What the MoMA Did To My Momma Series #1
Moyo Okediji
Title: What the MoMA Did To My Momma Series #1
Medium: Collage
Date: April 2018
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Moyo Okediji
Title: What the MoMA Did To My Momma Series #1
Medium: Collage
Date: April 2018
Madam Ngu looked at my most recent painting and from the expression on her face, I could see that she did not like it.
She sat on the big chair in the center of my studio in the Ekenwan campus. I had arranged my paintings around the wall as she requested, ready for her critique.
“Muyo,” she said, “you need more life drawing classes.”
“Yes, madam,” I responded.
Yesterday I took a break from work, and for the first time since the Covid outbreak in 2019, ventured out.
With Adetola Wewe, my friend visiting from Nigeria, I went on a boat ride.
The third stage of colonization is now in progress. This is part of a ten-stage program of total obliteration.
At the onset of the first stage, the colonizer attacked us violently and mercilessly, killing our leaders and taking our land.
At this first stage, they directly rule us and live on our land, openly displaying their weapons of destruction to threaten us and remind us that they are capable of obliterating us and willing to wipe us off the face of the earth at the slightest provocation.
When young women went to the river to fetch water, they would disappear.
The king’s royal beads even went missing.
People were worried. One of the wise men said, “Let’s approach Ọlọ́run to give us a police boss.”
But who could they trust? One of them must be the thief.
They decided unanimously that the only trustworthy person in the entire community was Ijapa.
Ijapa gave them only one condition: “Nobody should visit my house without letting me know in advance that they were coming.”
I went on a walk this morning, and it felt really good.
As I walked, something occurred to me: The world is an incredible garden in which we were meant to simply hang out, enjoy, party, make love and multiply.
But what do we really do?
We bitch, hate, steal, cheat, lie, cry and even kill.
The Corona prophet, therefore, came to warn us.
A silent demolition is going on.
When I was about 8 years old, I walked from Akarabata Line 2 to Iremo in Ile Ife, a distance of about three miles, every morning, at dawn. I was attending a private coaching class that started at 6 am, two hours before formal classes began at 8 am.