Meet NAC Finalist Taiye Idahor!
Taiye Idahor is one of the 4 women shortlisted as finalists for this year’s National Arts Competition. She graduated from YabaTech class 2007. I spoke with her today while she worked patiently and methodically on her sculpture.
She’s utilized a variety of different materials in the past, but at the moment and for the purpose of this competition her chosen medium is paper. “What type of paper?” I asked…
Generally Taiye is using newspapers as is customary for paper mache sculptures, however she views her paper application as something slightly different using herself long strips of newspapers (with a water/glue mixture) in various ways to build height, texture and dimension to her sculpture. She prefers to use The Punch nearer the base of her sculpture –it’s not as soft or malleable as The Guardian, but ideal for the frame, The Guardian she reserves for the outer layers.
To date Taiye also prefers to leave her paper sculptures unpainted, she finds them more interesting that way. In this case I feel it’s especially fitting considering this year’s theme “Documenting Changes In Our Nation”.
In Taiye’s words: “I have chosen to approach the topic from the perspective of the source of these changes not the events or the change itself but where it starts and ends, and the responsibility it falls on to document them. The responsibility of documenting changes doesn’t lie only with the press or the photographers or artists, it lies mostly with the people…Something as simple as a family portrait can give so much information about that particular time in history, fashion, architecture, and interior design are all interwoven inside one image. Documenting changes in our nation is every Nigerian’s responsibility.” Taiye intends to communicate this “With a paper sculpture of …several hands all interwoven and rising from the ground but gradually giving way for each other at the top.”
One of Taiye’s amazing sculptures resides at the AAF HQ; it is almost frighteningly human in its form and “body language”. I am personally very eager to see the end result of her current project. You will have to come to the Grand Finale Exhibition to get a glimpse at the finished product!
lagos and found 