The King’s Horseman: Portraits of Authority in Southwestern Nigeria

This paper documents the visual culture of Nigeria at the beginning of the twentieth century. It offers a discussion of a single piece of woodcarving and places this in relation to workshop carvings in the Yoruba town of Abeokuta. More precisely, it places that work into the context of a colonial history, suggesting the carving is a portrait and record of a particular event. The paper looks to other examples of Yoruba woodcarving, placing them into relationship with historical events before moving to a wider consideration of Yoruba visual culture and its representations of Yoruba cultural agency in relation to the British colonial regime.