text: Kinetic Kalabari - tribunedigital-chicagotribune
  Sokari Camp`s Avant-garde West African Sculpture
  November 20, 1988|By Michael Kilian.
  WRITING FROM WASHINGTON — Say ``African art,`` and immediately images leap to mind of colorful masks, shields, weavings and primitive figures representing all manner of ancient spirits.
  But how might a modern-day African artist conceive ``African art,``
  Titled ``Echoes of the Kalabari: Sculpture by Sokari Douglas Camp,`` it also moves and makes music. And, as the artist intended, it`s not a little humorous.
  ``In Nigeria,`` she said, ``I would not be given the opportunity to make art because objects in my part of Nigeria are religious.
  ``If I were making objects in Nigeria, I would be a priestess. I wouldn`t be talking about art. I`d be talking about curing people or talking to spirits.``
  ``I did not tell people what I did until last year,`` she said. ``It`s only last year that an important member of my family-my sister-and members of an important cult in my home town saw what I did. I never used to tell people at home that I actually made objects because an object is a very powerful thing. It would be like someone making hundreds of crucifixes. It would be a very emotional thing.
  ``It`s not something you talk about easily-I was tampering with something religious. I tried not to, but my first year in college I was doing something about water and I had odd bits of plaster and tinfoil and things spilling out of a corner of a room-a very Western sort of work-and it suddenly looked to me like a masquerade.
  ``I was terrified for about two days. I ran around saying to my tutors that I`d done something terrible-tampered with something that was spiritual. But no one really understood. I made a fuss for about two days, and then I calmed down because no one understood.``