56 - ⊕ ‡ ABE ODEDINA (NIGERIAN B.1960)

⊕ ‡ ABE ODEDINA (NIGERIAN B.1960) STIR IT UP, 2018 acrylic on plywood 76 x 51cm (78 x 53cm framed) Property from an Important International Collection Provenance Acquired by Ed Cross Fine Art Purchased from the above by the present owner Exhibitions Zeitz Mocca | When We See Us | November 2022 - September 2023 Literature Emily Watkins, "Painterly Paradise ", Harper's Bazaar, Spring 2018 Katherine Finerty, David Remfry RA, Adjoa Armah, Emily Watkins, Ed Cross, "Abe Odedina: Love and Hate, Paintings 2013 - 2020", Ed Cross Books, 2020 Art Africa, "Africa First! Serge Tiroche", Jul 21, 2022 Zeitz Mocca, "When We See Us- A Century of Black Figuration in Painting", British Library Cataloguing, 19 November, 2022 Abe Odedina was born in 1960 in Ibadan, Nigeria, entering a world charged with the febrile cultural energy of a newly independent nation. As a young man, he moved to Britain to train as an architect, built a successful career, and eventually settled into a life between the bustling creative landscape of south London and the historic, spiritually vibrant streets of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Although he spent decades shaping physical structures, a pivotal trip to Brazil in 2007 radically transformed his trajectory. In Salvador, amidst the ceremonial fairs of Candomblé, Odedina found himself profoundly reacquainted with the Orishas and the rich, syncretic folklore that modernism had cast aside in his native Nigeria. Inspired by this rush of public devotion, street murals, and sacred art, he put down his architectural drafting tools and taught himself to paint. Today, Odedina works from his south London home in his signature blue overalls and spectacular spectacles, crafting a practice that defies easy categorization. Though he frequently describes himself as a "folk artist," he uses his work to actively interrogate the limitations of that very label. His distinct visual voice has garnered international acclaim, earning him the prestigious Ellsworth Kelly Award in 2017 and leading to commissions by director Danny Boyle for The Children’s Monologues at Carnegie Hall. His vibrant works are housed in prominent permanent collections worldwide, including the British Government Art Collection and the Jorge Pérez Collection. In Recife, Salvador, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Yoruba philosophy, art, music, cuisine and ritual bear witness to the resilience of the Orishas, the deities of the Yoruba pantheon. Surviving the Middle Passage, they flourished in the New World, strengthened through association with the Catholic saints and venerated within Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion of righteous living. Among the most formidable to endure were Eshu, Ifa, Ogun, Oya, Shango, Yemoja, Oshun and Orisha Oko, whose worship, through syncretism, spread across the West Indies and the Americas. The present work portrays Oya as a young woman. Spirit of the whirlwind, sorceress, mistress of lightning and guardian of the underworld, she rules from palaces beneath the River Niger; when she dances, tornadoes follow. Her winds of change destroy yet renew, and she attends every great transition, death included, standing at the gates of burial grounds and worshipped alongside the Egungun ancestor cult. Favourite wife of Shango, she rode before him into battle as lightning precedes thunder. The most feared of the river and rain divinities, she endures across the diaspora: as Queen of hurricanes and cemeteries in Cuban Santería, as Iyansã, syncretised with Saint Barbara, in Brazilian Candomblé, and as Ti Kita in Haitian Vodou.