Nyancho NwaNri

Uyai confronts the prevailing standards of beauty imposed on the bodies of African women as a result of colonisation and the adaptation of Eurocentric ideals. It reconsiders the idea of beauty, sensuality and their social implications from an African cultural standpoint.

For decades, beauty standards have been defined from a fixed perspective; one that lauded lighter skin tones, leaner, more slender figures, straight hair and chiseled facial features while condemning full bodies, kinky hair, melanated skin, broad noses and thick lips. Such impositions caused the eroding of our indigenous ideals of beauty, womanhood, and our relationship with self, body, skin and identity as black and melanated women.

This video piece however, approaches the subject of beauty through the lens of indigenous Nigerian cultures, incorporating performative visuals drawn from the rituals of the Mbopo tradition of Ibibio people of Southern Nigeria, with the sounds of Ikorodo; a genre of traditional Igbo music from Nsukka, Southeastern Nigeria, historically performed to honour the Ikorodo maiden spirit know to be the daughter of Ani; the earth goddess, mother of all creatures, symbol of womanhood and femininity and the most powerful and revered deity among the Igbo.

Mbopo is the Ibibio word for what is commonly known as the “fattening room” practice where young girls are taken into seclusion for a specified amount of time. Surrounded by and attended to by older women from the village alone, in this period, the girls are fed regularly to enable them gain weight as a fuller figure was considered more desirable, better able to handle childbirth. They were are also adorned and pampered daily with beauty treatments using natural ingredients like oils, natural chalk amongst other substances.

Although crafting and beautifying the body is the most known aspect of the “Fattening room” practice, one major component is the training and admonishment given to the girls while in seclusion. They are taught about sensuality, proper moral conduct, given further knowledge of their culture and counselled by the older women of the society; a practice that embodies beauty not just as an outward projection but as a way-of-being radiating from within.

Uyai therefore seeks to empower African women (and women from all over the world) to reclaim ownership of their image, create a renewed healthy relationship with their bodies and embody their true beauty regardless of looks.