Otu Iche · The Stone-Thrower

Otu Iche is a fierce and youthful masquerade, energetic and troublesome in the manner of Agaba. It belongs to the world of Onitsha's young men and carries the charge of their initiation.

It appears at Iwaji, the new-yam festival, and at the burials of male youths who have been initiated into the masquerade cult. Historically, it engaged in inter-village contests, floggings and mock battles in the manner of Ulaga. This is not spectacle for its own sake. It is a rite of passage: a proving ground on which courage, discipline and belonging are demonstrated and earned. The epithet “the Stone-Thrower” carries the memory of those charged encounters between neighbouring quarters.

For all its ferocity, Otu Iche is bound by rules and meaning. It marks a threshold in a young man's life, the moment he assumes responsibilities to the masquerade institution and the community, and it does so publicly, in colour and motion, so that the whole town witnesses the passage.

In the work

REWA paints Otu Iche as a pair of figures charged with movement, the cloth and energy of the arena caught at the edge of a battle.

Detail

Closer

10 detail photographs of Otu Iche. Click any image to open it full screen, then swipe or use the arrows.

Otu Iche, detail 1 — REWA — Wool, ribbon and cloth, made to be flung about the arena

Otu Iche, detail 2 — REWA — The arm raised, mid-dance

Otu Iche, detail 3 — REWA — Wool, bead and glove: the ferocity lies as much in the making as in the dance

Otu Iche, detail 4 — REWA — The collar, beaded at the throat

Otu Iche, detail 5 — REWA — Ribbon and cloth in motion

Otu Iche, detail 6 — REWA — The hems, and the bells at the ankle

Otu Iche, detail 7 — REWA — Where cloth meets the ground: the part of the masquerade seen most closely, and remembered, by the crowd

Otu Iche, detail 8 — REWA — The headdress, knitted and dyed

Otu Iche, detail 9 — REWA — Wool worked into flame. Each mass is knitted, dyed and stitched by hand before it ever moves

Otu Iche, detail 10 — REWA — Layer upon layer of knitted wool and cloth

From the field

In Motion

The masquerade as it appears in life, filmed at an outing in Onitsha. This is the source material the painting is drawn from.

Otu Iche

A dense mass of raffia and fur, mid-dance