Moyo Okediji
Nigerian, born 1956
The Dutchman, 1995
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 72 in.
Lent by the artist

The Dutchman was painted after Okediji had spent time in the United States, had gained greater insight into the daily reality of African Americans and had encountered firsthand how artists confronted that reality in their work. It was inspired, in part, by the African American poet Robert Hayden's poem about the Atlantic slave trade titled Middle Passage:

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever
and the dying; horror the corposant and compass rose.

Middle Passage:
voyage through death
to life on these shores.

This painting perhaps best embodies the theme of this exhibition and may signify Okediji's own psychic reconnection to his long-lost ancestors strewn across the Atlantic and to those who survived in the New World.

Prominent tints of blue have dual signification. Not only is the deep Atlantic alluded to, but also the pain at the root of African American blues music, as suggested by the collision of blue with its complement, orange. Here is the Middle Passage experienced through Yoruba eyes, now opened to the deeper aspects of that passage.