FISHES OR CRABS
ẸJA M BÁKÀN?
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Fishes or Crabs? (Ẹja m Bákàn?)
Date: 2018
When people stand at the crossroads, and they ask about their fate, they ask, Ẹja m bákàn? The question is based on symbols. Is Eja the fish that is good? Or is it Akan, or crab, that is bad?
To all Omo a yọ orù bá wọn tọ́jú ọmọ tuntun;
Ọmọ́ gbó,
Orù ò gbó:
the offspring of those who bring out the orù pot of herbs to care for infants;
the baby prospers,
and the pot does not falter.”
The painting of this canvas started in 2019 and ended in 2020.
The carpenter is singing as he does the roof:
Ẹ̀yin tẹ́ ń lóyún lé rodo-ríndín, hẹn-ẹn
Bọ́mọ bá yàgbẹ́ o
Baba rẹ̀ ní ó ko.
Translation:
You who conceive while your infants are mere suckling babies
When your infants mess their pants
Their daddies will change their diapers.
Night BreezeIf you didn’t know that when night falls, the sun would rise the following morning and flood the world with light, you wouldbe scared to go to sleep,wouldn’t you?
The construction process at the Àkòdì Òrìṣà proceeds with the building of Ìwòrì-Òdí, an architectural monumentality of the third and fourth programs of the Ifa computer.
I turn the same painting upside down, as Iya Afilaka instructed me. And it still remains legible.
Why?
Because we have paid Iba (homage)
to the vagina that is turned
upside down, yet
does not drip