Nonfiction. In this pioneering work Olu Oguibe charts the life and career of Uzo Egonu, from his origins in Africa to his expatiation in Britain. Egonu, a remarkable, compassionate and very private artist, has been described as "perhaps Africa's greatest modern painter," one whose work challenges the impoverished Western myth of the naive African artist. The complexity of Egonu's work is firmly located within the tradition of modernism. What we see is a judicious synthesis of visual languages developed from his critical encounter with Western art and an informed awareness of his African heritage; a synthesis which reaches beyond mere formalist concerns to involve both the experience of his life in the West and the painful turmoils of his country of origin, post-colonial Nigeria. This monograph is a timely intervention in the prevailing debates on the role, position and aesthetic concerns of the African artist in the contemporary world, and offers a unique contribution to the scarce literature on artists of African, Asian or Latin American origin living in the West.

Over a seven-year period between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s, Olu Oguibe wrote some of the most powerful and apocalyptic poetry ever to come out of Africa. In that period he published three slim volumes of poems that established his reputation as perhaps the finest poet of his generation: "A Song from Exile, A Gathering Fear," and the long love poem, "Songs for Catalina." Then, he quit writing poetry, almost as abruptly as he began, and declared his work done.

Revised and edited by the poet himself, this collection brings together those three volumes as well as other poems, some of them more recent and published here for the first time. Most of the previously published poems are preserved in their original form.

These poems echo the urgency and restlessness of the times in which they were written and capture the burden of hope and despair which postcolonial societies must bear.

Olu Oguibe is a renowned scholar and artist as well as an award-winning poet. His books include "The Culture Game, God's Transistor Radio, A Song from Exile," and "A Gathering Fear." A peripatetic traveler who has lived and worked in several countries across Africa, Europe and America, Oguibe is a senior fellow of the Smithsonian Institution and recipient of the State of Connecticut Governor's award for excellence and lifetime achievement in the arts. He currently lives as a recluse in an early 19th century home in the old mill town of Rockville, Connecticut.

In the celebrated, controversial essays gathered here, Oguibe exposes the disparities of the reception and treatment afforded Western and non-Western artists; the obstacles that these contradictions create for non-Western and minority artists, and the nature and peculiar concerns of contemporary non-Western art as it deals with the ramifications and residues of the colonial encounter as well as its own historical and cultural past. Oguibe's uncompromising and unapologetic criticism provides a uniquely globale vision of contemporary art and culture.