About
Ìbítáyọ̀ Ọjọmọ is an artist, an architect, and an educator. Trained in Nigeria and the United States, he was Professor of Architecture at the University of Ife, Nigeria, visiting Processor of Architecture and Planning at the University of Trieste, Italy, an adjunct professor of African art history at Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia. He was a design instructor at the Charter High School for Architecture and Design, in Philadelphia, and for a long time, a drawing instructor at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, at Mercy Hurst College, Erie, Pennsylvania. He has practiced architecture and lectured widely in Africa and the United States on African art and music.
He retired from active teaching in 2012 to devote more time and energy to the practice of art. He not only sees art as a means of connecting intimately with the World, but also sees art as a way of contributing to its intellectual and artistic heritage from the perspective of an African. He draws from the rich and highly complex reservoir of the artistic knowledge and powerful aesthetic legacy that have influenced and transformed Western art. In particular, Ọjọmọ is interested in pursuing the interdependence of verbal and visual metaphors (òwe) among the Yorùbá people of West Africa. He experiments with their embedded wisdoms, relevance, and applicability to contemporary society through his Art: "ART AS METAPHOR".
His formal education and training in art and architecture, combined with a deep immersion and appreciation of the environment and culture of Ọ̀wọ̀ where he grew up observing and participating in traditional rites and celebrations, have prepared him more than adequately for the artistic goal that he has set for himself. His special insight and first hand experiences growing up as a direct descendant of one of the most important and revered royal household in Yorùbáland has been a rare asset. All of his ingrained life experiences and exposure are central to the core of his choice, style, and treatment of subject matter in his paintings.
"The scope and scale of Professor Ọjọmọ's paintings are consistent with the system of proverbs and adages he draws upon for subject matter. It is a system reflecting millennia spent observing human behavior and refining the code of social relations. Thus among the Yoruba a proverb anticipates and awaits every conceivable circumstance. Concept of character are indelible in this system, and Ọjọmọ uses them to develop visual metaphors, puns, and admonitions that give venerable vernacular understanding a contemporary spin, thereby renewing the old."
- Michael Harris, "The Yoruba Artist", Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1994.