Adetola Wewe is with me in Austin Texas.
He is here as an artist in residence in the art center/gallery that I began recently.
He is chilling here with some àsun that he brought with him from Nigeria, and one of the local beers in Austin.
DANCING WITH WORDS
Do we dance while talking, sometimes?
Usually, we talk with our mouths.
But the eyes are also part of the conversation.
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.
YORUBA DISINFORMATION IS MUNGO PARK
This morning, a friend of mine who is a professor at a university here in Texas woke me up with, “Hey Moyo, what is the meaning of Yoruba?”
This professor called me on WhatsApp video.
Disinformation is as old as the human tongue.
Let me take that back.
Disinformation predates the human tongue.
Disinformation started with the body language of making signs.
When you smile, when you really are plotting to hit a fellow, that is disinformation.
This is very easy.
Even a baby knows what’s in here
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: Rites of Passage
Medium: silicon on paper
Date: 2020
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.