Abstract
In this paper, I describe my artistic project, Igùn—a StyleGAN series trained to animate the research question: what bronze objects could have been produced should the 1897 British invasion not have occurred in the Benin Kingdom? In addition to looting over 3000 palace-commissioned artworks, I surmise that the invasion resulted in a 17-year (1897–1914) artistic decline. Although post-invasion colonial reports referred to a thriving art scene and increased colonial art patronage, there is a dearth of visual documentation to identify objects created during this period. Considering this absence, I propose Igùn, a series of StyleGAN models trained on a dataset of looted Benin Bronzes. This project is informed by the Igún Eronmwon’s (the royal guild of bronze casters) artistic protocols. Finally, I present three prototypes based on emergent themes—infancy and facial expressions, which were underexplored in Benin’s classical bronze casting tradition.
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Notes
The old Kingdom of Benin extended over a region that in its heyday covered a large part of southern Nigeria. Currently, it is identified as Edo state, one of the thirty-six states in Nigeria.
Number of bronzes indicated in a speech by the Omo n'Oba n'Edo, Uku Akpolokpolo, Erediauwa, Oba of Benin in 1997.
In response to repatriation requests, some institutions returned Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. They include: the University of Aberdeen, Jesus College in Cambridge University and Metropolitan Museum of Art repatriated a few bronzes.
4This included the sphere of influence delineated at the Berlin Conference of 1885.
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Atairu, M. Reimagining Benin Bronzes using generative adversarial networks. AI & Soc 39, 91–102 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01761-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01761-7