ToKillaMockingBird
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: ToKillaMockingBird
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Date: 2018
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: ToKillaMockingBird
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Date: 2018
YORUBA DISINFORMATION IS MUNGO PARK
This morning, a friend of mine who is a professor at a university here in Texas woke me up with, “Hey Moyo, what is the meaning of Yoruba?”
This professor called me on WhatsApp video.
Disinformation is as old as the human tongue.
Let me take that back.
Disinformation predates the human tongue.
Disinformation started with the body language of making signs.
When you smile, when you really are plotting to hit a fellow, that is disinformation.
I woke up during the night and went to the bathroom.
There was no water to wash my hands.
No hot water. No cold water.
What was going on?
I went downstairs.
No running water.
Dear Kicking Fetus
For Saidiya Hartman***
Why kick your mother
so hard, so relentless
right in the center
of her tender navel?
Is there something
you know about life,
about the impious ways
Those who love you
often don’t let you know;
you may discover their love
in their whispers, looks or gestures.
But it is those who hate you
that shout hostility at you loud and clear.
We are erupting, we are the ones born to fly to open wide the feathers of our wingsand like a kite without a careto soar far above the fence
HOUSE OF THE HEAD: ÒRÙLÉ ORÍ
The latest addition to the Àkòdì Òrìṣà
is the ÒRÙLÉ ORÍ,
the House of the Head.
Órí is the most important òrìṣà
in Yoruba divinity.