Moyosore B. Okediji

The son of celebrated Yoruba writer, Chief Oladejo Okediji, Moyosore B. Okediji is a true pioneer in the arts. Among the first set of undergraduates to be admitted in 1973 to the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) to study fine arts, in 1979 he was the first and only graduate student to be admitted to the University of Benin to start an MFA. He organised group art exhibitions under the name ONA in the lobby of the University Hall on the campus of the Obafemi Awolowo University, where he taught from 1982 to 1992, and in 1988 he founded Kurio Africana, the only Nigerian arts journal of its day.

When no university in Nigeria offered a doctorate in art or art history, Okediji moved to the United States in 1992, becoming the first doctoral student in African art history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The People’s Passage was painted in the summer of 1994, when the artist was still a doctoral student at the University, where he also taught art history: "I wanted to explore in paint some of the major themes that I was studying at that time, including the movement of Africans to the new world via the historic Triangular Trade.

"The People’s Passage expresses my internal struggles as I grappled at that time with making up my mind whether to stay in the United States to complete my doctoral studies or return to Nigeria. I decided to stay. The painting, therefore, became a vessel of my migration, both physically and psychically, to the Americas from Africa. I liken my movement to the US as part of the Triangular Trade. Despite the hardships and trauma of my passage, I have gone through the dark turning, and I am now seeing the brilliance of the shining lights in the new ports. Various parts of the composition, when viewed closely will reward the viewer with surprising figures hidden chromatically and embedded in shapes. The viewer is invited to visually excavate the environment and keep what they find."

"This process of digging is my story, shown in the tapestry of colour, rhythm and textures: when I invest in serous and diligent mining of my opportunities in my new home away from Africa, I excavate great outcomes, and my rewards are boundless."

Okediji's work has been exhibited at venues including the New Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art and the Denver Art Museum, and is in the permanent collection of a few museums such as the Ackland Art Museum in the University of North Carolina, and the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is also the author of African Renaissance New Forms, Old Images in Yoruba Art and The Shattered Gourd: Yoruba Forms in Twentieth Century American Art.