Dr Moyo Okediji

Moyo Okediji is an art historian, artist and curator whose works contains a number of icons and signifiers of the deep aspects of Yoruba culture. He was part of Ona, an art movement at Obafemi Awolowo University.

Okediji was born in Lagos in 1956; his family hails from Oyo town, in Oyo state. His parent moved to Ile-Ife when Okediji was young and he spent most of his adolescent years in the ancient town. In 1977, he completed a degree in painting at the University of Ife, thereafter, he worked as a graduate assistant in the Faculty of Arts at the university. Okediji later earned a master's degree MFA in African Art Criticism, Poetry, and Painting at University of Benin and returned to the University of Ife as a lecturer. While in Benin, he was influenced by the techniques of Guyanese painter Doris Rodgers who included decorative elements of African origin in her works.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Okediji,along with Kunle Filani and others were part of the art movement called Ona, the movement sought to reference Yoruba adages, proverbs, and visual concepts in their art works adjusted to modern Nigerian realities of the twentieth century. During the period, he also edited a short lived magazine called Kurio Africana. The group held their first exhibition in March 1989 at the University of Ibadan.

Okedeji went on to obtain a Ph.D. in African Arts and Diaspora Visual Cultures at the University of Wisconsin in 1995. For ten years he was the curator of African and Oceanic arts at the Denver Art Museum. He has taught at various colleges in the United States, including Wellesley College, Gettysburg College, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Colorado at Denver. He has also exhibited at various places including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC,. the Corcoran Center, London, and the National Museum Gallery, Lagos Nigeria. He is the author of books and exhibition catalogues including African Renaissance, Old Forms, New Images in Nigerian Art; and The Shattered Gourd: Yoruba Forms in Twentieth Century American Art.

He is currently an academic staff of the University of Texas, Austin.




Sources: Wikipedia and University of Texas website.