Between Beauty and Meaning
Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation
5
Ancient Reverberations
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Adeyinka Bello at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan
Human/Sculptural Dynamic at an Intersection of Cultures
What cognitive worlds are shared by the human person in the picture, Adeyinka Olarinmoye , and the statue, the inanimate human creation in the image?
What is the cognitive dynamic at which they intersect?
Their spatial convergence, their visual juxtaposition in this picture, represents Africa in the matrix of the modern, as demonstrated by Susanne Wenger, the creator of the sculpture or the inspirer and director of the artistic school one of whose members constructed the work, and her cultural descendant, Adeyinka Bello.
Immersives in Yoruba culture within configurations variously Western.
Different in race but united by human ancestry and the intersection of Yoruba and Western history.
Susanne Wenger, Adunni Olorisa, is gone but the art of her school lives on, welcoming all to the institute created in a Western frame to study the non-Western, as the manifestation of the power that has made Western culture globally dominant, its technological prowess, flashes light and captures an image of the modern woman who yet embodies in her own way the ancient culture of Orunmila that spellbound Wenger into spending a lifetime in Yorubaland on coming there from her native Austria.
Mistress of the forest numinous, recreator of the Osun vegetative space as cosmographic space, planter of Orisa seeds that yet grow slowly, unknown to many, if not most, forefront of masters and mistresses of spirit, we have not forgotten you, we who walk the long walk under the stars.
Though invisible, manifest to us through the living presence of she who visits the place where your shrine sentinel stands guard, life palpitating through her every pore, elegant face framed by juxtaposition with the visage of the sentinel testifier to the quest for learning in the context of a transformative relationship with African existence you share with the politician/scholar, the living quickening of skin testifying to that power in honour of which great Achilles swore that he preferred to be the lowliest servant of the lowliest man living on iron rations than to be king among the dead....Elbereth Gilthoniel, sower of stars,giver of soccour in lands and times of shadow....Galadriel.....
Also published on Facebook
First published as "Human/Sculptural Dynamic at an Intersection of Cultures" on 29 January 2014 at the Facebook group Adeyinka Olarinmoye : Aesthetics,Thought, Action
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