Artist's Statement
A graft on a support plant does not always produce positive results. In some cases, the plant rejects the graft. In other cases the graft develops into a powerful and uncontrolled growth that it completely takes over the support plant and transforms it into something totally new or something totally unrecognizable.
Western modern artists’ move away from naturalistic or figurative art to an essentially non-naturalistic and abstract art using African art as a catalyst for their revolutionary goal at the beginning of the 20th century is akin to grafting European art on African aesthetic ideals. The result did not bode well for the development of contemporary African art. It pre-empted genuine African modernism even as it threatened to uproot the “African” from African art. It was difficult if not impossible to resist the overwhelming influence of colonialism with its Western art education. Three categories of contemporary artists have evolved from this situation:
Those artists who try to synthesize the African ancestral art with the modern European art in their work.
African artists who draw heavily on iconography and rituals of ancestral religions, and
A group that utilizes mainly African traditions and literatures as springboard for their art.
My work belongs in the third category. For me, “art is a metaphor”. I am inspired by this concept because it is the closest an artist can get to mining Yoruba proverbs and making them relevant to contemporary situations. Besides, Yoruba proverbs are such powerful ways to tell a whole new story in this time and age. They are tropes and dramatic figures of speech, a veritable source of wisdom and understanding, which touch on every aspect of everyday life from birth to death, from marriage to child rearing, religion to politics, and faming to war. There are proverbs for every imaginable context. As a culture that developed without Western form of writing, the Yoruba use proverbs to serve as a guide for moral conduct, explain social and human behavior, and to give shrewd advice on how to deal with new situations.
My philosophy of the arts is that it should contribute to the growth of every individual and help to define them in the world. I want my art to help the audience to take a closer look at social issues and the environment. Hopefully, the viewer might see things not easily perceived on the surface and change their thought about art and the world.
Ibitayọ Ademọla Ọjọmọ