the expense of life! Senseless wars over the years have wrecked the universe beyond repair, and man is a victim of his own creative and imaginative power.

The two hemispheres of the calabash, being lid and receptacle, come across as a metaphorical harmony. The human condition fritters under the existing rancour of power tussles – and we return to that state of inexorable separation. The mutual interdependence is lost on the saboteurs. Today, the economic tribulations faced in Africa have their clone in Europe’s economic architecture. We are so halved that it is impossible to assume a laissez-faire posture towards the damnation of each other any more than the progress of one means capital resources for the other in some way. It is time we questioned the origin and inspiration of power play and politics. This mutual interdependence is also connoted by the emblem of the sea standing on the left side. It goes without saying that the exploration of worlds other than our own in which case we realise that self-importance is relative has been possible with the sea route. But Gulliver’s account in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels suffices for the précis and acumen of the reference on the ground. It explores the truth about relative supremacy. This cult of meaning substantiates the moral compass and sacred principles of organised primitivism.

If one would take the initiative to study civilisation beyond the immediate here and now, one would understand the hubris of progression. That colossal fit of hegemonic consciousness that has ravaged ecological co-existence carries terrible significance. The matter is at once historical and political. Interestingly, both history and politics are phenomena of power. They are interwoven in such a way that history embodies politics, while politics tends to reengineer the germ of history. A fine example is the White South African domination of their Black brothers, whereas history traces the Black as original settlers and the Whites as intruders. Again, this is what history books say. And trees? They are our older friends.

Finally, to situate the claim in a contemporary context, many wear several masks to adapt to the demands of survival. Since every living organism wants to survive, the mask represents shifting values in an environment plagued by the spirit of impudence. While all these may find appropriation, the mien of the face spells the mood of the sculptor: agony. The distorted faces of contorted modernity. While we keep offering our views on a better condition, it is well justified that man is a predator to the bodies that make his stint on earth habitable.

Kehinde Folorunsho

Kehinde Folorunsho is a literary critic and a scholar of literature. His interest in literature spans poetry, visual arts and translation studies. He made it to the shortlist of the Atẹlẹwọ Prize for his Yoruba translation of Chimamanda's Ngozi Adichie's "We Should All Be Feminists"; shortlisted for the Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize, 2025. As a book reviewer, he has been published in local newspapers. He is the recipient of the 2025 Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize for Book Review.