I just completed this painting
as a tribute to
The Birth of a Beautiful Divinity, Ajé
Ajé (The Divinity of Profit, Prosperity and Wealth)
65” x 77”
2020
is Searching For Me).
I fling open the gates of my heart
visit me, Aje, visit me.
Can you see her?
do you see her eyes,
Aje’s limitless eyes of endless gifts,
searching for your heart?
Akodi Orisa resident artist, Foluso.
It was in 1980, in Nigeria, when this police encounter occurred.
I will start by swearing
in the name of Ogun
that this event, strange
as it sounds, actually happened
in the middle of the night.
They say when you want an African to tell the truth, make the African swear to an indigenous divinity—not to the Bible or the Quran. Those two books are just books. The real book that they believe and consider real is not written. It is oral, and tied to the indigenous divinities.
I was 19 years old in 1975 and an undergraduate studying painting at the University of Ife when my friend, Augusta Akusu-Ossai, took this picture of me.
The attire I’m wearing in the picture is typical of what I always wore in those days: a long adire (batik) top that I designed and sewed myself, and the baggy pants of that era.
Wisconsin, Madison, 1994. Naming ceremony.
I was a college student.
One of my Nigerian colleagues had just finished his Ph.D., and he returned to Nigeria.
He had no idea that his girlfriend in Madison was pregnant.
When he was contacted, he decided that he was not returning to the US.
The pregnant girlfriend decided she was not going to Nigeria to join him.
I met Antonia at a wedding party in Akure in 2011.
The wedding party was inside a high-end hotel, where the big politicians and rich people stay when in Akure.
My friend who was a commissioner had given me a room in the hotel, because I was writing an exhibition catalog, and needed a place with good internet service and constant power supply.
TRADE BY BARTER
Our ancestors did not have money, but they traded across the vast continent of Africa, through Europe and as far away as China.
Goods from Africa traveled across thousands of miles throughout the world, even at a time when we did not use money in Africa.