The Story of Rowland Abiodun
This site, built using a Wix template by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju and with content by him, exists to project my explorations of the work of Rowland Abiodun, a consummate explorer of Yoruba thought about the nature of art, developing his insights through decades of research in Yorubaland, building on his immersion in the culture in growing from childhood to adulthood and eventually becoming an academic there.
This lived experience is complemented by depth of reflection on his experiences and systematic explorations, a progression continuing after he moved to the United States to continue his scholarly work.
His work is trailblazing in unearthing depths of knowledge developed in centuries of an oral culture and reverberant in the visual and verbal arts in those artists whose works are influenced till the present time by those older conceptions and practices, a culture of transmuting ancestral foundations he played a role in cultivating among artists in his time as an academic at the then University of Ife, Nigeria.
June 2022
Check out the latest work by Rowland Abiodun, philosopher of Yoruba art.
Yoruba Art and Language : Seeking the African in African Art is a compendium of his life's work, integrated to provide a synoptic view of his vision.
Quote from
Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language, rephrased by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
''Thought roams naked in its divine essence, deadly to unmediated vision, through imaginative expression is it safely engaged with.''
Rowland Abiodun's Statement of Vision
from his
Growing up in Yorubaland with parents, grandparents and extended family members steeped in oral tradition, my early exposure to traditional education in Yoruba art and culture helped to shape direction of my research. Yoruba language, artistic concepts, and belief systems enabled me to understand the philosophical notions at the heart of the Yoruba worldview. My priority has always been to study and understand African art without inadvertently silencing or leaving out altogether, the voices of their creators and users.
As a Yoruba culture bearer and an art historian, I have long believed that the Yoruba language and culture should be critical components of my methodological tools for the study and deeper understanding of Yoruba art. Starting with my earliest publications such as "Naturalism in Primitive Art: A Survey of Attitudes” (1975), and "Ifa Art Objects: An Interpretation Based on Oral Traditions" (1975), my search for the interrelationship between the verbal and visual arts has continued up to my most recent publication, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, (2014).
Claude Levi-Strauss’s very important observation about the Yoruba that “as theories go, the Yoruba seem to have been able to throw more light than ethnologists on the spirits of institutions and rules which in their society, as in many others, are of an intellectual and deliberate character” (1966), agrees with what I had long thought was possible for the study of Yoruba art.
Unfortunately, no such sentiments were expressed in the discipline of art history. Art scholars rarely ventured outside of dominant Western paradigms, even when they analyzed works from non-Western cultures. This proclivity has led to a weakness in the study of African art because it ignored the discovery, recognition, and analysis of African-derived paradigms. To sustain my research interest in the Yoruba language and culture vis-à-vis the study of Yoruba art, I have had to look beyond the traditional discipline of art history.
Collage evoking image of Rowland Abiodun as academic general,
as described by his former student, Professor of Art, Moyo Okediji.
The picture in the foreground is of Yoruba sculptor Olowe of Ise's
mounted military figure,in front of an image of a museum building
designed by David Adjaye and inspired by the crown of the mounted figure.
In 1994, a prominent Yoruba language scholar, Olabiyi Yai argued persuasively that “When approaching Yoruba art, an intellectual orientation … consonant with Yoruba traditions of scholarship would be to consider each individual Yoruba art work and the entire corpus as oriki.” While oríkì has been generally translated as “praise poetry” or “citation poetry,” broadly speaking, all verbal and visual invocations qualify as oríkì in Yoruba culture. Oríkì affirm the identity of almost everything in existence. Oríkì extends beyond our traditional categories of two- and three-dimensional arts and color. Oríkì includes architectural space, dress, music, dance, the performed word, mime, ritual, and food, engaging all the senses.
Oríkì energize, prepare, and summon their subject into action. Yoruba art, like most African art forms, is more like an active “verb” than a static “noun.” Irrespective of whether they are sculpture, shrine paintings, poetry, or performance, Yoruba art forms are affective – they cause things to happen; they influence and transform natural phenomena. This is because they embody àṣẹ, the power to make something come to pass. Quite often, they are also mnemonic devices, transformer-carriers intended to facilitate free communication between this world and the otherworld thereby providing valuable insights into Yoruba metaphysical systems, myths, lore, and thought patterns.
The definition of Yoruba art suggests an interdependence of the verbal and visual arts through the concept of oríkì – evidence of the well-acclaimed richness of their oral culture. It is not unlike what scholars do in Western art history when they seek to deepen their understanding and appreciation of their subject. They look at its intimate connections with, and relationship to language, canonical literature and culture. It is expected that a scholar of French Impressionism be proficient in the French language, read relevant literature in French, and have a good knowledge of French culture. The same language requirements apply to scholars of Japanese or Chinese art in order to make their work credible and noteworthy.
Because proficiency in African languages generally has not been considered a prerequisite to do research in African Art history, their critical place has never really been discussed in the methodology, conceptual frameworks, and analysis of most Africanist art scholarship. It is also possible that the origins of the low priority given to African language in African art studies lie in the attitude of colonialists who often regarded African languages as inferior in status to languages in the West, and therefore unfit for use in serious academic discourse.
This attitude influenced the decision of early Africanist art scholars and even many colleagues who, today, still conduct their research entirely in Western languages or through translators who might not possess the requisite linguistic training to perform the task expected of them.
It was predictable that with time, many would drift more towards studying African art solely through the colonizer’s language and not through the language of the makers and users of African art. Though using a foreign language seems to guarantee a kind of temporary space for African art in the art historical marketplace, there is a real danger that Africa’s intellectual contributions through their languages to the study of art in the world might be lost forever.
A collage of a picture of Abiodun and of a sculpture evoking the creative force,
the dynamism of lighting and thunder
associated with the Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology deity Shango.
The collage is used in this context
in suggesting the
multivalent creativity of the visual and verbal matrix of Yoruba discourse
that is the inspirational centre of Abiodun's work.
My work explores new, holistic perspectives for the critical interpretation of African art as exemplified by the interrelationship of the visual and verbal arts among the Yorùbá of West Africa. My life’s work is to lay bare cultural meanings and themes that have been overlooked and even forgotten.
My work continues to demonstrate that Yoruba verbal and visual art forms, though separate, have been interdependent, supporting each other through mutual references and allusions.
This interdependence dates back to ancient works from Ilé-Ifẹ̀. The Yoruba language and relatable cultural superstructures and practices may be perceived as a continuum, characterized by referential congruity and mutual reflection. They evolve within the notion of àṣà – a dynamic concept of style and creativity that incorporates tradition and innovation in Yoruba art and culture.
Collage of Abiodun and Yoruba Gelede mask used in celebrating the spiritual power of women.
This collage is constructed to evoke the conjunction between the lyricism of the mask
and the mellifluous beauty of Abiodun's dramatizations of Yoruba oral literature,
a generative centre in his exploration of cognitive responses of Yoruba people to their art
as well as his contributions to the understanding of the feminine
as conceived in classical Yoruba thought in its verbal and visual artistic expressions.
Equivalents of the Yoruba oríkì in their visual and verbal forms abound among many African peoples and their descendants in the diaspora even if they do not use the same term. The fact that among the Yorùbá oríkì is immediately important as an efficient means of capturing moments or nuggets of history that provide an indispensable body of research material for reconstructing artistic values makes oríkì and oríkì-type phenomena not an option but a necessity in art historical methodology. It is well known that the Zulu, Ewe, Akan, Edo, Igbo, Bamana, Mande, Kikongo, and Kimbundu, to name only a few, possess rich oral traditions that have served not only as a means of preserving culture but also for interpreting art forms.
It would be immensely beneficial to the cause of sound African art research and scholarship if the proper indigenous names were employed in the identification of art works instead of the current practice of putting them in parentheses or omitting them altogether. In the same vein, many indigenous terms that embody important artistic and aesthetic concepts should be given prominence in African art studies.
To leave these terms out for whatever reasons is to make future research in Yoruba art difficult, if not impossible. But perhaps a much worse repercussion would be the creation of an African art field in which African thought and languages are not considered relevant in the understanding of African art. The end result would be tantamount to removing the “African” from “African art.”
