‘Many Lamps Same Light’: The Stained Glass Paintings of Nigeria’s Prime Artists, Y.C.A. Grillo and D. H. Dale

Abstract

Many lamps same Light’ investigates the place of agency in the transmutation of indigenous imageries in the art works of the pictorial turn. Through an investigation that entailed an empirical analysis of the works of two Nigerian prime stained glass artists, Yusuf Grillo and David Dale, this study established that in spite of their diversity in picture making tooling mechanisms, both artists met the purposes of the “new thinking” paradigm shift in the post Vatican II evangelisation regime. In a hermeneutic discourse, however, the study investigates Grillo’s exclusive use of indigenous thought systems’ imbued lexiconology as visual tooling mechanisms to affect imagery for the episteme of ecclesia in Africa. In effect that novel art form did not only affect the enlargement of the series in images of this, otherwise, European art form but also a change in imagery in the entire constellation of Church art. In fact, through art as agency utilsing the iconographical imageries from Nigeria as ciphers of the pictorial turn, distinguishing the paradigm shift in Christianity, it was possible to tell the Christos story with Christ as the magnate holding the ecclesiologies together.

Keywords: stained glass, pictorial turn, evangelisation, iconographical imagery, tooling mechanism, agency, light, lamp