MAIDJAD Volume 11

Foreword

MAIDJAD Volume XI brings together two scholarly contributions that reaffirm the journal’s commitment to rigorous inquiry in African art and visual culture, while foregrounding the continued relevance of theory, history, and close visual reading in contemporary art scholarship. 

The first article, “A Comparative Formal and Contextual Analysis of Obiora Udechukwu and Ada Udechukwu’s Selected Drawings,” offers a structured examination of drawing as both aesthetic form and socio-cultural narration. The study positions line as more than a compositional device, arguing for its function as a vehicle of meaning-making across political history, cultural memory, gendered experience, and diasporic identity. By placing Obiora and Ada Udechukwu side by side, the paper advances an important comparative lens that highlights both convergence and distinction within their visual languages, while also extending current scholarship on the Nsukka School and indigenous sign systems. 

The second article, “Rethinking Linearity of Forms and Nigerian Perspective: A Discourse on Theories and Concepts of Modernism in Painting,” takes up a broader theoretical engagement with modernism, debating trajectories and resonances within African and Nigerian art discourse. Anchored in questions of influence, visual language, and the conceptual role of line, the paper invites readers to consider how modernist ideas are interpreted, contested, and re-situated through African artistic practice and art education, particularly through discussion of selected Nigerian artists and institutional histories.
Together, the articles in this volume offer readers both depth and range: from focused comparative analysis grounded in artworks and context, to wider theoretical reflection on modernism and its claims within African art history. MAIDJAD remains grateful to the authors for their contributions, and to the reviewers and editorial team whose careful labour sustains the journal’s scholarly standards. 

We invite continued submissions that advance critical debates, introduce fresh evidence, and expand interpretive frameworks for African art and design across historical and contemporary contexts.

Adiwu Talatu Onkala PhD
Editor
Maiduguri Journal of Arts and Design (MAIDJAD)
March/April 2026