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Statues Also Breathe – an Artistic Representation of the Chibok Girls – is a Reminder of the Importance of Humanising Our Stories
…we can make the missing and the dead breathe again.
In April 2014, 276 teenage female students were kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State. 8 years later, many of them have not been rescued, but their parents are still hopeful.
In September 2022, Prune Nourry, a multi-disciplinary New York-based artist who draws her inspiration from the issues of human selection, collaborated with the families of the Chibok girls, and the Department of Fine and Applied Arts of the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile- Ife, to unveil Sculptures Also Breathe – 108 portraits of the Chibok girls inspired by the ancient Ife terracotta heads.
Statues Also Breathe “aims to raise awareness about the plight of the Chibok girls who are still missing while highlighting the global struggle for girls’ education.”
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To conceive the project, Prune Nourry met with the families of the Chibok girls and was entrusted with portraits of their missing daughters, which she then used as inspiration for eight heads sculpted in clay.
From these eight original sculptures, 108 heads were cast in clay sourced from Ile-Ife by potters from a female potter’s community in the Yoruba town of Ilorin and students of Obafemi Awolowo University.
On September 30, 2022, a one-day workshop was held at the university where 108 students sculpted and transformed each head into unique sculptures, using portraits of the missing girls.
On the 23rd of December, I visited Art Twenty-One where the sculptures were unveiled. It was a somber moment for me and a reminder of why it is super important to humanise our stories.
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In this part of the world, it is common to hear that 100 people were killed in a bomb blast, xxx students were kidnapped, or that a trigger-happy policeman shot a pregnant woman on Christmas Day. But beyond these numbers and empty statistics, we must continuously remember that people who have lost their lives through insurgency and insecurity in Nigeria were humans like you and me who had dreams and hope and wanted to make the world better the little way they could. They had a family; people who loved them greatly. We must always humanise them: put a face to the victims and tell their stories.
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At Art Twenty-one, there is a screen showing the stories of the Chibok girls, the process of making their sculptures, and the idea behind the project.
The Story
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The Making
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The idea behind it
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Some of the Chibok girls
Remember them.
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Perhaps the most touching of all, for me, was seeing a delegation of mothers of the Chibok girls and some of the girls who escaped Boko Haram’s captivity in attendance. They had come to see their friends and loved ones depicted in the sculptures. There were tears and sadness for the calamity that befell their community and families, joy and laughter that the yet-to-be-found girls are not forgotten and people are out there humanising them, and hope and faith that one day, they will be rescued.
Statutes Also Breathe is a powerful project, one that has made me take many pauses to think as I go through my day. I am reminded, yet again, of why I must never get desensitised to news of insurgency and terrorism in the country. Every one of us walking on the road, buying groceries, pushing trucks, selling tomatoes, or whatever activity we may in be engaged in has our story. And so it is for the kidnapped and the dead. It is thus important for us to humanise the dead in every way we can and tell these stories that truly matter – of people, of places, of things.
As we celebrate this season and look forward to the new year, I urge every one of us to take a moment to think about the yet-to-be-rescued Chibok girls. We must never stop asking (and praying, if you are religious) for their release.
Like Prune Nourry, we can make the missing and the dead breathe again.
