Similar Posts
The Butterfly Thinks Himself A Bird
Moyo Okediji
Title: The Butterfly Thinks Himself A Bird
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Date 2021
Size: 24″ x 30″
The title is an important line in playwright Ola Rotimi’s masterpiece, THE GODS ARE NOT TO BLAME.
Rotimi took the line from a Yoruba proverb, “Labalábá fira rẹ̀ wẹ́ye, kò le ṣìṣe ẹyẹ.” ̛It means, “The butterfly compares itself to the bird, but is unable to perform like a bird.”
So, what do they look like?”
“So, what do they look like?”That’s the question I never could answer. But I swear I saw them.They came in some underwhelming craft.They took me into the craft. I saw the inside of it.I don’t recollect sitting down.
Gudugudu
Artists: Moyo Okediji with Foluke Olukanmi and Jumoke Awodeyin.
Title: Gudugudu
Medium: Installation
Date: 2018.
Akodi Orisa, Ile Ife.
Dear Kicking Fetus
Dear Kicking Fetus
For Saidiya Hartman***
Why kick your mother
so hard, so relentless
right in the center
of her tender navel?
Is there something
you know about life,
about the impious ways
Jetlagged.
Jetlagged.
From Heathrow Airpot to Austin Airport.
one of the paintings I just discovered in my garage.
This is one of the paintings I just discovered in my garage.
The painting celebrates Robert Hayden’s poem, “Middle Passage.”
It is a really long poem.
The painting focuses on this excerpt:
“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: ”
The character across the floor of the ship being whipped to consent is the lady called Guinea Rose in the poem.