President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday, June 11, approved the naming of a 3.2 KM Road in Kwali Area Council after Ladi Kwali.
Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, disclosed this while commissioning the road that linked the Kwali bridge in Kwali Area Council of FCT.
Wike told residents of Kwali that Tinubu is always committed to the wellbeing of Nigerians and will continue to deliver the dividends of democracy.
Ladi kwali,known and celebrated internationally for her mastery of pottery, is the face of the woman on the N20 note.
Ladi Kwali first trained with her aunt in her village located in what is now the Kwali Area Council of the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory. Her talent was recognised early by the Emir of Abuja (now Suleja), Alhaji Suleiman Barau, who collected her pots for display in his palace where they caught the attention of the potter Michael Cardew (1901-1983) during his 1950 tour for his extensive report on pottery development for the Nigerian colonial government. After M. Cardew founded the Pottery Training Centre (PTC) in Abuja in 1952, L. Kwali became its first female trainee in December 1954. She completed her training in January 1959 and was employed at the centre.
Although M. Cardew taught her wheel-throwing, L. Kwali used the centre’s stoneware clay to create pots using the traditional free-hand modelling technique in which she was adept. She decorated them with poetically incised lines rendered in bands that left ample space in-between for her rendition of schematised figures of scorpions, fishes, birds, snakes, chameleons, crocodiles and lizards. The deeply incised lines were filled out with white porcelain body which glowed under dark celadon glazes after being glost-fired at high temperatures. Her use of new materials and firing techniques resulted in heavier and impervious pots that could no longer function as water storage pots with cooling properties. They had become fine art pieces. Patrons and audiences of the new pots had also shifted significantly, from the local to the international. The pots had acquired a new form of modernity, making L. Kwali the pioneer of an African ceramic art modernism.
