Rites of Passage
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Rites of Passage
Medium: silicon on paper
Date: 2020
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Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Rites of Passage
Medium: silicon on paper
Date: 2020
Afolabi Damilare’s portrait of Moyo Okediji.
Thanks for this wonderful gift, Afolabi
This is the first Akodi orisa that I constructed in 2011 in Ondo.
I had no trouble whatsoever from anybody when I built the studio-museum there.
I am therefore surprised that the one in Ile Ife, just finished in 2018, has attracted so much attention.
SAY IT NOW
When you speak to yourself at night
be not afraid to speak truth
to thunder using the language of proverbs
to deliver music to homeless soldiers
eating from street dumpsters
with long spoons dining with the devil
wearing rifles loaded with a silver lining
The Massacre of General Okoro
Is it funny
or merely coincidental
That, as they killed her son,
the mother was dreaming
She was breastfeeding him?
OLÓDÙMARÈ is what I have written here, using the Yoruba alphabet that I just designed. It…
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.