ARTIST STATEMENT
VILLAGER in Bromo Tower Studio
photo by Stuart Ruston, courtesy of BOPA
my work exists in honor of my ancestors, to keep them alive in my existence. remembrance and reverence are the seeds I plant, the seeds of change that manifest through time. harmony is my harvest, I follow the Yorùbá traditions, customs, and practices of my ancestors that place me in harmonious gratitude with energy, the land, air, water, fire, the earth, and all that is abundantly in it. My work is a ritual, a journey to becoming. My process is an intimate worship of my lineage - mappings of connection to a larger cosmos of knowingness of this world and all of the energies hidden and unseen that catalyze this existence, ÀṢẸ. As my vessel carries the harvest fruits of change, my work becomes ancestral transformation and healing. This practice is my truest devotion to my ancestors, the past, myself, and the present. It is my devotion to time, actualized as a tangible change for the future unborn. ÀṢẸ
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ON ANCESTRAL VENERATION
My work is an earnest commune with my ancestors, with our collective ancestors whose shoulders we stand on, bridging the past to the present and rekindling the imagination and visualization of a future that embodies the spirit of FREEDOM. I am here to use my hands, eyes, legs, voice, and every facet of my infinite being to fulfill my ancestral responsibility and ensure that my ancestors do not die within me. My work is an ancestral devotion to everything that has come before me- an intimate and limitless connection to this reality that recontextualizes time as divine knowingness of all that is to exist. Each creation is a love letter to all African people across the diaspora - memorializing and honoring our heritage, resilience, cultural diversity, and expressions throughout history.
"AFROABSTRACTURE" AS A WORKING PHILOSOPHY
Working in painting, soft sculpture, cyanotype prints, photographs, installations, audio-visual media, and performance art, my transdisciplinary artistic practice is a spiritual and energetic reconnection to the DIVINE within and around us, following in the Yorùbá philosophy of limitless divine energy potential, ÀṢẸ. Through this energetically conscious practice, my work endeavors to scrutinize, deconstruct, and redefine the existential and paradoxical question of what it means to be a “Contemporary African", echoing a re-examination of consciousness and existentialism grounded in African knowledge systems, cultural and spiritual practices, philosophies, and traditions.
This transdisciplinary practice employs a philosophy I have coined as "AFRO-ABSTRACTURE." The conceptualization of this philosophy is channeled through the energetic intuitive exploration of the work informed by an Afrocentric consideration for materiality, color, sound, texture, rhythm, mark-making, scarification, layering, and pattern-making in all of my working disciplines. This creative language is characterized by exploring and transforming spiritual energy saturated in both the material and the metaphysical. By activating the physical and conceptual embodiments of Yorùbá oral & cultural tradition, spiritual practices, African fabrics & textiles, wood figurines, masks, and other objects of cultural significance, my work reveres how the past is alive in the present, mindfully and intimately honoring my ancestors and their contributions that continue to inform and shape contemporary expressions and experiences.
Through this meticulous research-oriented practice, my work also serves as a contemporary conduit for preserving and granting benevolence to my cultural heritage, paying homage to the IFA divination system that governs the spirit of the Yorùbá.
THE USE OF COWRIES
My work is a ritual of remembrance, rituals as actions repeated with intention manifested as energy potential being actualized for reality to occur, sense, and change through my being. In my work, I follow my ancestral tradition of agriculture and fishing by connecting to the abundant spirit of the water through the cowries. In Yorùbá and the African diaspora, cowries are revered as a vessel/object significant as adornment through jewelry making, currency systems, trade networks, rituals, ceremonies, and ancestral veneration practices.
Cowries in my work become the technology of energetic connection to the divine life force and all that is in, hidden, unseen, and around it. They are a vessel of symbol of connection with my ancestors, a vessel of knowledge, carrying ancestral wisdom from the past to the present- A SEED. Cowries are seeds, seeds of love, of reverence, of protection, of abundance, of mystery unfolding. This vessel becomes a portal of gaze to transport me, to a space where time is endless and energy is the fuel for inevitable change.
The cowries signify my commune with the energy of my ancestors, alive, dead, and unborn. As the sea snail leaves its shell behind, its memories are left intact in the shell waiting to be activated and transformed into a new energy, proof of honoring change and time. By activating this infinitely potent object/vessel, the cowries become my way of reflecting on the historical, spiritual, and social dimensions of Yorùbá and African art, finding all the ways the past is alive in the present and future. It is important to remember where we came from so we know where we are going.
Then time becomes cyclical again and change becomes inevitable.
Good change.
ON PERFORMANCE AND MOVEMENT
My sounds are a ritual of connection- Ancestral rhythms of divine transformation and harmony. As I commune with rhythm, I am connected to endless possibilities, celebration, jubilation, and transformation.
When I emit sounds and vibrations, I connect with the music of the stars and the earth. Through repetition, I evoke the auditory with reverence to the divine existence of sound itself and connect with the sacred rhythm of the universe that pulsates through this reality. The frequencies I emit are joyful noises that elevate the spirit through sound. Infinite bliss.
Sound, movement, rhythm, and spoken word become my worship of my ancestors. Entropy becomes my strength, and my truth is potential. This potential is the change waiting to be realized through rituals honoring harmony as the sacred spirit of sound.
photo by Niajea
SPIRITUAL GINGER (performance at Maryland Art Place)
ON WORDS, PRAYERS AND SPELLS
In the beginning was the ÀṢẸ, and ÀṢẸ was the word that catalyzed this existence and all that is in it with divine life force, and ÀṢẸ became the world. Words are an important part of my practice, whether in my poetry, or in the titles of my paintings , performances and visual artworks, I commune with words with intimacy to the power they possess to conjure change.
Language is the energy that coats and codes this existence.
As I pour back into the world through this journey of divine transformation, through my words and my work I bring good graces of the world to you. may the wind flow lightness and lift the burdens of this world from your crown. may you be lifted to the highest of heights. may the earth rejoice in your existence and the trees dance to your jubilee. May the water's coolness bring you peace, ease, and clarity. may the fire burn through your hearts with passion. passion to birth this world and yourself anew at each moment’s passing. ÀṢẸ
photo by Raba Abro
pictured here at Creative Freedom: Celebrating Black History Month (group show), Chesapeake Arts Center, Brooklyn Park, MD