Exported Potential: The Stories Hidden in Nigerian Gemstones
Dear Reader,
When we speak of gemstones in Nigeria, what often comes to mind are their economic value, their glittering surface, or their export statistics. But beneath the rough lies something older and deeper, a cultural reservoir of meaning.
My research, “Indigenous Symbolism & Storytelling:How Yoruba gemstones can be engaged as carriers of indigenous meaning, stories, and identity.,” is an attempt to listen to these stones differently. I am interested in how gemstones, like words, hold stories. How they have traveled through rituals, adornments, and myths, and how they might still serve as archives of identity in contemporary practice.
As a fifth-generation artist working in sculpture and mixed media, I’ve long been drawn to materials as vessels of memory. Wood, metal, and textiles carry human histories. But gemstones often seen only as commodities have been denied their voice within cultural discourse. My work asks: What happens when we begin to read these stones as texts? As symbols? As witnesses of migration, displacement, and survival?
This inquiry is not just academic. It is also personal. Growing up surrounded by Yoruba traditions, I saw how objects from carved masks to ritual beads were more than ornaments. They were thresholds into history and cosmology. Yet when it comes to gemstones, Nigeria has largely confined them to the category of export. They leave our soil before they can tell our stories. In this sense, they embody what I call “exported potential.”
In this newsletter, I will be sharing fragments from this journey:
• Notes from archives and libraries.
• Conversations with cultural custodians, miners, and fellow artists.
• Reflections on Yoruba cosmology and material culture.
• Glimpses of my studio, where stone becomes sculpture and symbol.
My hope is to invite you into a dialogue where gemstones are not mute, but speaking. Where research is not abstract, but lived. And where Nigeria’s resources are not only extracted, but reimagined as carriers of identity and meaning.
Thank you for joining me at the beginning of this path. I look forward to walking it with you.
Warmly,
Shariff