Because I am now always home, I went into my garage and discovered a body of about ten large paintings dating to 1993.
This is one of them.
I just painted and rolled up the canvases, and forgot about them.
You really have to spend a lot of time to visually excavate them. There are so many things buried into the body of the colors.
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Farewell
Medium: acrylic on canvas.
Date: June 1994.
The Yoruba people are agitating to be free from Nigeria.
They have discovered that they gain nothing from being part of Nigeria, but they lose a lot by remaining in Nigeria.
I ask, “Why do they want to move away from Nigeria?”
They say they are concerned that northerners are invading their villages, abducting their women and children, polluting their rivers with illegal mining, driving cattle through their farmlands—and making legislation (with the assistance of the few Omo Aale among them), to strip their lands to build the north.
KING CHARLES:
The light is awful! Ha! who comes here? Are my eyes seeing double? What is this strange object in our bedroom? Camilla, do you see what I see? Are you for real? Speak, you apparition, trying to scare a new monarch!
EGUNGUN:
Ayam Egungun, the Ancestral Spirit of those your ancestors named Southwest Nigerians.
KING CHARLES:
Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil?
“You still have a couple of drops in your cup,” Obaseki observed, leaning over. He held his cup to his lips and drained the last drop. “Drink up, Brother Mo, and I’ll take you to my mother’s joint. The beer is always bone-dead cold, I assure you. And you will always get any brand you want. Together with pepper-soup.”
Personally, I was done. All I wanted to do was go home and sleep off my intoxication. But I was all so confused. Somehow I wanted to know more about Gina and Joshua, and the only way I could keep in close contact with them was through Obaseki.
I could not believe my ears.
“You got pregnant from the rape?”
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?” I was making no sense with the question, but the situation was hardly making any sense either.
My throat felt dry. The bottles of palm wine on the table were still unopened.
I had to drink something immediately, I was thinking, or I would suffocate. This Gina was going to kill me.
A scale drops from my eyes, and gradually these terrains of the future open out to me.
All around me, I find these characters from the future visiting the present domain.
They are sculpted out of fire.
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-Seven)
“So whose panties are those?” Adolo asked, pointing at something.
She had just finished wiping down my feverish body. She sat on the chair. Felicia sat on the table and Steve stood, holding on to the open door of the wardrobe.
I didn’t know what Adolo was referring to.
“What panties?” I asked.
“These ones,” She said.
Steve looked in her direction, and answered, “Gina’s”
I was weary and in a dreamlike state. The fan whirling above was noisy, and as it blew the air on my wet body, I felt bone-rattling shivering spells.
I really wanted to cover my body with the blanket.
“She must have left them there when she was here,” Steve said.
“Gina?” Adolo asked. “Who is Gina?”
“Guess you may say Moyo’s new girl,” Steve said.
“Moyo? He has a new girlfriend?” Adolo asked.