Socially Engaged Protest Arts: Metaphors of Subtlety and Aggressiveness in Select Arts of Ganiyu Jimoh and EB Mike Asukwo

The efficacy, messages and aesthetic value in a socially-engaged art depend on a number of variables such as the artists creative vision, skill, inclination, worldview, emotional disposition, and agenda. Similarly, the audience/beholders meaning-making and contextualization trajectories are in many ways attributable to their interpretive competence which are enabled by the variables listed for the artist. In this study, our focus is to provide a clear description of what socially-engaged art and a protest art denote, and how the designated arts of EB Mike Asukwo and Ganiyu Jimoh fall within each interpretation. In addition, this study seeks to deepen understanding of the dimensions of creative application of subtlety and aggressiveness as artistic metaphors in select protest cartoons by Asukwo and Jimoh. This study utilizes interpretive analysis to provide plausible insight into the embedding of metaphors in a cartoon in conjunction with applicable communication theories of art, to elucidate the kind of information the beholders can draw. In the end, this paper provides logical collocation behind the classification of the designated cartoons by Asukwo and Jimoh as socially-engaged cartoons and protest cartoons, and how some variables influence the shades of meaning and message both artists infuse in the selected works.