Authors Stanley J. Onyemechalu and J. Kelchi Ugwuanyi examine the meaning of these objects within the Igbo knowledge system and how these meanings were lost or transformed during their collection in colonial era through to their present state at the MAA.
Their paper also highlights the concepts of imprisonment and exile, evident in how these objects were collected and kept for over 100 years.
It attributes the loss of context and meaning of the Ọfϙ and Ikenga at the MAA to ‘Kolo-collecting’, an irrational desire to collect the other, which characterised the extractive-capitalist anthropology of the African colonial era, and ‘nkali’ – to be greater than another – which illustrates the power dynamics that disempowered, exiled, and imprisoned these objects of sovereignty and authority.
The paper took up the issues within Western museums’ curatorial approaches to colonial collections and offered useful ways for their participation in the ongoing conversations on restitution and decolonisation.
