Once Upon a Time,the Tortoise
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Once Upon a Time, the Tortoise
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Date: 2018
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Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Once Upon a Time, the Tortoise
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Date: 2018
This is one of the paintings I just discovered in my garage.
The painting celebrates Robert Hayden’s poem, “Middle Passage.”
It is a really long poem.
The painting focuses on this excerpt:
“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: ”
The character across the floor of the ship being whipped to consent is the lady called Guinea Rose in the poem.
The idea of ILẸ̀ Ọ̀GẸ́RẸ́ AFỌKỌ́ YẸRÍ must be difficult for those who interpret reality from the binary western tradition of male/female, living/dead, organic/synthetic, plant/animal, tall/short, high/low, liquid/solid, left/right and right/wrong or past/present.
The Akodi Orisa that I constructed in 2011, Ondo, Ondo State, Nigeria. It is the model for the one in Ile Ife.
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Rites of Passage
Medium: silicon on paper
Date: 2020
Could Black life matter,
without Black thoughts
and values mattering?
The indigenous African traditions
cannot breathe:
invasive viral forces
have placed their morbid knees
on the throats of indigenous African philosophy,
science, pedagogy, technology,
Yours truly at the Ohio State University to give a lecture on Friday.