The bronze-casting tradition of Benin City is one of Africa’s longest-surviving artistic lineages. For over six centuries, the royal guild of bronze casters, Igun Eronmwon, has produced works that embody the spiritual, political, and historical essence of the ancient Benin Kingdom. Through the lost-wax casting technique, generations of hereditary male artisans created plaques, commemorative heads, and ritual objects for the Oba (king) and his court.
For much of that history, the craft was an all-male domain, its skills transmitted from father to son within guild families. Yet, in the late twentieth century, that boundary was profoundly redefined through the pioneering work of Princess Elizabeth Olowu, the first widely recognized Nigerian woman to practise bronze casting. Her daughter, Professor Peju Layiwola, has since expanded this legacy through art, scholarship, and activism focused on restitution and cultural memory.
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Elizabeth Olowu: Breaking the Guild’s Gender Barrier
Born into the royal family of Benin, Princess Elizabeth Olowu is the daughter of Oba Akenzua II, who reigned from 1933 to 1978. Growing up within the palace compound immersed her in the rituals, artistry, and visual culture of the royal court.
Her path to art, however, came through formal education. During Nigeria’s post-independence era, as art schools emerged across the country, Olowu enrolled at the University of Benin, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in 1979 and her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in 1984, specializing in sculpture. Under the mentorship of master casters and academic instructors, she mastered the lost-wax process and adapted it to her own artistic vision.
By entering a profession long considered off-limits to women, Olowu transformed both artistic and cultural conventions. Her works blend ancestral technique with new subject matter, exploring themes of womanhood, maternity, and self-representation rather than royal ceremony. Pieces such as Mother and Child and Self-Portrait evoke empathy and intimacy, qualities seldom depicted in traditional palace bronzes. Through her art, Olowu demonstrated that innovation and tradition could coexist within the same medium.
Peju Layiwola: Recasting Memory through Art and Scholarship
Olowu’s eldest daughter, Adepeju (Peju) Layiwola, inherited her mother’s artistic discipline and intellectual curiosity. She earned a BA in Metal Design and later completed advanced degrees in Visual Arts and Art History. Today, she is a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Lagos, where she has served as Head of the Department of Creative Arts and played key roles in academic leadership.
Layiwola’s practice bridges studio production, scholarship, and activism. Her installations, textiles, and metal works interrogate colonial memory, restitution, and the afterlives of empire. In her landmark exhibition Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question (2010), she transformed the trauma of the 1897 British Punitive Expedition into a platform for artistic reflection and historical reckoning. Combining photography, metalwork, and text, the exhibition revisited the violent looting of Benin’s royal palace and the global dispersal of thousands of its treasures.
Through her art, writings, and curatorial work, Layiwola has become one of Nigeria’s leading voices in debates on restitution and cultural justice. She emphasizes that returning looted artefacts is not only about physical repatriation but also about restoring dignity, memory, and narrative authority to the communities from which they were taken.
The 1897 Expedition and the Politics of Restitution
The 1897 British Punitive Expedition marks a defining rupture in Benin’s history. British forces invaded the city, deposed Oba Ovonramwen, and looted over 4,000 artworks, bronzes, ivories, and royal regalia, many of which were later sold to museums in London, Berlin, and New York.
In recent decades, global restitution movements have revived calls for the return of these objects. The Edo State Government and the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) have partnered to establish the Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) in Benin City as a home for repatriated artefacts. Several institutions, including the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and the Smithsonian Institution, have announced formal returns or long-term loans of Benin bronzes.
(Sources: British Museum “Benin Bronzes” entry; Reuters Africa, 2022.)
Within this wider historical and ethical conversation, Layiwola’s scholarship situates her mother’s pioneering act as part of a longer restitutional narrative, one not only of artefacts but of agency. While Elizabeth Olowu reopened the physical foundry to women, Peju Layiwola reopened the intellectual and historical archives to a global audience.
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Legacy and Continuity
The significance of Elizabeth Olowu’s contribution lies in both her mastery of a sacred technique and her symbolic redefinition of tradition. Her sculptures, human-scaled, introspective, and empathetic, carry the dual imprint of royal heritage and personal narrative.
Peju Layiwola extends that transformation into the twenty-first century. Through her teaching, exhibitions, and writing, she demonstrates that art is both historical evidence and a tool of civic engagement. Together, mother and daughter embody three interwoven achievements:
1. Cultural inclusion: Opening the bronze-casting tradition to women while respecting indigenous artistic frameworks.
2. Institutional transformation: Connecting traditional guild knowledge with academic and curatorial spaces.
3. Restitution and narrative agency: Reclaiming control over how Benin’s dispersed heritage is interpreted and displayed.
Author’s Note
Princess Elizabeth Olowu opened a foundry door once closed to women; Professor Peju Layiwola turned that act of defiance into a sustained dialogue between art, history, and justice. Their intertwined legacy reshapes the story of Benin’s bronzes, not by erasing tradition, but by expanding it. Through them, the resonance of molten metal in Benin’s workshops becomes more than an echo of royal ritual; it becomes a chorus of renewal, continuity, and reclamation.
References:
1. Elizabeth Olowu, University of Benin Fine Arts Department archives; Vanguard Nigeria, 2016; National Gallery of Modern Art collections.
2. Peju Layiwola, University of Lagos profile; Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question (University of Lagos Press, 2010); Layiwola official website.
3. Benin Bronzes / 1897 Expedition, British Museum “Benin Bronzes” entry; Reuters Africa, 2022; BBC News, 2021; Smithsonian Institution restitution announcements, 2022.
