# Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition

> Two linked graphic languages of southeastern Nigeria. Uli is Igbo women's body and wall painting: freehand lines that swell and taper, spirals and small named motifs set asymmetrically on open ground, so gaps count as much as marks. Nsibidi comprises hundreds of pictographic and abstract signs from the Cross River region, kept chiefly by the Ekpe and Mgbe leopard societies and reserved white on indigo ukara cloth. In 1962 Uche Okeke took uli into modern ink drawing; at Nsukka from the 1970s younger artists, Obiora Udechukwu above all, carried uli and later nsibidi into drawing and painting.

- Period: 1900–present
- Where: Sub-Saharan Africa
- Origin: Southeastern Nigeria: uli is painted by Igbo women on bodies and compound walls; nsibidi comes from the Cross River region of Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon, developed by the Ejagham and shared with Efik, Ibibio and Igbo neighbours, and was recorded by Europeans from 1904, by the Reverend J. K. Macgregor (1909) and the district commissioner Elphinstone Dayrell (1910, 1911). Northcote Thomas photographed uli murals in Awka District in 1910–11. Both are older than these records. From 1962 artists carried uli, and later nsibidi, into modern drawing and painting, above all at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from the 1970s
- Branch: Traditions & vernacular
- Also known as: Uli, Uri, Nsibidi, Nsibiri, Nsukka School uli revival
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/uli-nsibidi/

## Use it with care

These are living traditions with restricted parts. Nsibidi has a sacred side kept by the Ekpe and Mgbe leopard societies, and ukara cloth is used exclusively by Ekpe members, so never copy society signs or ukara layouts for decoration, merchandise or invented 'secret' meanings; use only signs whose public meaning has been checked with knowledgeable members of the community. Uli is Igbo women's art, which declined after Christian missionaries discouraged it, and the mostly male Nsukka artists were criticised for drawing on it; credit and commission Igbo and Cross River artists, including women painters such as those of the Upa Women Artists Collective, and do not present invented pseudo-nsibidi or generated 'uli' as historical work. Keep the two traditions apart in credit: uli is Igbo women's painting, nsibidi a sign system of Ejagham origin kept by Ekpe and Mgbe men's societies; never label one as the other.

## How it works

- Let line carry the design: draw freehand strokes that swell and taper, with spirals, zigzags, V-forms and small motifs named after what they resemble (the kola nut, the snake), rather than filled silhouettes.
- Leave most of the ground empty and spread a few motifs asymmetrically across it, so the shapes of the gaps matter as much as the marks; separate designs with rows of stippled dots when they need it. This open, off-centre ground is uli's logic; nsibidi on ukara cloth, and some of Victor Ekpuk's drawings with their dense grounds, fill a field instead.
- Draw in one dark tone, the indigo-black of uli dye, on skin or paper; on walls add only the earth pigments to hand, white clay, yellow earth, camwood red-brown and charcoal black. Keep it flat, with no modelled shading or gradients; the Nsukka painters allow a loose ink wash to anchor a figure (Udechukwu, 1976).
- Use each nsibidi sign as a unit of meaning, a reduced pictographic or abstract glyph (the leopard's claws as repeated triangles, a crocodile, hands, a moon) that stands for a word, idea or story, and learn what it means before drawing it.
- Recognise ukara as Ekpe's own cloth, nsibidi signs reserved white on indigo in an orderly, symmetrical grid, and cite it as such; do not reproduce its layout or its signs outside the society. For a light-on-dark surface, set a few public, checked signs freely on the dark ground instead of filling a grid.
- Carry the vocabulary into pen-and-ink drawing and painting as the Nsukka artists did, and onto walls as Victor Ekpuk has: let uli line build the figures, keep the paper open around them, and draw with confidence, without erasure.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Dynamic asymmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/dynamic-asymmetry/) (defining)
- [Organic flow](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/organic-flow/) (characteristic)
- [Modular grid](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/modular-grid/) (occasional)
- [Isolated object](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/isolated-object/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Generous white space](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/generous-white-space/) (defining)
- [Repetition & rhythm](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/repetition-and-rhythm/) (occasional)
- [Flat hierarchy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-hierarchy/) (occasional)

### Typography
- [Hand-lettering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-lettering/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Monochrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/monochrome/) (defining)
- [Earth & mineral](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/earth-and-mineral/) (characteristic)
- [Light ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/light-ground/) (characteristic)
- [Dark ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/dark-ground/) (occasional)
- [Limited spot colours](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Pictogram](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pictogram/) (defining)
- [Biomorphic curves](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/biomorphic-curves/) (characteristic)
- [Non-representational](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/non-representational/) (characteristic)
- [Stylised figuration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/stylised-figuration/) (characteristic)
- [Whiplash line](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/whiplash-line/) (characteristic)
- [Angular & zigzag](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/angular-and-zigzag/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Flat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/) (characteristic)
- [Painterly brushwork](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-brushwork/) (occasional)

### Ornament
- [Folk & sacred symbols](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/folk-and-sacred-symbols/) (defining)
- [Restrained accents](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/restrained-accents/) (characteristic)
- [Cosmic & celestial](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/cosmic-and-celestial/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Line illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/line-illustration/) (defining)
- [Icons & pictograms](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/icons-and-pictograms/) (characteristic)
- [Pattern & repeat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pattern-and-repeat/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Pen, brush & ink](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pen-brush-and-ink/) (defining)
- [Hand-painted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-painted/) (characteristic)
- [Textile & craft](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/textile-and-craft/) (characteristic)
- [Architecture & signage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/architecture-and-signage/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Spiritual & sacred](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/spiritual-and-sacred/) (characteristic)
- [Communal & popular](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/communal-and-popular/) (characteristic)
- [Authoritative & institutional](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/authoritative-and-institutional/) (occasional)
- [Calm & contemplative](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/calm-and-contemplative/) (occasional)

Avoids: Full polychrome, Fluorescent & neon, Gradients, Illusion of depth, Naturalistic depiction, Gloss & highlights, Straight photography

Palette: #f0ebdf, #1b1a1c, #23305a, #c4952f, #8c3a23

Typefaces: Nsibidi signs as an ideographic set, drawn by hand (there is no standard font; check each sign's meaning and keep to public signs), Uli line and motif repertoire drawn freehand (uli carries no script; use it around text, not as letters), Ancient Wakandan script (Black Panther, 2018), a fictional derivative of nsibidi built from hand-drawn characters supplied by production designer Hannah Beachler: a reference, not a source of real signs

Known for: Uli body designs drawn on four sheets of paper stitched end to end, Arochukwu, 1930s or 1940s, the outline probably by a Western-trained artist and the patterns probably filled in by local Igbo women, perhaps commissioned through the missionary Agnes Siddons Arnot (Pitt Rivers Museum 1972.24.16 and .172, one of more than 100 uli drawings on paper there); Uli murals photographed by Northcote W. Thomas during fieldwork in Awka District, November 1910 to December 1911, at Agulu, Agukwu Nri, Nibo, Nise and Amansea, above all the Ngene shrine walls at Nibo, which young women repainted before the Ngene festival; and the 1984 restoration of the Iyiazi shrine at Agukwu Nri, led by Obiora Udechukwu, Chike Aniakor and Herbert Cole, for which some 50 women of Amaeze painted new murals (Paul Basu, 'Uli: art and archive', Re-Entanglements, 2021); Women artists of uli today: Ada Udechukwu (b. 1960), one of the seven artists of The Poetics of the Line, whose 'lines and voids' are 'deeply influenced by the traditional Igbo art of Uli' (Contemporary And, 2021), with ink drawings such as Solitude and Masked (2018) in Particles in Motion (SMO Contemporary, Lagos, 2021); and Chinyere Odinukwe, whose painting Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi reworks the Odelegu uli murals of Nibo as the backdrop to a portrait of Nwambeke, made for the [Re:]Entangled Traditions exhibition at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (February 2020); Ukara cloth of Ekpe, the men's society of the Cross River region, 20th century, cotton, raffia and indigo dye, with nsibidi symbols among its designs (Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 92.0094); Ukara: Ritual Cloth of the Ekpe Secret Society (Hood Museum of Art, 2015): cloths sewn with raffia by artists of the Ezillo community in Ebonyi State, who are not Ekpe members, then dyed in indigo so that nsibidi signs appear white in a grid; Uche Okeke, Oja Suite pen-and-ink drawings begun in Lagos in 1962, which take uli spirals (agwolagwo, the snake motif) and V-forms into modernist drawing, among them Three Mallams and the Moon (inscribed 'Oja Suite I'; Baltimore Museum of Art 2021.208); see also his Primeval Forms (1962, ink on paper; High Museum of Art 2022.45.1); Obiora Udechukwu, Preacher, Mourners and Gidan Tailor (1976), uli-inspired drawings in bold and thin lines anchored by ink washes; Preacher and Gidan Tailor were acquired by Tate in 2021; Obiora Udechukwu, Our Journey (1993), ink and acrylic on four canvas panels, whose 'sinewy, bleeding' lines draw on uli and nsibidi and gather a bold yellow line into the spiral of the sacred python (Hood Museum of Art 2017.23abcd)

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Alike in its design choices: [Warli Painting](https://stylogeny.com/styles/warli-painting.md) (1970–present), 64% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/republican-china-book-design.md) (1923–1949), 60% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Kamon (Japanese Family Crests)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/kamon.md) (c. 1100–present), 60% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth](https://stylogeny.com/styles/bogolanfini.md) (1900–present), 60% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design](https://stylogeny.com/styles/maori-kowhaiwhai.md) (1500–present), 59% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Baybayin Revival Graphics](https://stylogeny.com/styles/baybayin-revival.md) (1963–present), 59% alike

## Sources

- Wikipedia: Uli (design) (Igbo women's body and wall painting; 'swelling and tapering curves interspersed with angled lines'; asymmetrical, often spontaneous; the negative space between designs; stippled white dots (ntupo) separating designs; wall pigments of clay white, yellow, camwood red-brown and charcoal black; body dye from uli plants staining the skin an indigo colour; motifs named for what they resemble; Uche Okeke's 'new visual language' and the Nsukka renewal; male artists criticised for drawing on a female art form; the Upa Women Artists Collective): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uli_(design)
- Wikipedia: Nsibidi (also spelled Nsibiri; developed by the Ejagham, used also by Efik, Ibibio and Igbo; 'hundreds of abstract and pictographic signs'; the Mgbe and Ekpe leopard societies; a sacred version and a public, more decorative version; encountered by Europeans in 1904; leopard's claws as repeated triangles; ukara motifs in white on grids against indigo, including lovers, hands, masks, moons and stars; Macgregor 1909 and Dayrell 1910 and 1911; inspiration for the Wakandan writing system): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsibidi
- Endangered Alphabets, 'Nsibidi' (the Reverend J. K. Macgregor, who wrote on nsibidi in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute): https://www.endangeredalphabets.net/alphabets/nsibidi
- Elphinstone Dayrell, Ikom Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria (Royal Anthropological Institute, 1913), title page 'E. Dayrell, District Commissioner, Southern Nigeria', stories collected in the Ikom district: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70959/pg70959-images.html
- Pitt Rivers Museum, Body Arts: 'Uli designs' (Arochukwu drawing on four stitched sheets, 1930s or 1940s, 1972.24.16 and .172; Agnes Siddons Arnot and E. H. Duckworth; more than 100 uli drawings held): https://bodyarts.prm.ox.ac.uk/index.php/temporary-body-arts/body-painting/196-uli-designs.html
- Pitt Rivers Museum, Body Arts: 'Uli materials and tools' (dye green at first, turning black; applied with a thin sliver of wood or a forged iron tool, some with several heads for parallel lines): https://bodyarts.prm.ox.ac.uk/index.php/temporary-body-arts/body-painting/197-uli-materials-and-tools.html
- Paul Basu, 'Uli: art and archive', [Re:]Entanglements (2021) ('Both body and mural designs are also known as uli'; Northcote Thomas's fieldwork in approximately 18 towns of Awka District, November 1910 to December 1911, with uli wall paintings at Agulu, Agukwu Nri, Nibo, Nise and Amansea; the Ngene shrine at Nibo; mural pigments white (nzu), yellow (edo), red (ufie) and black (oji); the 1984 Iyiazi shrine restoration at Agukwu Nri led by Obiora Udechukwu, Chike Aniakor and Herbert Cole, with some 50 women painting new murals; Chinyere Odinukwe's Akwamkosa Achalugonwayi for the [Re:]Entangled Traditions exhibition at the University of Nigeria, February 2020): https://re-entanglements.net/uli/
- Hood Museum of Art, 'Ukara: Ritual Cloth of the Ekpe Secret Society' (2015) (Ezillo stitchers, not Ekpe members; indigo dye; 'white against a deep blue background'; signs 'arranged in a grid, giving the cloths an orderly, symmetrical quality'; nsibidi as 'ideographic, abstract, and gestural signs'; 'used exclusively by members of Ekpe', worn by them and hung in lodges): https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/node/5026
- Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Cloth (Ukara), 92.0094: https://emuseum.as.miami.edu/objects/6693/cloth-ukara
- Perrin Lathrop, 'Uche Okeke', Smarthistory, Spanish translation on LibreTexts (Oja Suite pen-and-ink drawings begun in Lagos in 1962; uli spirals (agwolagwo) and V-forms (okala isinwaoji); Okeke learned drawing from his mother, an uli artist; head of Fine and Applied Arts at Nsukka 1971 to 1983; Obiora Udechukwu took up uli and later nsibidi): https://espanol.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Humanidades/Arte/04%3A_Africa/03%3A_Africa_Occidental/3.06%3A_El_arte_de_Nigeria/3.6.15%3A_Uche_Okeke
- Baltimore Museum of Art, Uche Okeke, Three Mallams and the Moon, 1962, pen and black ink on paper, 2021.208 (verso inscribed 'Oja Suite I'; recto 'C. Uche Okeke / 1962', though some BMA pages give 1961): https://artbma.org/artwork/three-mallams-and-the-moon/
- High Museum of Art, Uche Okeke, Primeval Forms, 1962, ink on paper, 2022.45.1: https://high.org/collection/primeval-forms/
- Hood Museum of Art, Obiora Udechukwu, Our Journey, 1993, 2017.23abcd: https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/objects/2017.23abcd
- kó, 'Frieze Masters London: Obiora Udechukwu' (2021) (Preacher, Mourners and Gidan Tailor, 1976, uli-inspired drawings in bold and thin lines with ink washes): https://ko-artspace.com/events/7/
- kó, 'Tate acquires new works at Frieze' (Gidan Tailor and Preacher, 1976, ink and wash on paper): https://ko-artspace.com/press/35-tate-acquires-new-works-at-frieze-thanks-to
- Wikipedia: Obiora Udechukwu (born 1946; first saw uli murals in Agulu; BFA thesis on Igbo uli mural art, 1972): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obiora_Udechukwu
- Wikipedia: Nsukka group (members; The Poetics of the Line, National Museum of African Art, October 1997): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsukka_group
- SMO Contemporary Art, Ada Udechukwu (b. 1960; BA, University of Nigeria, Nsukka; The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group, Washington, 1997–98; Newark Museum): https://smocontemporaryart.com/artists/325-ada-udechukwu/
- SMO Contemporary Art, 'Particles in Motion' viewing room (1 May–31 July 2021) (Masked and Solitude, 2018, ink on paper; 'the traditional Igbo art of uli with its emphasis on brevity of statement, linearity, abstraction' and the 'balancing of positive and negative space'): https://smocontemporaryart.com/viewing-room/10-particles-in-motion/
- Contemporary And, 'Ada Udechukwu: Particles in Motion' (2021) (her 'lines and voids, deeply influenced by the traditional Igbo art of Uli'): https://contemporaryand.com/exhibition/ada-udechukwu-particles-in-motion/
- Krannert Art Museum, 'Auto-Graphics: Recent Drawings by Victor Ekpuk' (2014) ('his improvisational use of nsibidi'; 'drawn with no erasure'; 'dense grounds of micro-stories and bristling opaque forms'): https://kam.illinois.edu/exhibition/auto-graphics-recent-drawings-victor-ekpuk
- The Phillips Collection, press release on Victor Ekpuk's State of the Union: Things have fallen apart, can the center still hold? (2021) (b. 1964, Akwa Ibom; adhesive vinyl): https://www.phillipscollection.org/press/local-artist-victor-ekpuks-graphic-installation-inspired-ancient-nigerian-script-transforms
- Typeroom, 'And the typographic Oscar goes to Black Panther's Wakandan Afrofuturistic heritage' (2019) (Zachary Fannin: 'Hannah provided hand-drawn characters derived from Nsibidi for our Ancient Wakandan script'): https://www.typeroom.eu/article/and-typographic-oscar-goes-black-panthers-wakandan-afrofuturistic-heritage-and-typographic-oscar-goes-black-panthers-wakandan-afrofuturistic-heritage
- Liz Willis, ''Uli' Painting and the Igbo World View', African Arts 23(1) (1989)
- Simon Ottenberg, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997)

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/uli-nsibidi/