In the late 1980s, amid mounting political conflict in Nigeria, five graduates of the University of Ife (from 1987 forward, Obafemi Awolowo University) formed an art collective named the Ona Group. Since that time, these artists--namely Moyo Okediji, Kunle Filani, Tola Wewe, Bolaji Campbell, and Tunde Nasiru--have continually intervened in the political landscape and used the generative power that exists in the world (ase) to construct new realities. Their art must therefore be uniquely understood as a mode of what Yoruba linguist Olabiyi Babalola Yai terms "constant departure." In this dissertation, I situate the Ona Group within modern Nigerian art discourse and follow the spread of Onaism in the 1990s, when the group dispersed, and some established themselves in Nigeria under Sani Abacha's corrupt military regime and others relocated to the United States to pursue graduate study.
