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The Green House Effect
18 Aug 2013
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Princess Theresa Iyase Odozi
The efforts of an indefatigable female artist and her empowerment centre have had a galvanic
effect on an Ogun State-based backwater community. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports
Visualise an exodus of nature beings from this degraded fringe community. Shaking their heads
in frustration, they are beating a hasty retreat before its frenzied anarchic development... Lost in
thought, the visitor endured the discomfort while the taxi driver manoeuvred through the craters
and gullies of its dusty, winding, arterial thoroughfare. This Ogun State-based satellite outpost of
a Lagos State neighbourhood, called Olambe, is metaphorically and literally groaning from the
effects of the governments neglect!
But beneath this indelible impression of a total absence of governance lurks the human spirits
hardiness and resolve to endure the most deplorable conditions. To a significant segment of the
local creative community, this is a never land, a creative wasteland of sorts...
Well, not for Princess Theresa Iyase-Odozi. Even before her impressive GreenHouse Art
Empowerment Centre has sprouted up as the communitys beacon of light and hope, she had
always seen opportunities and possibilities in this apparent Siberia. The amiable University of
Lagos-trained artist would rather see art as a calling than as a business. Since her return from
Germany in 2002, she had wormed her way into the highly competitive, talent-glutted Lagos art
circuit.
Take her first solo exhibition, Arrival, held in 2009, for instance. Its curatorial audacity and the
choice of the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos venue confounded many. Who is this lady? not
a few had wondered. Did she really produce the paintings she displayed at her exhibition?
Of course, she did! Besides the fact that she had, prior to the 2009 debut solo, participated in
several group exhibitions both within and outside Nigeria, a visit to her tastefully-designed
Olambe residence would lift a veil on the creative soul concealed beneath the gorgeously-attired
princess of Benin Kingdom who seems always ready to reward her visitors with smiles.
Art should be her second nature. This is not just because her husband, Victor Odozi is an art
lover and one of her biggest collector, but also because art has always trailed her trajectory in
this earth-life. Buoyed by the consciousness that art practice is a use-or-lose-it affair, she had
taken it up as a duty to promote her professional colleagues through the establishment of a
gallery in the backwater Olambe community.
Enter the Green House Art Empowerment Centre. Since the December 22, 2012 opening of this
four-storey edifice, activities around this artist have been revved up a notch. This empowerment
centre, which is located directly opposite her impressive mansion-like residence, earned her a
metaphorical pat on the back and thumbs-up sign from both the Ogun State Government and the
local community chieftains. It has, in recent times, hosted a series of art-related activities.
Among them were a workshop for children in April and another for art teachers held last month.
The landmark building of the communitys Lucy Estate houses probably the only gallery in its
environs, which includes the Lagos neighbourhoods of Iju and Ojodu. Though based in Ogun
State, it attracts more visitors from far-flung Lagos neighbourhoods. Staffed with a nimble team
of enthusiasts, the Green House Art Gallery has been a regular participant at the annual National
Gallery of Art/Art Galleries Association of Nigeria-organised International Art Expo Lagos,
held exhibitions in its premises, reached out to schools in both Lagos and Ogun states through its
moving art exhibitions, offered skill-acquisition programmes and motivational talks to the youths
of the host community, among other activities. We are pleased with the impact we have made in
creating awareness for the arts in Olambe, Princess Iyase-Odozi told her visitor.
The empowerment centres main outpost consisting of a laundry and a book club adjoins her
residence. But there are other outposts in other states of Nigeria as well as in the federal capital
city, Abuja. Basically, the GreenHouse Empowerment Centre operates on the tripod of an art
gallery, a book club and a laundry/dry-cleaning business to support its operations. Essentially, a
foundation known as the Iyase-Odozi Foundation supports the entire endeavour and ensures it
keeps within its altruistic goals. Promoting art and Nigerian artists remain our over-riding
purpose and not the desire to make money, Princess Iyase-Odozi reiterated.
The book club complements the art gallery as a philanthropic endeavour. Both, Princess Iyase-
Odozi added, are designed to serve the community through enhancing the quality of life of its
people. Our location in Olambe makes us easily accessible to those we have set out to serve.
At the official opening of the empowerment centre building, the artist had regaled her audience
with her breath-taking installation of colourful paper houses hanging on and positioned around
dry dwarf tree trunks. The installation, titled On Thy Roots We Stand, was part of an
exhibition that also had paintings and murals with the same name and is a veiled allusion to the
symbiosis between the centre and the community.
Meanwhile, the centre still has a long list of programmes waiting in the wings. It hopes to train
people in such vocational skills as music, drawing/sketching, painting in different media,
producing tie-and-dye, candle-making, sculpture, crotchets, flower arrangements and soap-
making, among a long list of others. So far, the workshops held at the centre had focused on craft
and ceramics.
Besides the urge to support the lives of the less-privileged members of the society and to
empower the communitys youths, the centre hopes to foster new artistic talents. Among the
programmes aimed at making the latter a reality are a planned solo photography exhibition by a
female journalist and a group show of the works of female artists.
Surely, promotion of tourism one of the empowerment centres targets. The Ogun State
Government had through its representative at the official opening promised the improvement of
the access road to the centre, which is mainly run by Princess Iyase-Odozi and an advisory
board. The Ogun State Commissioner of Commerce and Industry, Otunba Bimbo Asiru, who
represented his principal, the governor (Senator Ibikunle Amosun), had told the gathering at the
opening ceremony that the rehabilitation of the road would cost N40 billion and that the
contract has been awarded.
This planned access road would certainly spell doom for a lot of hastily-erected structures.
Perhaps, that would bring back beauty and smiles to the environment and who knows? the
nature beings might just return to the land.