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
Olodumare laughed when the Nigerian contingents
Stood up to present their case
before the throne of the Most High.
Olodumare said, “Active and passive
are equal and opposite
to effect the law of balance.
In the beginning
I created the most talented people
In a landscape mischievously named Nigeria.
My last 256 ODU IFA painting has been acquired by the Boston community center, The Guild. It is a great home for the painting. They have huge walls and the painting graces one of the large walls by the entrance.
NEW SALE
I have just sold this work titled “MESSENGER OF HOPE.”
It is a terracotta piece mounted on canvas.
It has an antique look to give it a timeless dimension, just as the element of hope that it defines.
I’m happy the work has found a home where it will be happy and loved.
THE MESSENGER OF HOPE
“Ó dàbọ̀,” which is what stands for the idea of goodbye, actually is the very opposite of goodbye.Why? Because “Ó dàbọ̀” does not say that you are leaving.Rather, as you depart, you are speaking of “àbọ̀,” meaning, “the return.”As you depart, you begin to celebrate your return.
One Her Independence Day
I sent her
a flower vase
spun of orphic hair
with strands of gold,
each line gilded
with a ray of solar tint,
tightly woven into a dreamy jar
with slender pythonic fingers,
and detailed with combed titanic glints
boasting ornamental strings of rubies:
There is a revolution going on in Nigeria.
They called it, at first, #EndSARS.
Then it morphed into #endswat.
Like an arrow in flight, nobody knows where it is going.
The youth revolution in Nigeria has caught the entire country by surprise.
The youths of Nigeria are incredibly talented.
Nigerian youths have been handed nothing by my generation.
My generation is the generation of pythons.
My generation of pythons can swallow everything and anything up whole and alive.
But after a python swallows up its victim whole, it cannot move from the spot.