SWD 15

Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian environmental defender

“We either win this war to save our land, or we will be exterminated, because we have nowhere to run to.” - Nigerian author & environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed by the Nigerian military government, 1995. Born 1941, executed 1995.

Art: 2011
Media: Ink; colored pencil; plastic tarp w/ metal grommets; stitched thread, twine and string; fragments of toy American flags; 4 pieces of old leather book cover; part of a Seattle newspaper car ad; plastic piece of a Kroger's supermarket frozen fish package; piece of a plastic food package printed w/ USDA Organic; cast iron fixture from Seattle's Music Hall Theatre (1929-92); metal clasp from the drawer of an old wood cabinet, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Framed size, 30 inches H x 22 W [cm: 76.2 H x 55.8 W]

Saro-Wiwa was an internationally recognized environmental defender, having won the prestigious Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Environmental Prize. He was a television producer; a writer, of prose,  plays and novels, including Sozaboy, published 1985. Sozaboy addresses the genocide in Biafra, which I recall reading of and hearing news of, in 1969, when I was 19. Saro-Wiwa was active with, and eventually a president of [the] Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (acronym: MOSOP).
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Saro-Wiwa’s environmental defense work was on behalf of the Ogoni peoples, whose lands have been devastated by Royal Dutch Shell in the production of oil for sale to western countries. In November 1995 he and eight other activists of the Ogoni people, known as the Ogoni 9, were hung by the military.
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He was survived by his wife and five children.

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The source photo I used for my portrait is seen on the cover of the book A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary by Ken Saro-Wiwa. It was published posthumously. I’m hoping to find attribution for the photo, in which Saro-Wiwa is smoking a pipe.

UK publisher: Penguin, 256 pp, £6.99, December 1995, ISBN 0 14 025868 X
US publisher: New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1995, ISBN 978-0-14-025914-8.

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A posthumously published book of writings by Saro-Wiwa, titled Silence Would Be Treason – The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa, was published in 2017 by Daraja Press [visit darajapress.com for info].

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Another book I saw online, which might be of interest to viewers of this site, (see photo of the book cover):  A Month and A Day – Letters by Ken Saro-Wiwa.

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In my drawing I included a depiction, drawn on-site of a Shell gas station, seen from the outdoor deck of the building in Seattle where I live.

Exhibits

(2016) The drawing was exhibited in a group show of art and photography, For the Love of Our Earth, held  at the Mt Baker Neighborhood Center for the Arts, Seattle.

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A 4 min., 13 sec. video of the drawing.

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A 4 min., 47 sec video of the drawing.