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Bruce Onobrakpeya

Jesus is condemned to death [1]
Jesus takes his cross [2]
Jesus falls the first time [3]
Jesus meets his mother [4]
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus [5]
Veronica wipes Jesus' face [6]
Jesus falls the second time [7]
Jesus and the women of Jerusalem [8]
Jesus falls the third time [9]
Jesus' clothes are torn off [10]
Jesus is nailed to the cross [11]
Jesus dies on the cross [12]
Jesus is taken from the cross [13]
Jesus is laid in the tomb [14]

The Defeat of Humanity

Jesus was a good man. In Bruce Onobrakpeya’s The Fourteen Stations of The Cross, the goodness of Jesus is qualified through the symbols of an era. The title refers to the traditional Catholic devotion commemorating the Passion of Christ, from his condemnation to his crucifixion and burial. I saw the prints as part of an exhibit called The Mask and The Cross at the National Museum of African Art in D.C. For many months before I strolled in one Saturday morning, I had been thinking about Jesus. Why did he die? What did he feel as he was crucified? What did he stand for? I was thinking about Jesus like I thought about Prophet Muhammed (SAW) as a child. This is to say I have been thinking a lot about God, thinking a lot about the Self, and feeling very small. 

Onobrakpeya’s prints are small for the message they carry. I see great attention to detail in their approximately 240 by 600 mm dimensions. The tones and patterns are as familiar as the batik prints we wear at home. Onobrakpeya knows his people. What draws their eye. What they mean when they say, “That’s beautiful.” Yet his actual mastery is in how he represents the death of a foremost figure from our collective imaginary. These images, long circulated around places of worship, are redrawn with the knowledge of colonial brutality.

Pontius Pilate, who condemns Jesus to death, is wearing a cap that only a Nigerian chief could wear, with a stem that proudly dangles [1]. He washes his hand as if preparing for a meal of pounded yam. The soldiers are in a garb that screams Queen’s regiment [1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11]. It is your own people, after all. In each of his falls, Jesus is elongated [3, 7, 9]. The cross is stretched and patterned with motifs that those who carve on rocks know. Interlocking squares, concentric circles, kissing triangles, so many diamonds. The women of Jerusalem who fall at Jesus’ feet look familiar, kneeling in a wrapper is one of the first things you learn to do as a girl [8]. When Jesus is taken off the cross, lifeless, a woman I assume to be Mary has hands over her head in that gesture that is mo gbe! As I live and breathe! [13] The guttural cry of the Mother who sees the end of her child. When his body is laid down in a tomb, a woman in a hijab looks over it [14]. 

How do we know Jesus was a good man? Perhaps belief is enough to carry us through. For me, I linger on purpose. What is the purpose of believing that Jesus was a good man? In Onobrakpeya’s prints, the purpose of belief is understanding, perhaps wisdom. Jesus was a good man because he represented something beyond himself, a certain way of living that only his death could show. The kind of living that resists the defeat of humanity. That says no to business as usual, to routines. Routines that aggregate and make civilizational projects. Projects imbibed with violence, casual, grinding violence. 

I will keep thinking about Jesus because I still feel very small. My routine is as far as I can see. In his death is a commitment to life in a way I cannot yet imagine, much less make reality. He died because, to him, there must have been an essential goodness in being human. Oppressors came and went, humankind was sentenced and brutalized, things fell apart, the center could not hold, and yet, it was not just okay to be alive. It was necessary to love while being alive. He knew, really knew to the last nail, the impossible conditions of living, the corrosiveness of business as usual, and he said yes, a relational yes. Can you believe it? 

All images excerpted from here.