The Benin art world and the Benin Royal Family have lost an extraordinary daughter.
Princess Elizabeth Olowu (née Akenzua), distinguished sculptor, artist and daughter of Oba Akenzua II, has passed away. News of her passing was announced by her daughter, Professor Peju Layiwola, herself one of Nigeria’s leading contemporary artists and scholars.
Princess Elizabeth occupied a remarkable place at the intersection of Benin royalty, tradition, artistic innovation and social change.
Born into the Royal House of Benin, she was a daughter of Oba Akenzua II, who reigned from 1933 to 1978. She grew up surrounded by one of Africa’s greatest artistic traditions—the palace culture that produced generations of master bronze casters, ivory carvers, woodworkers and other specialists whose works made Benin famous throughout the world.
Yet Elizabeth would not merely inherit that artistic heritage. She would challenge one of its boundaries.
Benin’s celebrated tradition of metal casting was historically dominated by men, particularly the hereditary guild of bronze casters at Igun Street. Princess Elizabeth became a pioneering female sculptor working in metal, entering a field from which women had traditionally been excluded. Her artistic practice included bronze and other media, and her works frequently explored womanhood, motherhood, family, royal heritage and the experiences of African women.
She studied Fine Art at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and subsequently became an important figure in Nigerian art and art education. Her significance therefore extended beyond being an artist who happened to be a princess: she represented a remarkable meeting between an ancient artistic inheritance and a modern generation of professionally trained Nigerian artists.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful dimensions of her story is its continuation through her daughter, Professor Peju Layiwola, artist, scholar and professor of art at the University of Lagos. Through mother and daughter, Benin has produced two generations of women who have used art not simply to create beautiful objects, but to interrogate history, memory, identity, womanhood and cultural heritage.
Their family story also tells us something important about Oba Akenzua II himself.
At a period when social and cultural conventions could be formidable, the Oba permitted his daughter to pursue a path that challenged established gender boundaries. He also allowed Princess Elizabeth to marry the man she loved, Babatunde Olowu, a Yoruba man she had met during her university years. It is from that marriage that Elizabeth and her children, including Peju, bear the Yoruba surname Olowu.
There is something profoundly instructive in that history.
A Benin monarch deeply committed to preserving Edo culture and tradition could simultaneously recognise that culture need not become a prison. He could defend heritage while allowing his daughter the freedom to cross boundaries of profession, gender convention and ethnicity.
Today, as we mourn Princess Elizabeth Olowu, we remember much more than a royal daughter. We remember a pioneer who helped expand the space available to women within Nigerian art; an artist who carried centuries of Benin artistic memory into a new age; a mother whose creative inheritance continues through another formidable artist; and a Benin princess whose life itself became a bridge between royalty and modernity, tradition and innovation, Edo and Yoruba, mother and daughter, one generation and the next.
May Princess Elizabeth Olowu rest peacefully among her ancestors.
Benin History extends its heartfelt condolences to Professor Peju Layiwola, the Olowu family, the Benin Royal Family, and the wider Nigerian artistic community.
Credit: Benin History
