Rites of Passage
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Rites of Passage
Medium: silicon on paper
Date: 2020
Interested in some of my published works?
Follow Me
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Rites of Passage
Medium: silicon on paper
Date: 2020
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
Hey, world out there
I hunker down here
and hail you, dear friend,
for we now live in the world
of virtual friends
but you can’t hug anymore.
We live in a new world.
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.
DANCING WITH WORDS
Do we dance while talking, sometimes?
Usually, we talk with our mouths.
But the eyes are also part of the conversation.
The Last Dance.
Adetola Wewe is working in my studio gallery on his last painting as the first resident fellow of the University of African Art at Austin.
He is concluding a one-month stay, and has produced an incredible number of paintings during this short period.
He will leave for Houston during the week, from where he plans to fly back home.
Today, he will share his residency experience with the students of the University of Texas at Austin, in a course titled “Introduction to African Art,” taught by Moyo Okediji.
At my studio in Austin, Adetola Wewe is seen working with Keji Badmus, the first recipient of the Apprenticeship Program of the University of African Art at Austin.
The apprenticeship system is the indigenous art education school practice in the indigenous African creative cultures.