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.”
Moyo Okediji
Title: We Are All Fishes Angling in a Simmering Lake
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Date: 2021
24″ x 30″
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Title: The Not-I Bird (After Wole Soyinka’s Poem in DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN)
Wole Soyinka: The Not-I Bird
“Not-I became the answering-name
Of the restless bird, that little one
Whom Death found nesting in the leaves
When whisper of his coming ran
Before him on the wind. Not-I
Has long abandoned home.
Hanging out with Adetola Wewe on the riverboat on Lake Travis, Austin, Texas.
He is visiting from Nigeria as the first fellow-in-residence, University of African Art at Austin.
TO MY GRANDDAUGHTER ON GRANDPAS DAY
I landed a fish last summer.
It begged me to catch and release.
I said I was hungry
It said better to hunger than kill
“We are all fishes”, it reminded me,
“angling in a lake of love.”
I saw the same fish this summer
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.
PART OF THE BEAT
Only you can kill yourself,
hiding your game in the shelf
Too many die
living a life of lie.
Too many fellows live
but can’t survive
You must go anyway
but don’t go away
Place your feet on the ground
while you’re still around
When nobody supports you,
when everybody says no to you,
when people turn down your requests,
and you cannot get any grant
when they band together to oppose you,
and say your ideas are not practical
and they frown when they see you:
don’t despair;
these are signs that you are moving in the right direction;
keep placing one foot ahead of the other
continue to push ahead
I am installing huge paintings by Adetola Wewe inside my gallery in Austin Texas.
Adetola Wewe is the first resident fellow of the University of African Art, Austin, Texas Campus.
SAY IT NOW
When you speak to yourself at night
be not afraid to speak truth
to thunder using the language of proverbs
to deliver music to homeless soldiers
eating from street dumpsters
with long spoons dining with the devil
wearing rifles loaded with a silver lining
Back to class. School has changed.I now teach remotely from home,talking to my laptop,addressing cyberspace from my house,as if it was real life. Where does life end and fantasy begin?Nobody knows, nobody cares.
Adetola Wewe, is with me in Austin, Texas, posing with the first painting he completed and signed as an artist in residence at the University of African Art Residency, Texas, Austin.