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The Way of the Calabash 4: Kumadze and the Interior Cosmos of Becoming

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  "This journey we have embarked upon", I ventured to ask my guide as we walked on, ''what are its stages, its progressions? What will its conclusion be like?"  She looked at me in response but did not reply. Her eyes, both still and mobile with a cosmos of possibilities, seemed to be both within me, looking into me, as well as looking at me from across the space between us. Something within me throbbed in reaction, a vibration in rhythm with my speech, as if activated by my questions. An image appeared in my mind's eye, a muscular figure moving through a space palpitating with symbols,  shapes ablaze within an expanse suffused by the blue of ocean depths. I felt cocooned by the gentle pulse of blue, a creature in primeval waters beginning its long journey from a single celled organism  to the complex of nerves and brain that is the human being- a miniscule identity throbbing with a sense of infinite possibility, potential nevertheless beyond the ...
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From the Chi Calabash to Shevirat ha-Kelim, a Vision of Creative Tension: Between Chiagoziem Orji and Vincent van Gogh: The Way of the Calabash 3

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  We kept walking until we came to a valley, rich in beautiful flowers interspersed with glorious trees, but curiously, some of the trees were unbeautifully distorted, almost frightening in their forms, while some of the flowers gave off malodorous odors, as they seemed eaten by insects. What could be this place, both marvelous and distorted, I wondered. It looked like an incompletely assembled jigsaw puzzle, like bright fragments mixed with rough casings through which the inward brilliance flamed, brighter in some cases, dimmer in others. As we moved through this place resembling the outcome of a cataclysmic explosion, scattering pieces that resolved themselves into sparks brightnesses encased in coarse forms, the entire configuration forming an inconclusive kind of order, I was fascinated and restless all at once, waiting to explore this place both glorious and forbidding. At the same time, I felt a strong pull towards...
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The Way of the Calabash: Part 2: Chiagoziem Nneamaka Orji, Victor Ekpuk and Bruce Onobrakpeya

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Abstract This piece of speculative fiction and art criticism navigates the liminal space between Nigerian visual art and metaphysical journeying. The narrative develops The Way of the Calabash as a mythic-philosophical journey into self-realization, drawing on a visual constellation of contemporary Nigerian art, guided by symbolic figures of Wisdom and Mediation. Through verbal maps of crimson spirals and radiant squares, the narrative weaves Nsibidi and Uli symbols into a journey of self-discovery, echoing the philosophy of Natural Synthesis actualized as the fusion of African cosmology, art, and philosophy across generations. The images—featuring Chiagoziem Nneamaka Orji's calabash-bearing woman, a self-portrait, titled "Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe", ''My God Affirms When I Agree'', an image configured by Nsibidi motifs, Victor Ekpuk's Nsibidi inspired abstractions, and Bruce Onobrakpeya's art and ancestral presence—serves as visual anchor, pulsing wit...
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