Bèbè Ìdí (Beaded Waistline)
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Bèbè Ìdí (Beaded Waistline)
Medium: Terracotta
Date 2010
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Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Bèbè Ìdí (Beaded Waistline)
Medium: Terracotta
Date 2010
MEANINGLESS WORD
“Food is not ready,” Iya Oyo informed me. “This is just a snack. I know you are hungry” In Yoruba she said “Fi eléyìí panu. Mo mọ̀ pé ebi ti ń pa ẹ́.”
She left me a bowl full of boiled groundnuts. I loved boiled groundnuts. It was still in the shell. “You can throw the shells here after cracking them.” In Yoruba , she said, “Pa èèpo ẹ̀pà ná à sínú abọ́ yìí.
The simplest thing, as ordinary as just inhaling and exhaling, is an amazing feat of enjoyment.
When you can inhale and exhale, just enjoy it because it’s priceless.
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Once Upon a Time, the Tortoise
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Date: 2018
Do you know why people say Ọbá wàjà (the monarch climbed the rafter) and not Ọbá kú (the monarch died)?
You will find the answer to the riddle in Ìrẹtẹ̀ Méjì.
Orunmila was a monarch, who gave birth to several other monarchs including Alárá, Ajerò, Ọlọ́wọ̀ and several others.
You will also find out in Ìrẹtẹ̀ Méjì why Yoruba people (ọmọ a yọ orù bá wọn tọ́jú) do not die, but climb the rafter.
TWO ROCK STARS
ROCK 1:
I wish I were a rock of salt.
Then I won’t be so insulted.
Here I sit at the bottom of the stream
pelted by water
pecked by fishes
pinched by crabs
unseen, uncelebrated by man
useless to him and his art.
I wish I were a rock of salt
Why the Art Museums Are Closed
A dialogue with Africa
about the ancestral images
that the West looted
from the continent is inevitable.
Without this dialogue,
all the museums in the world,
all the art galleries,
all the exhibition spaces,
are uninhabitable spaces