Why the Tortoise and the Dog Quarrel All the Time.
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Why the Tortoise and the Dog Quarrel All the Time.
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Date: 2018
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Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Why the Tortoise and the Dog Quarrel All the Time.
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Date: 2018
Captive No More
1
What you are reading is not poetry. It is not fiction. It is my true family history.
I am an ascendant from slavery. Yes.
It means I am a descendant of enslaved bodies. Yes.
Inside me, they locked iron collars,
leg fetters, and hand lockers. Yes.
Yes. Does it sound weird? Yes.
Slavery was real in Africa. Yes
Africa was the Ground Zero of slavery. Yes.
This is the latest Portrait of Moyo Okediji by a young Nigerian artist, Femi Okediji. I really enjoy his mastery of chiaroscuro. The loose strokes of his composition merge structurally into a coherent musical gradient that gives form to my facial expression.
As I continue to operate Zoom to teach,
I also begin to reorganize my desk.
This is what my Zoom class/office/desk
now looks like.
The computer energies
from the laptop combine
with the computer energies
from the Opon Ifa
PART OF THE BEAT
Only you can kill yourself,
hiding your game in the shelf
Too many die
living a life of lie.
Too many fellows live
but can’t survive
You must go anyway
but don’t go away
Place your feet on the ground
while you’re still around
Artist: Moyo Okediji, Painting in the Round Series: Visitors from Another Space/Time.
acrylic on canvas
Dimension: unequal.
Date: 2007
Waiting to give a talk at a symposium at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL.