Le Mbari Club, un espace de création transnationale au Nigeria

By gathering artworks, archives, books, and journals, this Box of Graphic Arts highlights the richness of intellectual and artistic exchanges that traverse the African continent and extend far beyond, making Mbari an emblematic site of Nigerian and Pan-African cultural modernity.

On the eve of Nigeria’s independence in 1960, creation was a political and transnational instrument for writers and artists. Founded in 1957 by the German-born linguist Ulli Beier, the Black Orpheus journal quickly established itself as a medium of diffusion and recognition for a new generation of Anglophone African writers, among whom Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka.

Ulli Beier and his wife Susanne Wenger nurtured, with writers Ezekiel (Es’kia) Mphahlele and Chinua Achebe, the idea of a place in Nigeria devoted to creation and cultural debates. In 1961, they established in Ibadan a club for writers and artists named Mbari. In Igbo, “Mbari” refers to the notion of creation. With an open courtyard, a bar, and a restaurant, the Mbari is a multidisciplinary space where concerts, dances, debates, exhibitions, and theatrical performances take place.

The Mbari Club is distinguished by its international openness: it invites artists from Nigeria, but also from other African countries, Europe, and the United States. In 1962, the Nigerian playwright Duro Ladipo founded with Ulli Beier the Mbari Mbayo Club in the town of Osogbo, contributing to the emergence of a particularly dynamic local arts scene. This effervescence was encouraged by Ulli Beier. His successive wives, Susanne Wenger and Georgina Beier, also play an essential role in the training and recognition of Osogbo’s artists.