In this early illustration, Onobrakpeya reimagines Christ’s entry into Jerusalem through an African visual idiom, where procession and community take center stage. The stylised figures and symbolic palms evoke both movement and reverence, transforming a biblical moment into a timeless reflection on humility, sacrifice, and renewal. Happy Palm Sunday. – Dr. Mudiare Onobrakpeya
This Palm Sunday edition of Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! arrives as a quiet offering of memory, faith, and legacy. Dr. Mudiare Onobrakpeya shares one of his father’s works, a spiritual tribute that continues to resonate across time.
Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger!| Artwork credit Prof. Bruce Onobrakpeya Palm Sunday Lino Engraving 1968. Special thanks Dr. Mudiare Onobrakpeya
The scene is stripped to essentials in line, form, and movement, yet it speaks profoundly. Here, the biblical moment is not distant from us, it is brought home, grounded in familiar gestures and communal presence. It becomes a reflection on humility, sacrifice, and renewal values that remain timeless.
Professor Bruce Onobrakpeya stands as one of the foundational pillars of contemporary Nigerian art. A master printmaker and painter, his practice has consistently bridged tradition and modernity, drawing deeply from Urhobo cosmology, folklore, and spirituality.
A member of the Zaria Art Society, he was part of the generation that reshaped Nigerian art into a confident, independent voice. His innovations in printmaking, particularly his experimental techniques have influenced generations of artists across Africa and beyond.
Beyond his own works, his legacy lives through the Harmattan Workshop, a space of learning, exchange, and artistic growth that continues to nurture emerging talents.
In every line and procession within Palm Sunday, Bruce Onobrakpeya reminds us that entry is not about grandeur, but about humility. And not about spectacle, but about purpose. Much like the quiet journey into Jerusalem, this work calls us to reflect, to renew, and to walk gently with meaning.
And so, as the palms are lifted and the path is made, we are reminded that art, like faith, must move among the people, carried in community, alive in spirit, and never kept in the finger.
iBAND Magazine, Celebrating Visual Arts from the Original.
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iBAND Magazine 
Dear iBAND Editor,
I read your work all the time very early in the morning before leaving for work and indeed, you make art work writing sublime and the language elevates the artists, arts and culture. Your work is so culturally engaging and very rare style of documenting in extraordinary ways that will make Nietzsche envious and Longinus speechless on the elevated language and noble or grandeur of ideas.
That said, the road to liking your piece everyday is cumbersome and now just realised I could leave a message here. Thank you for what you do. I would also want to suggest you try FordFoundation for support on what you do. They are keen in cultural writing with what you have, you are a winner. They may even use you to project some of their ideas,
Best wishes Aito
Ofure O. M. Aito, PhD. Professor. Postcolonial Literature, Fulbright Scholar, Fellow. Leslie Center for Humanities (Dartmouth), CADFP Fellow, CRD Fellow, Deputy Provost,: Postgraduate School, Director, Institute of Gender Studies, Federal University Lokoja.
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Thank you so much for kind words Prof!
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I just read the Nigerian road to modernization and the cultural exhibition in London and it reminds me of the challenging struggle to hold on to selfhood in home lost or host home. This is impact of postmodernism and the notion of multiple identities in a cultural landscape.
I think it is time you did an interview of Prof. Toyin Falola and his conversations on transcultural identities…. Home away in home I call it.
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Thank you so much. We are on it
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