Jelili Atiku’s Dance of Justice and Sacrifice

The image that often strikes one upon seeing any of Jelili Atiku’s many performances is that of an Egúngún masquerade strutting his stuff in a public square—and here, it is the maverick, spiritual effect of a figure confident in the riot of colours he displays in his garments, his body markings, and his other accoutrements that magnets the spectator; a figure that calls attention to itself with its choreographed or arbitrary movements. He appears to us like an otherworldly figure, a performer who seems to straddle a line between the activism of urgent contemporary concerns and an acrostic possession of the influences of Yoruba spirituality. To witness a performance such as his, in person, is to unwittingly find oneself in a natural partnership, to become an acolyte in a ritual of protest. The man is not so much a man as a vessel whose very bearing mimes powerful visual messages and symbols. In large part, the shadow that Atiku casts on his audience is that of a conspicuous enigma. And on the informal and formal stages where he performs, that enigmatic appearance becomes precisely his leverage: he somehow manages to transmogrify his entire frame into a potent medium for protesting injustice.