The Onobrakpeya Staff
The Latest Addition to My Iroko Roots Shrine.
The Shrine
This staff was delivered to me by Mudiare Onobrakpeya, as a gift from his father Bruce Onobrakpeya. Mudiare tells me the staff was carved by Bruce Onobrakpeya's father Onobrakpeya Obi Omonedo
Bruce Onobrakpeya is one of the world's greatest artists of the sacred.
Distilling inspiration from his native Urhobo culture and their Edo, Yoruba and Fulani neighbours, in dialogue with the sacred arts of other African peoples, such as the Akan of Ghana, along with Christianity in an African context and correlative with technological forms such as vehicle spare parts, spark plugs, electronic circuitry and other mechanical instruments, he is able to uniquely unleash the numinous essence of the sacred, its sense of the mysterious and powerful, intangible but palpable, remote from the conventional but compelling in its force.
Bruce Onobrakpeya 's earliest introduction to sacred arts included the artistic work of his father, a carver of sacred artifacts.
The gift of an object carved by such an ancestral master is of great significance in my efforts to drink from the inspirational streams of Onobrakpeya's art.
The symbolic value of the walking stick.is amplified by the manner of my acquisition of this unique object, through the son of the master who learnt from the earlier master. suggesting the transmission of inspirational force across generations, a creative circle integrating the ancestors and those who still walk the Earth.
The presence of this walking stick among my collection of iroko tree roots and parts of other kinds of trees activates this shrine.
Before now the shrine was largely an aesthetic object since I simply enjoyed the force of its presence in my bedroom but did not use it in any other way, such as meditating or praying there.
The symbolic value of the graciously transmitted walking stick inspires me to place it within the shrine, suggesting the significance of wood, as represented by the tree parts, wood as emblematic of our first ancestors and primal brethren, the natural forms, from water to soil, without which humanity cannot live and the walk of knowledge enabled by the powers of self and inspiration from various sources the walking stick signifies, at the intersection of an African centred yet globally integrative spiritual, philosophical and artistic culture Onobrakpeya implies for me.
The other image are of Bruce Onobrakpeya, taken by myself at his home and studio in Mushin. Lagos, as well as a picture of an African ancestral figure.
-- The Latest Addition to My Iroko Roots Shrine.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
The Shrine
This staff was delivered to me by Mudiare Onobrakpeya, as a gift from his father Bruce Onobrakpeya. Mudiare tells me the staff was carved by Bruce Onobrakpeya's father Onobrakpeya Obi Omonedo
Bruce Onobrakpeya is one of the world's greatest artists of the sacred.
Distilling inspiration from his native Urhobo culture and their Edo, Yoruba and Fulani neighbours, in dialogue with the sacred arts of other African peoples, such as the Akan of Ghana, along with Christianity in an African context and correlative with technological forms such as vehicle spare parts, spark plugs, electronic circuitry and other mechanical instruments, he is able to uniquely unleash the numinous essence of the sacred, its sense of the mysterious and powerful, intangible but palpable, remote from the conventional but compelling in its force.
Bruce Onobrakpeya 's earliest introduction to sacred arts included the artistic work of his father, a carver of sacred artifacts.
The gift of an object carved by such an ancestral master is of great significance in my efforts to drink from the inspirational streams of Onobrakpeya's art.
The symbolic value of the walking stick.is amplified by the manner of my acquisition of this unique object, through the son of the master who learnt from the earlier master. suggesting the transmission of inspirational force across generations, a creative circle integrating the ancestors and those who still walk the Earth.
The presence of this walking stick among my collection of iroko tree roots and parts of other kinds of trees activates this shrine.
Before now the shrine was largely an aesthetic object since I simply enjoyed the force of its presence in my bedroom but did not use it in any other way, such as meditating or praying there.
The symbolic value of the graciously transmitted walking stick inspires me to place it within the shrine, suggesting the significance of wood, as represented by the tree parts, wood as emblematic of our first ancestors and primal brethren, the natural forms, from water to soil, without which humanity cannot live and the walk of knowledge enabled by the powers of self and inspiration from various sources the walking stick signifies, at the intersection of an African centred yet globally integrative spiritual, philosophical and artistic culture Onobrakpeya implies for me.
The other image are of Bruce Onobrakpeya, taken by myself at his home and studio in Mushin. Lagos, as well as a picture of an African ancestral figure.
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