'The road to Mbari' : Jacob Lawrence and the influence of the 'international' on a local modernism.

The trans-Atlantic relationship between newly independent states in Africa and African American cultural leaders (especially those associated with the American Society of African Culture) crystallized around the 1961–62 Festival of Negro Art and Culture in Africa and America, in Lagos. This was a not unproblematic moment that brought together Nigerian culture struggling to emerge from its colonial framing and an African American community struggling with their position in regard to newly independent African states. The shadows of American Cold War promotion of freedom over equality loomed across the event. The success of Jacob Lawrence’s exhibitions and his subsequent return to Nigeria provides perhaps the most vital and visible legacy of this period. His work Street to Mbari stands as a major achievement in its own right but also in relation to an emergent modernism in Nigeria. That modernism was itself the product of a diverse history that took differing routes. Lawrence’s work, and his awareness of the agency in his subjects, gave confidence a nd impetus to a modernism that was already inherent in Nigeria.