Afriboy

New drawings for sale at afriboy.com

2011-02-24T00:24:00.001+01:00

Hi,

My name is Mark, I'm a friend of Orokie and I am maintening the site http://www.afriboy.com/ .

You might be aware that Orokie has got glaucoma, and to raise money to save his sight by a surgical operation, he is putting on sale a serie of drawings and 2 notebooks.

Artworks on sale at http://www.afriboy.com/galleries/artshop/

The prices are indicative, based on the prices of previous sales, the point being also that Orokie will need to raise a bit more than Euros 7'000 for the surgery...

Please let us know if interested by some of his drawings.

Cheers

Mark

MY BAD

2009-12-13T11:30:00.000+01:00

Reemerging from out-of-connection world soon... Sorry about that.

Mille et un Soleils6/One Thousand Suns and a Sun6: Fish!

2009-11-15T09:24:00.003+01:00

Pour étranges qu’aient été tous les phénomènes décrits jusque là, j’en avais vu de plus surprenants par le passé. Mais je dois reconnaître que je ne m’étais jamais de ma vie trouvé dans un endroit qui ne semblait accepter qu’une seule couleur, et par ailleurs, je ne pouvais oublier le sens des convenances, dans quelque situation que je me trouvasse. Bien que ce nocher branchu fût un être singulier, il était probable qu’il avait un géniteur et une génitrice, peut-être tout un village d’êtres branchus, et il devait, par conséquent, avoir reçu une éducation quelconque. Je m’éclaircis donc la gorge pour me présenter le plus cérémonieusement possible dans les circonstances données (C'est-à-dire que cet individu me présentait toujours son postérieur).

Après que j’eus accompli cette formalité, je vis une sorte de feuille choir lentement de l’une des branchioles du nocher, et atterrir précisément dans mon giron. C’était apparemment une note, que je m’empressai de lire. Voici ce qu’elle portait :

« Bonjour passager. Je suis Triokolo

Si tu te plains du bleu qui est ton lot

Remarque que le bleu est la teinte du monde

Elle colore les cieux et les ondes

C’est la carnation de la planète

Et aussi celle des nuits de fête.

Mais de toute façon, passager,

Nous ne faisons qu’y passer.

Une fois les dangers traversés ce soir,

Je t’amuserai de mon histoire. »

Décidément, quel être intéressant ! Ces branchioles sont donc une espèce d’organe de communication ! Quelle autre surprise me réservait-il ?

Mais en lisant la note, j’avais remarqué quelque chose qui avait fait passer une ombre sur mon cœur. Je la relus rapidement. Ah ! oui, voici : « Une fois les dangers traversés ce soir. »

Des dangers ? Que voulait dire cela ? Et de plus, étant donné que tout était bleu, par quels signes saurais-je que le temps passe et le soir tombe ? Je vis d’un coup tout l’inconfort de cette situation, qui confinait au cauchemar : s’attendre à un danger inconnu qui devait survenir à un moment insensible. Je me sentis devenir fort malheureux, et m’apprêtait à demander à mon compagnon rimailleur d’éclaircir ma lanterne lorsque, justement, je vis à l’horizon devant nous une intense lumière blanche qui mangea tout le bleu – et de cette lumière jaillirent des choses qui paraissaient vivantes et malveillantes. J’eus assez de présence d’esprit pour me rendre compte que c’était des poissons. Du moins ils en donnaient l’impression – mais ils étaient fort gros, comme gonflés, et leur tête ressemblait à une gueule affamée, vorace.

Nouvelle note chéant – et le nocher bondit dans la lumière, transperçant d’un bâton aigu un poisson. Tandis qu’il se livrait au carnage, je lus :

« Passager, admire les poissons de Séléné

Dont une morsure pourra te mener

A travers des fièvres éternelles

Vers une mort faite de larmes et de fiel. »

For all their strangeness, the phenomena I have thus far described were not stranger than things I had seen in the past. But I must confess I had never been in a place which seems to accept only one color, and besides, whatever the situation, I always was keen on the sense of common courtesy. Even though that boatman with branches and buds was a peculiar type, he likely had parents of both sexes, and perhaps an entire village of like-shaped personages, and so he must have some basic principles of good manners. Clearing my throat, I introduced myself as ceremoniously as possible under the existing circumstances (must I remind everyone that I was still facing the behind of that person?)

After I was done with that formality, I saw a kind of leaf dropping slowly down from one of the smaller branches of the boatman, and landing on my lap. That looked like a note, and I read on. Here’s what it said:

Greetings passenger, Triokolo’s my name

If this blue all around seems all too lame

Observe that for the globe ‘tis the hue

Skies and all water are things blue

This is indeed the planet’s color

The glow night revelers look for.

But, consider passenger that, anyway

Here we are only making our way.

Once the evening’s perils are left behind

My fun story I’ll bring to your mind.

This is decidedly a most interesting being. So those back branches are organs of communication of sorts! Did he have other surprises like that one in store?

But while reading the note, something had cast a slight shadow over my heart. I read it again, quickly. Oh, here it was: “Once the evening’s perils are left behind.”

Perils? What the heck did that mean? And besides, given that everything was blue, how was I to tell that night was falling? I suddenly realized the difficulty of my situation, which verged on the nightmarish: to expect an unknown danger which was set to spring at an unknown moment. I felt I was becoming rather miserable, and was about to ask my rhyming companion to enlighten me a bit when, precisely, I saw rising at the horizon an intense white light which ate up all the blue – and from that light pounced things that looked living and nasty. I was sufficiently alert to see that they were fish. Or they looked so – but they were fat, as if inflated, and their head looked like a famished, voracious jaw.

New note dropping – and the boatman jumped up in the light, piercing one fish with a pointed stick. As he was thus performing quite a massacre, I read:

Passenger, the fish of Selene do admire

One bite would entrench you in the mire

Of fevers eternal whose bitter ties

Will drag you down to tearful demise

Orokie in Mali?

2009-11-12T10:57:00.003+01:00

By way of apology for long interruption: was travelling in Mali, where I chanced upon this wall drawing in the Old City of Mopti. You'd swear Orokie was there. Look out for next posting...

Mille et un Soleil 5/One Thousand Sun and a Sun 5: Bleu

2009-10-26T00:32:00.008+01:00

Cette exclamation de Soko était pour le moins inattendue, et je n’étais pas sûr qu’elle s’adressait

à moi. Je regardai instinctivement autour de moi, mais il n’y avait personne à qui ces mots avaient pu s’adresser, et d’ailleurs tout le monde

me regardait à présent avec un air pensif qui semblait souligner que j’étais en cause.

« Veuillez vous expliquer – qu’ai-je fait ? », fis-je en me tournant de nouveau vers Soko, mais ce dernier ne semblait plus s’intéresser à moi. Il retirait ses vêtements. Son visage était calme, on dirait qu’il n’était plu

s Soko, il n’avait plus ce caractère vulgaire et impatientant, il était remplacé par un autre lui-même, qui me parut tout à fait séduisant et tout à fait intimidant. Néanmoins, je tâchais de ne pas me laisser faire.

« Dites donc ? Vous pensez que c’est le moment de prendre un bain ? » dis-je brusquement.

En réponse de quoi, Soko :

« Tu vas entrer dans le monde bleu, et suivre le nocher branchu. »

Et avant que j’ai pu faire les remarques qui s’imposaient devant ce charabia, Soko fit un signe de ses doigts, comme pour tracer un quadrilatère, et une fenêtre bleue apparut soudain sous ses yeux, un beau carré si intensément bleu que tout autour l’air lui-même parut se fondre dans l’ocre de la terre, et tirer vers un brun uni. Soko regarda intensément cette fenêtre, sans mon étonnement, mais avec une attente très vive dans son corps vibrant. La fenêtre s’élargit soudain, et dans le temps d’un sou

ffle, tout, absolument tout devint bleu autour de nous, et Soko s’agitait à faire des bizarres manipulations avec un bizarre instrument qui, en y regardant de près s’avéra être l’antique quantificateur – l’abaque. Les doigts agiles de Soko coururent sur les billes avec une prestesse singulière… Et soudain je me rendis compte que ce garçon, en fin de compte, n’était vraiment pas Soko. En fait, c’était celui-là même, le garnement qui semblait avoir transformé un reptile monstrueux en colibri. Comme je ne me retenais jamais de poser des questions, bien que personne ne parût juger nécessaire de me répondre, je demandai au garnement ce qu’il avait fait de Soko. Je ne pense pas qu’il m’ait entendu. Il disposait à présent des grands livres noirs sur le vide bleu, les ouvrit, et se mit à les feuilleter, cherchant manifestement une page en particulier. Il étala soudain les deux livres grand ouverts, et de l’un d’entre eux surgit avec un bruit de papier crissant une grande et longue chose creuse, une pirogue couleur d’eau de source, arborant un joyeux petit fanion – tandis

que de l’autre bouquin s’éleva, avec le même bruit, un être bleu au dos hérissée de branches festonnées d’écriteaux, de buissons de gribouillis.

Le garnement éclata de rire, et soudain, il ne fut plus là. Le nocher branchu se tint débout devant moi, immobile, dans la pirogue, les mains croisées par derrière, sous les magnifiques lobes de ses fesses. Je compris l’invitation. Je montais dans la pirogue,et me sentis aussi devenir tout bleu...

That exclamation from Soko was rather unexpected, and I wasn’t sure it was directed at me. I instinctively looked around, but there

was no one to whom these words would have been directed, and for that matter, everyon

e now was eyeing me in a pensive stare, which seemed to stress that I was the interesting object here.

“Would you explain

– what have I done?” I said, turning again to Soko, but the latter did no longer look interested in me. He was undressing. His face was calm, he didn’t look like he was Soko, he had lost the vulgar and the irritating in his cha

racter, he was replaced by another of his selves, who was truly seductive and quite intimidating. Regardless, I didn’t want him to get the best of me.

“Say sir, you think this is time for bathing?”, said I roughly.

Soko’s reply was this:

“You’re going to enter the Blue Universe, and follow

the branch-adorned boatman.”

And before I could make any observations that such gobbledygook deserved, Soko waived his fingers, as if drawing a four-sided figure, and a blue window suddenly materialized under his gaze, a square so intensely blue that all around the air itself seemed to blend into the ochre of the earth, and to turn into solid brown. Soko stared fixedly at the window, without my puzzlement, but with some lively anticipation permeating his excited body. Then all of sudden the window widened, and, in a whiff, everything became totally cerulean around us, and Soko was now busy performing bizarre manipulations with a bizarre device, which, after closer look, turned out to be the ancient quantifier – the abacus. Soko’s nimble fingers ran over the little balls with an outlandish quickness… And that’s where I realized that this was not in fact Soko, not really. This was that same little rascal who appeared to have transmogrified a mammoth reptile into a humming-bird. Since I had developed the habit of asking questions which no one ever thought worthwhile to answer, I asked that scallywag what he had done to Soko. I don’t think he heard me. He was now putting up large black books against the blue void, opened them, and browsed through them, evidently in quest of a certain page. Then he spread them wide open, and from one of them a big, long, hollow thing, a spring-water-colored dugout sporting a gay little pennant, emerged, in a crisp hiss of paper – and from the other, with the same sound, a blue being with his back bristling with branches scalloped with notices, thickets of scribbling.

The little rascal laughed, and suddenly, was gone. The branch-adorned boatman stood up in front of me, motionless, the hands crossed in his back, under the alluring bowl of his buttocks. I got the word. I climbed into the dugout, and felt I was turning all indigo, me too…

Mille et un Soleil 4/One Thousand Sun and a Sun 4: Dancing

2009-10-19T10:45:00.010+02:00

Regardant dans la direction qu’il m’indiquait, je vis… Mais d’abord je dois noter ceci, car c’est vraiment des plus curieux. Jusqu’à ce moment là, où je vis ce que je vis, je n’avais pas entendu cette musique chamarrée et polyrythmique qui, à présent, devenait presque le seul bruit que j’entendais. C’était comme si la musique avait été suscitée par le danseur. Une parfaite silhouette de garçon noir, de garçon africain, virevoltant avec élan et énergie, dans une de ces danses qui ressemblent aussi – dans l’exacte coordination des mouvements – à une gymnastique pleine de grâce.

« C’est la danse des trois jambes », dit Soko.

J’allais remarquer que c’était un nom absurde pour une danse aussi harmonieuse, lorsqu’il m’apparut clairement que le danseur semblait en effet user de trois jambes – et puis je compris que cette troisième jambe, ma foi, était, pour dire le tout, une fort belle jambe, et épiçait au mieux cette danse fantastique.

Mais au fur et à mesure qu’il dansait ainsi, le danseur s’éloignait, et avec lui, la merveilleuse musique qui nimbait ses pirouettes d’une si noble chaleur. Cette vision, véritablement, remplissait d’adoration, et on ne voulait pas qu’elle finît. On voudrait suivre le danseur sur cette piste mystérieuse où il glissait, mais, comme dans ses rêves de nuit chaude où l’on voudrait courir, mais où l’on a les pieds liés par on ne sait quels invisibles cordages, on reste pourtant sur place, immobile, effaré.

« Nchoupa… », murmurai-je.

C’était donc ça. Un être qu’on ne connait que par le bonheur dont il vous emplit, et dont on ressent soudain un besoin infini. Pas vraiment un dieu – il n’est pas question ici de terreur

et de majesté. Mais autour de moi, chacun souriait, tout semblait fun, et un des garçons alluma un boombax, qui émit une version assourdie de la musique que nous venions d’entendre. S’étreignant lui-même de contentement, il se mit à faire la danse des trois jambes avec un grand sourire.

Je me tournais vers Soko, et bien que me disant que je ne devais pas lui dire ce que je m’apprêtais à lui dire, je le lui dis quand même :

« Je veux rencontrer Nchoupa. »

Je m’attendais à tout, sauf à ce que Soko me répondit, avec un air calme et fatal :

« C’est donc toi ! »

Looking in the direction he indicated, I saw… But first I must point this out, for it is something most curious. Up to when I saw what I saw, I hadn’t heard that ornamental and polyrhythmic music which had now grown into the only sound that I could hear. It is as if the music were woven out of the steps of the dancer. The perfect figure of a black boy, of an African boy, twirling eagerly and vigorously, in one of those dances which – owing to the precise coordination of every move – look like some stylish piece of calisthenics.

“That’s the three-legs dance,” said Soko.

I was about to observe that the name was not too suitable for such an elegant dancing, when it clearly appeared to me that the dancer in fact seemed to use three legs – and I made out that the said third leg was, I own, a very pretty one, and it spiced up very well that splendid ballet.

But as he was dancing, the dancer was moving away, and with him, the wonderful music that showered his pirouettes with such noble warmth. The vision verily filled one with adulation, and one would beg for it never to end. One would love to follow the dancer on that mysterious floor where he glided forth, but, like in those dreams of a hot night in which one wants to run and yet one is tied up by invisible ropes, one stays put, inert, upset.

“Nchupa”, I whispered.

So here it was. Somebody you know only through the happiness with which he fills you, and for whom you feel an infinite need. Not really a god – there is no question here of terror and majesty. But around me, everyone was smiling, everything seemed fun, and one boy turned on a boombax, which let out a faded version of the music that we just heard. Embracing his own body in a fit of joy, he started to do the three-legs dance, grinning.

I turned to Soko, and, even as I was thinking that I shouldn’t say what I was about to say, I said it anyway.

“I wish to meet Nchupa.”

I expected everything, but not what Soko respo

nded, in a tone quiet and fatal:

“So that’s you !”

Interruption

2009-10-03T11:04:00.002+02:00

I am travelling until Oct. 13, and thought I had brought with me my Orokie folder, the inspiration for the Alif Shams wal Shams. But it isn't in my drive. So there is a two-week interruption in the story. I will try compensating with something else in-between. My apologies.

Mille et un soleils 3/One Thousand Suns and One 3. Like a Flower

2009-09-27T10:42:00.003+02:00

A ce moment, il se produisit une chose… Malheureusement, je ne peux m’en porter témoin véridique. Je l’aurais bien voulu, et peut-être même que, ma foi, j’aurais pu me permettre de mentir là-dessus. Après tout, même si je n’ai pas vu exactement dans quels détails la chose s’est produite – à cause de la vitesse phénoménale de l’événement – je peux tout de même dire que j’étais sur place, et si seulement j’avais prêté attention au bon moment… Donc je pourrais dire que j’ai tout vu, et celui qui me contesterait à cet égard trouverait à qui parler. Mais bon : à quoi cela servirait-il ? Le fait est que je n’ai pas vu la chose se produire au moment précis où elle se produisait, et le tout est donc pour moi comme un de ces numéros de prestidigitation dont on n’est jamais assez rapide et éveillé pour deviner le « truc » (sauf qu’ici, il n’y avait pas de « truc »).

Le fait est qu’en dépit de l’effroi que me donnait le spectacle du lézard géant, j’avais senti comme une autre présence derrière moi… Vous savez comme c’est, lorsqu’on est dans ces états d’alerte ! Et si c’était un autre monstre, qui sait… Donc, voilà, je me retournai subito presto, juste pour vérifier. Et là, je vis tous ces garçons du lac, les baigneurs, alignés là-haut, debout, tout nus, et nous observant en chuchotant entre eux. J’étais étonné du spectacle, et gardai un instant le regard fixé sur eux. Mais ne voilà-t-il pas qu’ils se mirent tous à applaudir et à faire des huées bruyantes et à gigoter – et quand je me retournai vers l’endroit où se trouvaient le crocodile et le garnement, eh bien, je ne vis plus que ce dernier en train d’échanger un regard des plus langoureux avec un oiseau rouge et bleu, qu’il tenait comme une fleur.

« Est-ce le croco ??? » m’exclamai-je, assez bêtement, je dois dire.

Sur quoi Soko déboula à mes côtés, qui se mit à me crier dessus avec une excitation vraiment excessive :

« Alors ? Alors ? Vous avez vu Nchoupa ? Vous l’avez vu ? »

« Comment ? », fis-je, lorsqu’il m’en laissa l’occasion : « C’est ce petit mec…

euh… bon lanceur de poids

et un peu magicien, apparemment, mais… là…. » (Je tâchai d’exprimer ma déception, sans tout à fait savoir quoi penser en fait.)

« Non ! Regardez ! Regardez ! », fit Soko avec impatience.

Then something happened… Unfortunately, I cannot claim that I am a truthful witness of that event. I very much wish I could, and well, I might be entitled to lie on the whole business. After all, even though I did not see in what exact details the thing occurred – due to the extraordinary speed of the event – I can still affirm that I was there, and if only I had looked on at the right moment… So, I might claim that I’d seen it all happening, and he who would dare contradict would soon find reasons to regret it. But what the trouble for? The fact is, I didn’t see it happening at the precise moment it happened, and the whole thing is therefore for me like those prestidigitation tricks that we are never sufficiently quick-minded and attentive to debunk (but there was nothing to debunk in that event anyway).

The fact is, in spite of the terror I was feeling before the giant lizard, I had felt something else behind me… You know how it is, when one is in those states of vigilance! And what if there was another monster, who knows…

So there, I looked back quick and fast, just to check. And there, I saw all the boys of the lake, the bathers, standing in line, stark naked and watching us while whispering amongst themselves. I was a bit taken by the show, and looked at them for a short while. Upon what, they started to clap, to jeer noisily, to push and shove – and when I turned my attentions back to where the crocodile and the brat stood, well, I saw nothing else but the brat, who was now exchanging a languid stare with a little red and blue bird, which he held in his hand as if it were a flower.

“Is that the croco???” I yelled, rather idiotically,

I must say.

And then here was Soko at my side, who started shouting at me with a rather unnecessary agitation:

“So! So ! Have you seen Nchupa ? Have you ?.

“What ?” said I, when he let me speak : “Is it that youngin… huh… a good weight thrower and a bit of a magician, it looks like, but… well…” (I was trying to express my disappointment, but didn’t know what to think in fact.)

“No! Look! Look !”, said Soko, impatiently.

Mille et un soleils 2/One Thousand Suns and One 2. Lézard Géant

2009-09-21T16:47:00.003+02:00

Là-dessus, Soko (j’avais entendu une personne qui passait l’appeler ainsi) se redressa de tout son long et me demanda si j’étais d’accord.

« Que vous me montriez cette chose, être, entité ? Certainement, car de toute façon… »

Je me tus car il mit un doigt sur sa bouche et fit soudain une drôle de tête, comme s’il écoutait quelqu’un d’autre en train de lui parler. Tout concentré, tout ouïes. Je supposai que c’était sa manière histrionesque de refléchir, ou de paraître refléchir.

Mais j’entendis aussi, finalement, car un silence progressif s’installait, et ce bruit nouveau agissait comme une ombre qui couvrait un terrain jonché d’étincelantes particules. Je l’entendais mieux parce qu’il tuait tout autre bruit. Les garçons se turent un à un, et même les oiseaux, les insectes. Seul le lac respirait, comme la brise caressait son corps lustré.

Le nouveau était curieux, un bruit produit par quelque chose de lourd et de lent, oui, lourd, lent, mais aussi, puissant, si puissant que c’en était – terrifiant. Je n’avais pas vu ce qui faisait ce bruit sourd et lourd, mais je savais d’instinct que c’était quelque chose qui intimait respect et épouvante. Autour de nous, certains s’éloignaient lentement à reculons, et ceux qui ne bougeaient pas avaient pris l’immobilité de morceaux de bois mort.

Je sursautai. Venait de bondir devant moi un garçon qui dansait en tenant l’image sculptée d’un crocodile pourvu d’un majestueux phallus. C’était fort inattendu, et je ne pus m’empêcher d’éclater de rire. Soko se tourna vers moi, la bouche grand ouverte, tandis que la danse du garçon au crocodile devenait de plus en plus endiablée. Il lança la statuette de saurien bien haut dans le ciel.

Elle partit comme une vrille, et retomba très, très loin, vraiment très loin. Au beau milieu du lac en fait. Cela me coupa toute envie de rire. Voilà ce à quoi je pensai, naturellement, en seulement cinq secondes, et sans autant de mots : « Si cette statue est partie aussi haut et est retombée en produisant un aussi puissant éclaboussis au milieu du lac, c’est qu’il doit être bien lourd ; si un garçon d’apparence aussi frêle a pu le projeter aussi loin et aussi puissamment, c’est qu’il s’agit, ma foi, d’un démon ! »

Mais le garçon dévalait le chemin caillouteux de la berge, et sans penser à ce que je faisais, je le suivis. C’était tout à fait irrésistible. D’ailleurs personne ne pensa à me retenir. Puis je vis le garçon accroupi à côté d’une espèce de monticule vert et gris, dont le haut, cependant, se releva, dont le bas se mut lentement, avec ce bruit là, ce fameux bruit, et je reconnus un lézard gigantesque, un crocodile qui devait peser, par là, cinq tonnes au bas mot, et dont la gueule s’ouvrit démesurément, s’apprêtant selon toute vraisemblance à croquer d’une bouchée l’imprudent garnement qui était allé lui titiller les naseaux. J’étais fort pressé de voir cette horreur se produire. Tout bonnement : « s’il le bouffe, il ne pourra pas me bouffer ! » Voilà ce que je pensai, ne me sentant pas hors de portée, d’autant que mes

jambes s’étaient refroidies totalement.

After which Soko (someone passing by just called him that) stood up hovering and asked if it was okay.“Okay to show me that thing, being, entity? Well, yes, since at any rate..."

I stopped talking, because he put a finger on his lips and looked suddenly quite weird, as if someone was whispering weird things to him. Very focused and attentive. To me, that was perhaps his histrionic way of thinking, or at least of looking as if he was thinking.

But finally, I heard it, because silence was gradually settling, and that new noise was feeling like a shadow swallowing a field lit with bright little bits. I could hear it better because it was killing all other noise. The boys, one by one, fell silent, and even birds and bugs. Only the lake breathed, as the breeze stroke its lustrous body.

The new sound was strange, a noise made by something bulky and slow, yes, bulky, sluggish, but also great, so great that it was – chilling. I hadn’t seen what was making that subdued, heavy sound, but I instinctively knew it was something which commanded respect and scare. Around us, some were slowly stepping back, and those who did not move took on the freeze of dead wood.

I was startled. In came leaping a boy who danced while holding high the sculpted image of a crocodile endowed with a glorious phallus. That was so unexpected that I went into a loud laughter. Soko looked at me, gaping, while the dancing of the crocodile boy turned wilder and wilder. He threw the saurian figurine high upward. It went like a gimlet, and fell down spinning very, very far, really too far. In the middle of the lake in fact. That did it for my laughter. Here’s what I thought, obviously in five seconds, and without so many words : “if that statue’s gone so high and fell down with such a huge splash in the middle of the lake, then it’s quite heavy ; and if that frail juvenile managed to throw it so far and powerfully, then I’d bet he’s some kind of demon.”

But said juvenile was now running down the cobbled path to the low bank of the lake, and, without thinking, I followed him. Unstoppable impulse. No one thought of holding me back anyway. Then I saw the boy squatting next to some sort of low mound, all green and gray, which, however, lifted its upper part, and whose lower part moved, with that sound, and I recognized a giant lizard, a crocodile who could weigh, oh, easily five tons minimum, and whose mouth opened wide, getting clearly ready to chomp on the careless brat who went and picked his nose. I was rather keen on beholding the horrific event. Well, to put it fair and square: “if he eats him, he won’t eat me!”, that’s what I thought, seeing that I wasn’t far from a strike and my legs had grown cold completely.

Mille et un soleils 1/One Thousand Suns and One 1. Nchoupa

2009-09-14T11:26:00.002+02:00

« Comment? Nooon? Vous

connaissez pas Nchoupa? »

Me parlait ainsi un échalas en blanc qui sentait le beurre de karité. On s’était vu au bord du lac. Le lac aux eaux si gonflées et lumineuses que parfois, on avait l’impression qu’il abritait le soleil – que ce que nous voyions dans le haut ciel était le reflet de l’astre aquatique qui nimbait son humide étendue de ces grands chatoiements. L’air était frais et clair, et les voix des garçons, entrelacées aux pépiements d’oiseaux aussi bavards, faisaient une musique joyeuse et rapide comme le ve

nt qui soufflait sur le lac. Et dans ces bruits, j’entendais souvent et toujours « Nchoupa ! » J’avais l’impression que même les oiseaux, en fait, n’arrêtaient pas : « Nchoupa --- chirrr --- Nchoupa --- chirrr… »

« Je vous assure », dis-je à l’échalas, le plus poliment du monde. « Je connais bien du monde dans bien de pays. Mais ce nom, Nchoupa, non, jamais je ne l’ai entendu. A vrai dire, je ne sais même pas ce qui s’appelle ainsi ? Est-ce une personne de sexe mâle, ou

de sexe femelle ? Est-ce une ville, un chien, un caillou ? »

L’échalas se gondola :

« Mais ! Mais les cailloux n’ont pas de nom ! »

Stupéfait par cette affirmation incongrue, je le regardai b

ien en face, et répondis (tout en gardant tout mon calme, comme vous pouvez vous y attendre) :

« Monsieur mon ami. Il y a des choses que je vous conterai bientôt, et vous jugerez par vous-même. En attendant, je vous demande tout simplement de répondre à ma question relative à Nchoupa. On dirait que c’est la divinité de ce lac, et je voudrais, si tel est le cas, lui rendre mes devoirs. Si ce n’est pas le cas, ma curiosité en serait d’autant plus fondée. »

« Oh ! » répondit l’échalas avec un franc sourire. « Je

vous montrerai Nchoupa. C’est encore mieux. »

“What the deuce? Well, okay, no, that I can’t believe, I mean that you don’t know him Nchupa? Nooo!”

There I was, listening to that elongated boy in white clothing who disseminated around him the scent of shea butter. We met on the bank of the lake. The lake with its powerful, glistening waters, which gave out the impression of holding the sun in hidden caves – so much so that what we were seeing high in the sky was in fact only a reflection of the watery star which suffused its humid expanses with immense glitters. The air was cool and clear, and the voices of boys, sprinkled with the songs of babbling birds – as babbling as them boys – was creating a kind of joyful and speedy music, very much akin to the breeze which was sweeping over the lake. And the noise that was thus turned out often and always reverberated with that “Nchupa!” I was under the impression that even the birds, in fact, were ceaselessly chirping “Nchupa --- chirrr--- Nchupa --- chirrr …”

“I assure you”, said I to the elongated lad, and this, most politely, “I know plenty of people in plenty of lands. But that name, Nchupa, it never hit my ears, no. Truth is, I can’t even imagine what bears that name. Is it a person, male or female? Or maybe a town, a dog, a pebble?

Lanky lad was smashed with laughter:

“How do you think a pebble got a name?”

Taken aback by the incongruity of his remark, I looked him right in the eye and retorted (while, as you may well suppose, keeping the utmost self-control):

“Dear my friend. There are things that I will shortly narrate to you, and then you will judge by yourself. Meanwhile, I quite simply ask you to respond to my question about Nchupa. One would think it is the divinity of this lake, and if so, then I would like to perform my duties. But if not, my curiosity is all the more justified.”

“Oh,” Elongated Lad uttered, grinning. “Let me show you Nchupa. That would be best!”

The Wounded Warrior

2009-09-10T17:35:00.005+02:00

Apparently, the health condition of Orokie is stabilising, and he is doing drawings again. He just sent me this one, "The Wounded Warrior":

In a hand written note accompanying the drawing, he is saying:

"Bonjour,
Help this wounded warrior to recover sight and health by passing on him sweet and positive vibrations,
Amen"

He has gone to his homeland for a few months to rest and repair his health, and should get surgical operation in December in Europe.

***

La santé d'Orokie semble s'être stabilisée, et il a recommencé à dessiner. Il vient de m'envoyer ce dessin, intitulé "Le guerrier blessé", avec une note disant:

"Bonjour,
Aidez ce guerrier blessé à recouvrer vision et santé en lui passant de douces et positives vibrations,
Amen"

Il est parti recharger ses batteries sur les bords du Lac Victoria, et devrait subir en décembre une opération en Europe.

Repair my spiritual engine:

Hope

2009-08-01T01:23:00.007+02:00

When Orokie e-mailed me 3 week ago (see post below ), this is what he sent me :

There is a last piece, yes, unfinished, and now you know why, that I began early this year at trying to make a fine piece that you could show to visitors and family guests. A suitable-for-minors piece, in the likes and style of old illustrations that artist did in exchange of a small metal coin for their Vatican Masters or Kings. As with most of all that stuff, it may show some aggession, call it violence, that I hope would not damage any pure mind brought up in dear Western Culture, where the good always defeats the bad - in school books illustrations at least - Even unfinished, I hope you will enjoy it and put it on any decent wall at your home. Even in one bathroom, why not? We are always to visit that room a few times a day. And properly placed, it may even show out the strength of my A+ on the mirror while you shave.

This is not just coming like this. Saint George, the birthday of Orokie, the Good fighting the Bad.

Orokie was doubting if the good would always defeat the bad...

His friends tried to help his mind getting positive, because "Yes, You Can !!"

Gradually, strength came, and 3 days ago I got :

Thanks, Bonjour. I was dancing pencil for you. Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bonjour.jpg !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Na Waoooo !!

Orokie fights again !!

Yesterday morning, he had appointment with his doctors, and here are the latest news :

Ophthalmologist was very happy and accepted my thesis that he shall be strong in his spirit, trust himself as the best Ophthalmologist and start helping his patients and do his job superbly good, also to help me.

Damaged optic nerve goes degenerating badly
but
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
at slower speed than before and
slower speed than Ophthalmologist wrote during last visit.

I am gaining extra time by being positive and strong in my spirit with the help of my friends

Thanks to all

I am fine and positive

Be good
Stay well

So, we all hope that Orokie will soon be OK,

Stay well, be good

Mark / a friend of Orokie

Heart breaking news - Orokie deeply needs help

2009-07-26T00:16:00.016+02:00

My name is Marc. Since ten years now, I am a friend of Orokie. 2 weeks ago, I received a mail from him. He told me the worst thing I could have ever imagined.
Orokie is badly needing our urgent help...

Let's first remember what happened :

In april 2006, Orokie went to Kenya to see his mother, who lives on an island of Lake Victoria. At that time, he disappeared, and during one and a half year we had no news from him.

A few days ago, here is how he explained me what happened :

quote

"I went to greet my mama.
It was some years ago, I was in Kenya, and the transport bus was taken by thugs who had booked as passengers, they picked guns from their bags and told the driver to go off the road.
We ended up in a clear in a forest where more armed thugs were ready to get all of the valuables. They even used dogs (Police!) trained to sniff banknotes hidden in socks, mama's bra, underwear... and soon we were all naked.
Some thugs got the ladies aside...
Maybe my attitude was not humble enough so they beated me badly and wounded me with machetes....
Traditional healer first, and later, medical doctors helped me...
I spent many many weeks unable to walk... Some friends made a fund raising after me and I came back to Barcelona where Hospital surgeries and cares made a wonderful work and later I was again able to walk on my own feet.
But from time to time the insides complain and also both the wounds and surgery scars ache in certain days.

Since those days my right eye can not see."

unquote

End of 2007 he re-appeared, and during a few months life seemed to be good with him, till the time, after the elections, troubles arose in Kenya, where is mother, brothers and friends are living.

He was very worried, sent all the money he could get to help his family an friends, then, as always when he feels bad, disappeared again for several months.

At Christmas 2008, he wrote about his deep depression:

quote

"The same as before yesterday. Nothing new. Just me plus papers and ink.

Mind was down down down after last year elections. Something is missing, like hope in the once much trusted politicians and leaders. That is why I keep a little small hope about my future.
Jobs are scarce and wanted by many in this period of economical struggle. Just twice I got the finals but was not elected for the post. Better people got the jobs.

Body is fine.
Physiotherapist did, does and will keep doing a great job all over my body."

When suffering bad breakdown, depressive shyness made me isolated from the outside world. Then, it was hard to make the first step".

unquote

End of February 2009, again, he disappeared.

Two weeks ago, he wrote me a message I would have preferred never to receive:

quote

With me, thanks to the gods of Love, I keep struggling with my faulty physical health, yet alive, and (keep it secret), wonderfully able to produce sperm plenty the minute full moon appears on dark sky in the night.

Faulty physical health. It all is inside.

Some say because after being badly wounded that day by thugs, the good will doctors that were to help me, sadly, when it was quite late, they could not complete their aimed fair job, leaving potencial risks, yes, that now come and gone without previous notice.

Some say even my mind may be confused, never able to persist on the scheduled recovery plan.

Maybe. May be sometimes I have given up.

But now the gods of love call me back into struggle, and I fight my body for a higher level of decent health.

When tears flowed non stop, like waters from snowy mountain, I thought it was my spirit continually thanking you for your beautiful help (thanks merçi).

Tears kept flowing like waters from a snowy mountain, and Ophthalmologist did his plumber job, by clearing the obstructed drainage channels in my eyes by using what it seemed to me a thin peace of copper line from one computer cable.

That day Ophthalmologist went on proceeding with further checkings. He seemed to enjoy very much when he began using all of his Ophthalmological tools and artifacts on me.

Then to afterwards show me a picture on his computer flat screen. Wow! It lloked like a Nasa photograph of mighty Sun. So orange bright.
But it was my left eye.

- See? Optical nerve is very damaged.

- Glaucoma Horribilis?
(My late Baba suffered from Glaucoma Horribilis since early age).

- Not sure.There are not specific clues yet.
He did not mention any high level of inner pressure in that eye...

But on next check, Ophthalmologist confirmed my optical nerve was even worse than before.
He mentioned "sheer forces" as the cause of such a horrible deterioration of the optical nerve.

"Sheer forces". Not bad a theme to wonder about in the dark of the night.

Yet my path is clear. It is just a matter of a few weeks time.

I will be needing very soon either "une canne blanche et un chien formé (European Union), ou un garçon qui me guide de la main (Homeland)" (a white cane and a formed dog (European Union), or a boy who guides me by the hand (homeland)).

I am not able to dance ink on paper anymore.
Well, I have tried, but even me I can not understand, neither clearly see the traces.

It has been hard for me to accept Ophthalmoligist's veredict but I had to submit, after spending my last coins on Barcelona most fantabolous, fashionable and private ophthalmologic clinic.

So that in the end I behaved Western Culture boy using my remaining banknotes in search of hope.
But it showed as those lotteries where plenty of unsuccessful people keep spending their few coins.

Now that I am fine with me, peaceful again and ready to spend my last hours of dim light in whatever good actions I am able to do.

With me it is fine.
The only thing it is now my million shilling coins question: Would me see Victoria Lake Sunset again?

Well, it does not hurt me anymore.
I told you.
I have summited, surrended and am ready to face the neverending darkness of night even, oddly enough, when it is day time.

Cause Sun would warm me the same as before, be it under European Union social care or (my prayers) telling stories under a large tree at homeland, next market, entertaining people and also, as coins would be dropped from time to time in the metal tin by my feet, earning my maize, with the precious sound of solidarity singing loudly in my ears.
Maize that mama would cook for me whith immense love, and also, sometimes, may be adding a piece of fresh proteine from our lake or from her well kept poultry hens.

Please understand.
I had to wait for peaceness of mind before being able to talk to you, cause I wanted to tell in sweet mode, with love from my spirit singing these words."

unquote

Today news are not encouraging, and apparently his optical nerve is not improving.

We cannot abandon such a wonderful man, so brilliant and generous. Please help him.

We have put on-line on his site some drawings for sale, and you can make some donation too.

The art of the cartoon 10:

2008-09-03T00:03:00.003+02:00

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
'What shall we ever do?'

The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

T.S.Eliot.

0 0 0 0 that Orokianian beat--

It's so erotic

So democratic

"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"

I shall rush naked and swim the lake

With my shorts down so. And tomorrow? And tomorrow!

What shall we ever do?"

Tea with milk before we sleep.

And if the moon is full, a game all night.

Yes, we shall play a game of chess,

Riding the night and all the stars whilst listening for a knock upon the door.

Art of the cartoon 9:

2008-09-02T23:47:00.002+02:00

Art of the cartoon 8:

2008-09-01T21:34:00.003+02:00

Closing of this blog.

2008-08-31T22:49:00.008+02:00

Since this blog was opened in December 2007 many people have visited it. Approximately, 21, 000 have passed through Orokie's blogs; 66% of these, however, have selected to look at blogger. Some have been kind enough to leave comments, all of which have made valuable reading and shown the range of readers attracted by Orokie's art. Readers have come from 800 cities across the world. Thank you to all those people who took the time to view Orokie's art. Among the many, there are some who deserve special mention. These are the readers who come daily to Orokie's blog, sometimes more than twice a day, to read, or see if there is any news of Orokie. Sadly, there is no news of Orokie. I have tried to contact his so-called close friends, but they have been of no help whatsoever, more concerned with what Orokie might do for them (as an artist) than what they might do for him (as a human being). There seems little point in carrying on with this blog. I did ask for news of Orokie (on this blog) but there was not a single reply. I fail to believe that out of the many who come to this site no one knows what this silence means. The blog will stay open for the next 72 hours, then it will be deleted. Some older posts have been re-posted in their original place, to give a final, fuller view of Orokie's work.

The art of the cartoon 7:

2008-08-30T21:06:00.001+02:00

The art of the cartoon 6:

2008-08-29T11:36:00.005+02:00

Quiero que el aire fuerte de las noche mas honda
quite flores y letras del arco donde duermes,
y un nino negro anuncie a los blancos del oro
la llegada del reino de la espiga.

The art of the cartoon 5:

2008-08-28T19:35:00.001+02:00

The art of the cartoon 4:

2008-08-27T09:53:00.008+02:00

The art of the cartoon 3:

2008-08-26T22:57:00.001+02:00

The art of the cartoon 2:

2008-08-26T12:56:00.003+02:00

The art of the cartoon 1:

2008-08-25T21:14:00.003+02:00

Black Art.

2008-08-17T19:34:00.004+02:00

Back in June, this installation caused a stir in the US. (Strangely, this was its second showing, but suddenly it became a security threat). Lots of views raged around the installation. Was it art? Should art be political? Was this abusing free speech? Was the closing of the installation censorship? But what does this image actually say?

Running along the side of the wall there are two hard black penises. They point, like arrows, a visual joke, towards a sign:

ONCE YOU GO BARACK.

Of course, this puns on the sexual saying “Once you go black, you never turn back.” Black is replaced by Barack. Barack becomes the word Black…becomes the sexual fetish. The imagery is pure Mapplethorpe as are the sentiments expressed. Black political power is sexual power. Sexual power is the Black man's attraction to voters. The installation claims the same thought as Mapplethorpe’s work. It uncovers the Black male. Exposes him. Reduces a human individual to common basics: a hard, erect thug.

This imagery caused offence. Yet, it is exactly the imagery which sells today. The thug stereotype pulls in punters across the internet. The Black male figure is de-sensitised. In recent months, this had come to concern Orokie. He saw sex used as a weapon in Kenya. He saw sexual thuggery at work. (He painted his feelings in images he wished to keep private because he felt the hurt intensely). He could see how looking at the Black male as a thug also involved the viewer in visual thuggery. The sexual gaze is not innocent. How we see and look at others does matter. In his art, Orokie seeks different vision, a humanising vision. The messages sent by art must be responsible. This is not an act of puritanism, rather an act of respect for the male body, spirit and soul.

Orokie: Blue Period.

2008-08-14T23:50:00.004+02:00

Icarus

2008-08-12T20:47:00.004+02:00

Western version

African version.

Ganymede, Orokie's African view.

2008-08-06T11:52:00.009+02:00

Modern view C21.

Orokie, of course!

Traditional view C18.

The image of Ganymede, cupbearer to Zeus/Jupiter has fascinated painters and sculptors for centuries. The images of this myth vary considerably. But all show one thing: a power realtionship. In some, Ganymede holds power and Zeus/Jupiter in the form of an eagle is passive, drinking from a bowl held by the young male. In others Zeus wields power and Ganymede is helplessly caught. There are images which suggest balance, in these man and god stand side by side. All of these images shows what lies within the mythology, the borderline bewteen rape and rapture, how the mind is caught by desire. Most images portray the raising of Ganymede to Olympus as a personal struggle between man and god...the struggle for godhead inside man. Orokie's Ganymede takes another view. Africa/Ganymede chases USA/Eagle. This is a political allegory in which Africa (more specifically Kenya) succumbs to Imperial power in the hope of elevation, of salvation from its troubles. Orokie's perspective is an interesting one. His watercolour shows the size of the male body: he draws away from the tradition that shows Ganymede as a child. This is a man, with weight, making a weighty decision. Seen from a distance, the eagle seems small, a minor power to be trusted. The figure lifted in ecstacy defies gravity, unaware of the real power and the bargain that has been made-- the price of such freedom. Often the backgrounds also carry meaning. Jupiter was the thunder god and Ganymede disappears into a turbulent sky. (The background becomes a gloss on the myth-- it shows that the power rests with Jupiter). Orokie's sky does not show the sky of Jupiter. Orokie's sky is painted as a neutral blue and suggests the blue of hope, a transparency that might not be true.

The Light of Orokie.

2008-08-03T17:30:00.003+02:00

Watercolour aims for the luminous.

A good watercolourist keeps the light.

This is true of Orokie's work.

He keeps the light alive in his watercolour...in the flesh of those he paints.

His work shines like that of Winslow Homer, one of the first to watercolour the Black male and give the Black male heroic status.

The Artist's Compass

2008-08-01T16:41:00.003+02:00

Anyone want to sail with Orokie?
Where is the ship now?

Turbator.

2008-07-27T12:34:00.007+02:00

Still no news has arrived about Orokie. But I will keep his blog open in his absence, hoping that news will come soon.

This picture was completed recently by Orokie. (Just before the silence). The picture shows much of what was on his mind.

He was talking (at this time) about his early education at boarding school in Africa. He wrote about the school’s repressive regime, artistically and sexually. (A regime inherited from White male colonialism). These view points clearly enter into the first level of the joke. “Boarding Dorm Fav”.

Then, there is a second level. A picture of an up-and-coming model from Sierra Leone with large boots, whose over-sized boot straps resemble wings, is turned into Hermes/Mercury, god of trade and artists. Orokie’s cartoon makes fun of Western modelling and its commodity fetishism…which includes the Black male model.

And the third level introduces something else that kept flying through Orokie’s mind at this time: the African Hermes, the trickster, the left-hand/sinister side of maleness. Hermes makes sharp and wicked puns…” Help them to come good”. This has always been a character of Orokie's satirical art. Turbator, troubled, isn't far removed from Master-bator...a familiar Orokie sexual pun.

Like the fake product, Orokie’s humour varnishes and strips away layers of repression in the name of freedom.

Lines

2008-07-07T22:19:00.000+02:00

Before the recent silence, Orokie sent this drawing through the mail. It came with a thought: “Perhaps, you might like to dance colours within the lines.” How those words seemed typical of him. Dance. Within lines. Yet break lines. Do something new. Against the lines of convention.

It was interesting to see the drawing for Narcissus I. It brought back many memories. It recalled the early talks we had, the first images of Narcissus, the photographs which Orokie transformed, bringing dead images alive with his own knowledge of the Black male body. A new Narcissus grew. At first, the lost penis was not there. Then Orokie added it…as a naughty joke…but such also added another depth to Narcissus. The inked drawing became a drawing about Black male self-discovery: a self awakening to an alter-ego, the other half (of the androgyne). Somehow, in this work, Orokie captured the sexual longing of a brother for a brother, Black for Black, infusing the drawing with a mythological and historical dimension. No longer did Narcissus merely seek himself selfishly. Instead, he sought for the true lover that eluded him…the other made by his dreams, not the Other manufactured by an alienating history.

Putting paint into Orokie’s drawing was a frightening act. There was the danger of obliteration, that paint might destroy pencil line, that the minor hand might not follow the hand of the master. Truly, there was a thrill in painting, in dancing with Orokie. It was an act close to Eros. As Orokie new when he set the challenge. Orokie’s spirit was felt in the energised tracing of lines.

The final painting, Narcissus II is not a copy of Orokie. He said: “Show me your technique, new things.” Narcissus II is an hommage to Orokie. And that is how it should be.

Narcissus II

2008-07-01T23:05:00.000+02:00

Last message from Orokie.

2008-06-30T06:51:00.001+02:00

Keep Hoping

2008-06-23T22:49:00.002+02:00

No news is good news. So it is said. No news in this case seems to be neither good nor bad. I would rather go on hoping that all is well than know otherwise. I would rather know the truth than live in a state of troubled imagination. I guess I speak for the many who read and value Orokie's art. But let us go on hoping that something will become clear soon. And while we wait, here is a new work by Orokie. One that he painted before the sudden silence. Enjoy, remember, and hope.

No news.

2008-05-09T21:57:00.003+02:00

Unfortunately, it has not been possible to contact Orokie for 11 days. Have no idea if this is good or bad. Emails go unanswered and texts. Will post news if there is any soon.

Fishing for the spirit.

2008-05-04T21:11:00.000+02:00

African Justice.

2008-04-26T21:20:00.004+02:00

Should art be political?
No.

Can art be political?
Yes.

How can art and politics fit together?
As propaganda (from Latin, to propogate)... by growing meaning, where the message is all important--message without argument.
As dissemination (from Latin, to seed)...by spreading information, where the message can be challenged.
As vision (from Latin, to see)...by showing ideas, where meaning works in harmony with symbols, where the message is transfused (like living blood).

Can the artist who draws the human body do so without touching body politics?
Perhaps.
But my art reaches out to touch, to paint the politics of the body, and the mind inside the physical.
Often, my art is political in two ways: it offers, through the body, a vision of the body politic, the dream that might be.

Homoerotic Museum.

2008-04-20T10:47:00.015+02:00

Oberholster, Bravo, Simonson, McCarthy.

Andrej Koymasky and his lover, Matt Koymasky, have a big presence on the web. Andrej and Matt have an internet home about themselves and gay history. (This is in English, French and Italian). They also have The Homoerotic Museum which looks at gay art through time and space.

The Black male body does appear in this museum, but not greatly: that is the way of modern art. Though some famous paintings of the Black male form, by gay artists, do not appear in the Homoerotic museum, such as Philpot’s domestic portraits, in the UK, and Tchelitchew’s Black male study, in the USA, there are some fine examples by Bravo, McCarthy, Simonson and Oberholster. (Richard’s work, here, sadly, is the usual distasteful pornograpic view). Now, they have added 15 of my pictures, which makes me very happy, for now there is a room devoted to a Black gay artist that is all about Black male beauty. Thank you, for doing this, Andrej, and for your kind emails…and good luck with the future!

Orokie.

Double Horizon.

2008-04-17T22:52:00.002+02:00

These words are taken from Orokie's cd rom of his art work:

Too often, yesterday, today, but not tomorrow, we have lived a double life with our private horizons concealed from the people we really love. So often our high-up has been lived on the down-low. The secrecy of it all fascinates the media-makers, not the pressures we live through and the difficulties we feel.
Too often, yesterday, we became the victims of power: were forced to live the fantasies of other men’s dreams. Too rarely, today, do we find empowerment: create an imagery that expresses our vision. Tomorrow, let us be something more than the past and enter the communities that mean the world to us.
Tomorrow, let my brothers not live through uncertainty. Permit them to come out from their closet of bushes and follow those facts that preserve their roots. AIDS is the shadow that haunts their bright blackness. Their isolation and ignorance are the wings of Izraili.

Orokie-Cezanne.

2008-04-13T20:58:00.009+02:00

Artists sometimes like to play with traditions.

The results can often create humour, as well as shock.

This work is by Tony de Carlo who uses Mexican influences.

It shows the heterosexual world of Botticelli interpreted through a gay artist's eyes.

So, the Dance of Love becomes a Dance of Death.

This lastest painting by Orokie returns to Impressionism and Bacon.

The colour palette uses Cezanne's mediterranean blues.

The mercury figure dances in with tea and milk (ah, a typical Orokie joke!) as if he is a Matisse dancer.

And the two figures on the bed echo Bacon's style rather than any particular sexual painting (such as Two Figures, 1953).

The result is a naughty combination of wit and eroticism.

Nicely, the winged helmet of Hermes appears as a comment on the flight of orgasm.

Why I painted this latest piece.

2008-04-09T21:40:00.004+02:00

There was kind of mystery in Saint-Ex missing plane.

I liked to read Saint-Ex's spirit in the words of his book: Le Petit Prince, at French Language lessons.

I list it as my favourite book.

The piece "See the Sea" was done after reading the last news. The small planet is empty. Le Petit Prince moved to the bottom of the Mediterranean sea...

"See The Sea."

'London, Mar 17 : For decades people have been wondering whether French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery's death during World War II was caused by the enemy or suicide. The mystery has now been solved by a German fighter ace who claims to have shot him down and who, ironically, loved reading his books. Horst Rippert, 88, also admits that if he had know it was de Saint-Exupery in the plane, he would never have shot him down even though he was the enemy. "If I had known that it was him, I would never have fired." Times on line quoted him, as saying. "You can stop searching - I was the one who shot down Saint-Exupery." '

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

2008-04-08T23:07:00.001+02:00

Self-portrait

2008-04-04T22:31:00.003+02:00

Thank you to those people that sent kindest greetings to Afriboy.com.

My spirit was warmed by them.

I have tried to answer them all, the many, but some were not clear to me. If I have missed some friend out please do let me know and let me have your words so that I can send you kindness back.

Out of the many emails, one came asking me to join a Portrait Blog. I thank that person, but I did not send a portrait.

A portrait is a special thing.

It is sacred, like a name.

It holds the lake of the eyes, and the rainfall of the lips ,and the temple, which is a dome of radiance and spirit.

This is my new self-portait, It is called "I am back".

Do tell what you think.

Feel loved,

Orokie.

After the tempest.

2008-03-30T14:37:00.002+02:00

Hello.
Hope you are all well.

I am fine.
The day is good and sunny, only our clocks went forward in the night.
We must adapt our bodies to this new local time.
Also I hope I will soon adapt myself back to normal day life.

This Sunday, I feel somehow like a sailor after big storm washed his ship of sails, compass, maps and books.
May be I will need time before I dance my spirit again in good rhythm.

Be good,
Orokie

All is well.

2008-03-29T20:06:00.003+01:00

Dear, John Powers, Belasco, Pure Cacao Joy, Daudi, Blackstone, Eshuneutics, Sirrond, Grinder and Anonymous... thank you for your kind words on my blog. Thank you to all those others who have kept me in their thoughts and kept my heartbeat within their own. At last, I have returned home. I am in my room once more. I am able to hold pencil and paint brush in my hands again.

The Ancestors say I still am not a man of theirs and so I am able to return to my work and life as it was before. Today, I have painted myself. A portrait. It is my way of saying: welcome back!

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR CARE, Orokie.

A story of intuition.

2008-03-24T19:12:00.007+01:00

There is a famous story about Basquiat and Warhol. In October, 1982, the art dealer Bruno Bischofberger took Basquiat down to the Factory to meet Warhol. They had lunch and Warhol decided to exchange a Polaroid of the two artists (taken by Makos) for a Basquiat painting. In an act of one-up-man-ship and hubris, Basquiat decided to go further: he would create a painting for Warhol, a double portrait. Only a few hours later, Torton, Basquiat’s assistant returned with a finished painting. This was Dos Cabezas/Two Heads. Warhol, the master of staging, realised that (at last) he had been up-staged. Basquiat’s portrait of Warhol saw straight behind the mask, capturing his strangeness, awkwardness, voodoo-like attraction.

Recently, a friend told me an interesting story about Orokie. A story that showed similar speed and insight. One night, Orokie asked this friend to send him a picture of a Black Male. The “game” was this. The friend would write down what he saw in the picture. Orokie would respond in images, sending a picture that showed what he “felt” was inside the photograph. A few hours later, a picture returned by email. It showed a sense of hurt, a questioning in the mind of the Black Male. Orokie said there was “a deadness in his eyes” as if he knew what the photographer wanted: sex. For Orokie, it was not a nice photograph. The image was about modelling for money and sexual suffering. Orokie also said that there was illness inside the man, decay, a sense that life was wasting and the end was near. The beautiful face was a Death’s Head. Beneath the glamour of the image there was real sadness. It wasn’t only the speed of drawing that puzzled the friend, it was also the accuracy. The image was of Dennis Speight…by Mapplethorpe…one of the photographer’s casual (for Mapplethorpe) Black sex-partners…and his image was associated with one key work by Mapplethorpe: an installation which combined photographs (with thorn and calla lilies) and a stone Death’s Head in an image of sexual passion.

As fast as Basquiat, and as insightful!

Prayer

2008-03-21T21:27:00.007+01:00

Before Orokie was taken ill, he was working on a major painting called "Prayer". This work (sketch above) now seems prophetic. The latest news is that Orokie remains in hospital, following emergency surgery, and is likely to remain hospitalised for a few more weeks. Thanks to those readers who have left their hopes and prayers on this, Orokie's blog...Orokie believes in the power of heart-felt words to create vibrations and change for the better. To those, out of the 600 that have passed through this blog in the past two weeks, all who are close friends of Orokie say "Thanks" on his behalf. We all look towards Orokie's recovery and future works that enshrine his joy and spirit. To Orokie: blessings!

Hope

2008-03-09T22:30:00.003+01:00

Let us hope that this will still be the future and Orokie's recovery will be soon. Thanks to those who have sent kind greetings. There is hope still: Orokie has recovered from major surgery and intensive care.

Worrying news.

2008-03-07T21:41:00.003+01:00

Dear readers of Orokie's blog,

I am afraid that posts have not happened this week. This is because Orokie has been seriously ill and there is still much concern about his well-being. I regret having to post this news, but do so because I know that people will be wondering why they have heard nothing from Afriboy. Please leave any thoughts and questions on this blog and I will do everything possible to keep you informed of what is happening. I would tell you more if I could, but I have little news except that which I have posted.

A friend of Orokie.

Orokie's Picture Poll (See right).

2008-02-22T20:58:00.007+01:00

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

(1)

Dear Readers of my blog, it fills me with joy to know so many like to view my work. Now, if it is alright, I would like to ask your help. I wonder what kinds of pictures are liked most, what styles of drawing attract. I have placed five pictures above. I would be full of joy if you would take time to vote for the style you like most. Then I might know which work sings most to my blog's friends, early, or middle or recent. I thank you for taking time and give you a wave of my paint brush in appreciation. Thanks, Orokie. You may vote for as many pictures as you like.

Prophecy: new work!

2008-02-19T22:14:00.002+01:00

This is beginning drawing for new work. The work is "Prophecy for Kenya". Words and final image will follow shortly. Be sweet until then, Orokie.

Angelic Art: Orokie's Angels.

2008-02-17T19:44:00.017+01:00

Angels, as images, are ancient beings that enter many religions. By name, they are messengers, intermediaries between lower and higher worlds. (They are mal’ach Hebrew, malaaikah, Arabic). The Hebraic angels of the Kabbalah and The Bible are mysterious forms. The angel mythology which spreads through the world today mainly descends from Catholicism, whose imaginative art codified the nine groups of angels.

The angel is a strange image, from linguistic roots. It grows from masculine nouns. Angels themselves are given powerful masculine roles. This is most true in the Protestant world of Paradise Lost: warriors (Michael and Gabriel), advisor (Raphael), overseer (Uriel). And in the Catholic vision of Dante's Divine Comedy where angels are powerful mover-intelligences. Yet, the angel, as a being, is thought to be androgynous, with a feminine beauty. The Sufi Ruzbehan Baqli described Gabriel as “like a maiden…with hair like a woman falling in long tresses…like a red rose.” This feminine aura is typical of Pre-Raphaelite art which created male images from female models and pictured angels as non-erotic beings.

There is, however, an erotic core to angel mythology. This exists as Eros/Kama in Greek and Hindu mythology. In Greek mythology, the winged Eros is a god without body: Psyche must not behold him, she is taught to know him through mind/psyche. In Hindu mythology, Kama Ananga is about to release his love arrows when Shiva burns his body alive, thus showing how the mind must reach beyond physical desire. These myths portray an elevated sexuality—a winged sexuality. It is a view connected to contemplation and imagination.

In gay art, today, sexy angels are as numerous as the host of heaven. The deification of Beauty by gay art reflects the religious tradition of beautiful angels, but also the superficial worship of Beauty (mainly White Beauty) among gay culture. Just a glance down the art pages of eBay shows how seller and buyer meet through the sexy angel image, the “Adonis-Angel” stereotype, which shows about as much knowledge of mythology as it does of art! The youthful nature of angels (Eros-Hermes) is bastardized into boy-cult worship. Is parodied and paraded in paradisal angels with carnival strap-on wings:

Is changed into a gratuitous voyeurism that is off-set with religious overtones. Sickening:

But black angels do appear in this White world. At the most cynical level there is this:

Here, a Black Boy-Adonis is given a penis-halo. The figure is nothing more than a sexual object. His spiritual qualities are confined to what he might do with his cock (ring). A thug-image is finished off with evil black wings, black bat-like appendages: think Dore’s Satan or Gothic vampirism. And this black magic chocolate delight is painted in China, cheaply, on demand, to supply the West’s voyeuristic tastes. Forget being set on fire with angelic conversation. Meeting has become meat at a barbecue.

At another level, there are artists that represent a deeper mythology. Such as this watercolour that shows the angel Samael (Satan) in a double manner: fallen, yet holy, a Black angel that has fallen in the eyes of culture, yet one maintaining a dignity of self.

And there are photographs, such as this by Menfesawe-Imani (from the Black Angel Project), that recognise the spiritual with the Black image and locate the angelic within a mode of seeing.

In the angels of Orokie, Beauty is very much to the forefront. But the angels of Orokie possess a very different quality to those within prevailing White gay culture. They are vital beings. In this image of Sandalphon, whose name means the sound of the foot, whom Orokie also calls “Amini”, the Brotherly Guardian beats with a heart beat that is also a drum beat from Africa as it calls the foot into dance. His phallic wand bestows life and he is a symbol of the spiritual energy within brotherhood. ACTIVE, DIMENSIONAL, CONFRONTATIONAL, he is far-removed from the effete and badly drawn angels of fallen culture. As spirit made him, so he asks to be viewed by spirit. He is spirited in the true sense of the word: Black spirited, a testifying angel, erotic in the contemplative sense (of Eros/Kama Ananga). This Sandalphon requires the viewer to feel. In Orokie's art, his angels are symbols, they bring messages about embedding feeling in human life, not just eroticising what might be done with a beautiful boy in bed.

Chess Master-beating

2008-02-12T22:08:00.002+01:00

"In a true game of chess there are always two minds at work and..."

Jeu des échecs

Jogo do chess

Juego del ajedrez

Conversation with Orokie.

2008-02-09T20:07:00.002+01:00

I: What would you say are the pitfalls when drawing?

Orokie: Knowing when a work is finished. It is my weakness. It is very hard for me to detect when to stop and when to step further.

I: That is a real challenge with art, not just painting, but with writing too. Too much interference and a work can be killed.

Orokie: I’d say over-cooked. Sometimes I would stop, fearing the wrong finish. I keep a number of drawings resting, that I would look at over a period of time, and see if the finish is clear in my mind. Then I apply what is needed.

I: Yes, I do that sometimes. With painting this is truer. I find with writing that if I leave work for long time then the impetus goes and I finish mechanically, without much heart.

Orokie: Can you imagine how many dustbins go filled of mine with wrongly over-finished drawings?

I: They are lucky dustbin men! Tell me, when you draw, do you use right-hand or left hand?There is a link between handedness and brain-function. I am just curious.

Orokie: I am right handed, but sometimes I use both hands to make art.

I: Ambidextrous.

Orokie: some drawings I do with left-hand alone.

I: Much like a footballer then…I know you play and like football a lot…you use all-round control. Do your drawings differ in the time they take?

Orokie: Some are quick.

I: Yes, I’ve seen those. An image sent to you and an hour later a painting comes back. You are faster than Basquiat!

Orokie: Some take 6 hours…and some more hours than I realise. Many hours. I am slower than I sometimes think. Here is an example of left-hand drawing...

Orokie: a critical view.

2008-01-23T22:22:00.003+01:00

In 1980, Robert Mapplethorpe produced his infamous “Man in Polyester Suit.” This is the photograph that sits on the easel in Orokie’s image. Mapplethorpe’s image produced mixed reactions (if not erections) in the 1980s. For some, it was the prime example of aesthetics and sexuality combined: sex was art and art was sex. For others, it was pornography: the fetishism of the Black male body. The semi-erect penis of Milton Moore (who had the most beautiful penis ever, for Mapplethorpe!) was both upgrading and degrading.

Mapplethorpe’s view of the Black male body in “Man in Polyester Suit” shows much of how Mapplethorpe looked at Black African men. The penis is their authenticity. The cheap, badly tailored suit (the pun in tailor, tail=penis would not have escaped the photographer) represents the fake veneer of Mapplethorpe’s Black men. The Black male touched civilisation in a distinctly shoddy manner, for him.

More recently, critics have claimed a more ambiguous role for Mapplethorpe’s photograph. Yes, it was a glorious sex hole for White males, but it was also a space in which Black men could gaze. An object of offence could also be an object of defence, allowing the Black male gaze to exist. The image allowed, in the words of critics like Mercer and Smalls, a double desire to co-exist. But the image in “Man in Polyester Suit” might be even more problematic than this. For it assumes that the Black male gaze has candour, honesty, and the fetishistic photograph might be turned into an agent of liberation. (Such might be as accurate as the belief that White men invariably look upon the Black male body like Mapplethorpe). In truth, the Black male gaze might be identical to Mapplethorpe’s view: candid, nothing more than an eye for sex-candy.

The photograph below is clearly a descendent of Mapplethorpe’s image. Of course, the Black male now wears a tuxedo, is given more status than an imported suit, non-American suit, but the message is no different. Beneath the trappings of dress, the Black male (the model Melshawn) is little more than his great penis. That Mapplethorpe’s image can be re-worked in this way (20 years later) does not show a development of the intelligence of feeling. It rather shows that nothing has changed for the better, indeed, has worsened, because Black men now consume the Black male image like White men. There is little difference. All that has happened is that Mapplethorpe’s high art pornography has become joking poornography. Still the same game: erect porn stars to celebrity status (as in Mapplethorpe’s photographs of Tom as a Da Vinci Renaissance Man). Little time is given to seeing the spiritual star within the common Black man.

Orokie’s painting casts an eye on these important issues. Who we are is implied by how we see. So, a Black male hand is guided by popping out eyes. A typical Orokie touch and hieroglyph for desire. Then, the artifice of Mapplethorpe’s work is stood against a natural horizon. In Orokie’s Black male, the image of Mapplethorpe is visually reversed (shirt tail from the right). Orokie’s African male exposes the sexuality within the model image and offers that sexuality as human, as natural. Much like Basquiat (in Armani), it plays with the image of the Black male artist and what kind of Black male aesthetic might result.

Orokie’s painting, here, questions the anaesthetic that is given daily to Black men who love other Black men. It suggests that human feeling is more than feeling a penis.

Erotic Art and Orokie.

2008-01-18T19:31:00.002+01:00

Who is Art for? This week I came across a thought on erotic art which said: “The fantasy of the viewer is most important. That is what makes a painting erotic. Erotic art is made to awaken the fantasies of the viewer.”

Is that true? I do not know. Partly, I feel it true. But it has the room freshener smell of post-modernism to it. You know, the author is dead and so the reader has free rein to live as s/he wants when criticising the work of art. Erotic art is made for a virtual world, one in which the viewer can fantasise. But of what? Of meeting the person in the picture? Of having sex with the body shown? Of entering a scene and bringing an intense and personal story to life. Like this:

It was a hot dark. He had taken refuge in the shadows of a stair-well. Here, he felt the dry heat of the sun being replaced by a liquid heat inside himself. A temperature that compelled him towards one deep, flowing action. Etc.

(Breyette)

Perhaps. Yet, I think that the erotic spirit is more than this. Look at this painting.

It came from a connection between model and artist. When there is some spiritual link with the model, when he agrees and feels very easy to model, then the drawing comes very beautifully, while my spirit gets very pleased through the creative process, as delightful as making love when both partners do wish so. Surely, this is what exists in an Orokie. Or I would like to think so. A feeling that a personal love has made the work and the viewer can touch that personal love. What the viewer creates is touched by the view that came from the love felt by the painter. I hope so.

That is what I want to give in my work…to a viewer…to a buyer.

Kind comments.

2008-01-17T17:03:00.000+01:00

It is good to receive kind words, from those who write through Afriboy, from those who write on this blog. These matter more than the racist comments that appear on my YouTube site. A White man writes on my video, “Great, more N******!” and links my art to his own enslaved mind.

This week a man from the USA wrote to me. He wished to buy some of my work. I was honoured by his wish and his words. I asked him what man of the imagination he might like. His words were so lovely that I trusted a friend to turn them into words. Malcom, your pure words were water to me.

Entrance (to the body).

(After Cavafy).

I listened and his words caught me.
Turned towards the screen where he spoke,
I saw an African body of beauty
Which appeared as if rivers and mountains had formed it—
Not European, not marble, not made by Eros,
But a form made by a painter
Who had drawn the very essence of man.
He was a body greater than the little thing,
A man of strength, yet vulnerable,
A man whose sexuality was a clean light
That warmed from inside
The glow of his very dark skin.
He possessed hands that might gently touch a forehead
And run downwards, against the flesh,
Be bold in their touch upon the secret boulders of love.
In his eyes, he held a peace
That might lull a man to sleep.

A View with a Room

2008-01-16T00:29:00.001+01:00

A new room:
It is truly peaceful,
Bewitching,
With sunshine coming through large window.

Sunshine spreads across
The next wall, smooth cream paint,
Where plain colour differs—
Clear shapes of danced shade.

These, in number, make five,
While nobody is in the room—
Gracefully drawn in sunlight
They cannot be viewed…opaque.

Nothing intrigues my mind
As I savour
The kiss of true light
With no question;

Any thought overwhelmed by sensations
As I peacefully stare into this room,
Taking whole pleasure in it…
My spirit.

The Art of Love.

2008-01-12T05:30:00.000+01:00

Quittons Orokie pour, ahem ! Platon (autre grand amoureux de garçons, quoique d’un genre plus gnangnan)…L’un des mythes érostiques répandus par Platon – chez qui le fabuliste n’est jamais loin du dialecticien – est celui de l’hermaphroditisme originel, qui vaut bien celui du péché originel. Nous sommes nés complets, et une malédiction de Zeus le père fendilla notre âme et notre corps en deux, et depuis, nous courons le monde à la recherche de notre moitié – notre âme sœur. Chez Platon, il s’agit d’un mythe érostique, et c’est le principe de l’amour (si loué et si décrié en même temps par l’Eupatride) qui guide notre errance. Mais il y a une vérité plus générale à ce mythe. Nous sommes nés incomplets de bien de façon, et c’est pour cela que certaines rencontres, dans des domaines moins flamboyants que Eros, nous comblent cependant de façon essentielle. Notre âme n’a pas été simplement fendue en deux : la foudre jupitérienne l’a aussi endommagée en bien des endroits, et nous cherchons dans le monde les êtres dont le tissu peut se coudre au nôtre. Certainement, c’est une telle rencontre qui m’est arrivée avec Orokie – mon frère païen

The Love of Art.

2008-01-12T05:17:00.000+01:00

From Orokie to Plato! It is a great leap. But come, all my friends, let us sit down at a Banquet of Love and discuss the love that we all share and reflect on the myth of Plato: the dream of the androgyne. Let this be the beginning of a dialogue between us. Ah, it is said that we yearn for our other. But so often the Black Male has been the Other, that nightmare from Africa to be desired with fear. As the great angel of poetic and political vision, Essex Hemphill, once expressed it: the Black man is expected to walk with machismo. So, he drags his cock and balls like chains of slavery. He lives as a member without any membership. But he must belong. I show you my work and ask you to re-member wholly the beauty of the Black Male. We must keep faith with love and not be afraid. In these times of HIV and AIDS we must yearn still, but learn to love wisely. So often we talk of looking for Love. But in my work I show you that Love is here and we should allow Love to give us eyes to see. Let Love give us eyes to survey the tenderness and brotherhood in others, so that our tissues unite, become sweet and run with milk and honey.

The Boy Who Lost his Penis. 6.

2008-01-08T19:54:00.000+01:00

And so it was

As the artist says

At Museum The Best not long ago…

And even now in 2008 where

“New Exhibitions, New Experiences, New Brand!”

Are promised to all,

But politicians still bring

castration,

repression,

to honest youth of Kenya,

forced circumcision and sodomy

in riots and pillage.

And forget themselves

nyakumahinya,

the love of all earth.

And still cannot honour

the absolute beauty of the African male body

in all its honest nakedness.

The End.

African Pride.

2008-01-08T19:51:00.000+01:00

The Boy who Lost his Penis. 5

2008-01-07T19:37:00.000+01:00

And so a meeting in all seriousness took place

at half past twelve, afternoon,

Archives Building, first floor.

Meeting Room,

where a dozen chairs plus quite an elliptical table

were to listen to an incredible and almost rounded story.

- No, no, no. Cannot be made like that.

I have checked all names in the list.

No, no, no. Cannot be.

Yes I have checked all them:

Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma

Converse, Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

No,no,no.

None from these keep on sale watercolour underwear,

neither watercolour shorts, nor bikers, no, no.

No watercolour trousers to dress in watercolour Tsotso boy's naked thighs.

-Scissors? No, no, no.

It is most high risk.

We could spoil that watercolour Abu horn...

-Razor blade? A small window in that paper?

No, no, no.

It would bring our visitors wondering about genitals and sex,

- Listen to me, I keep a solution,

and we can approve it in a minute.

My cousin Mwandiwa,

he is decorator for Nyayo Buildings Ltd.,

he can mend faulty finished walls by applying new paint on the wrong.

He even experienced at painting one crashed Bus

and he painted that Bus that no one would ever think it was not new.

He can place new paint on the old design.

Abu horn will remain.

Nothing wrong.

No,no,no.

Since that day, yes indeed,

Tsotso herald keeps blowing the horn.

Playing same roll as Mrs. Adamson had given him,

in same piece of watercolour paper she used

to communicate to the world about her love for art

and her love for truth.

Yet only a blot quite different in its colour shade from the original background

light grey blue appears there now,

giving news to our world that the body needs

castration and repression.

The Boy who Lost his Penis. 4.

2008-01-06T20:23:00.000+01:00

One day in the morning, just near noon,

where twelve a.m. equals zero p.m.,

there she came

a second blonde lady,

with hair the colour of crispy ripe maize,

UK’s PM in expensive anaconda shoes on the red rolled carpet,

which twelve Museum employees kept unrolling for her:

protocol second class.

Whilst children sang:

-Is she coming to stay?
- Is she making her home among the wild acacias?
- Is she coming to meet her bridegroom?
- Would she live where lion roars?

But this iron lady with blonde tinted hairs

did not come with paints, and brushes, and easel

(though she did come to see the savage lions of Kenya).

She just walked her feet inside the Museum,

raised a fine smile for the welcoming crew of Curators,

White Collars, Directors, three Captains,

some from the Police crew, Firemen -- just in case!

And paraded upstairs on red carpet with label:

"Second Class Protocol,

Colour Red,

Length One mile,

Brush it clean afterwards".

Until her face turned the colour of the carpet.

And her eyes showed war…went killing the air around.

For there was Tsotso, herald, displaying his horn,

with parts not meant for polite political party:

African Pride (Luo Warrior).

2008-01-06T15:49:00.001+01:00

The Boy who Lost his Penis. 3.

2008-01-05T23:11:00.000+01:00

It was as it was

when Minstrels sang

to the tune of Nyatiti.

Yes, many, many, and many more

She painted with truth, in all their glory.

But no it wasn’t as it used to be,

not as the minstrels used to sing.

For now there was a blot

On Tsotso the elegant,

a blot on his thighs…

and a tale to tell.

African Pride

2008-01-05T10:41:00.001+01:00

The Boy who Lost his Penis. 2

2008-01-04T23:00:00.000+01:00

And Minstrels sang upon their strings

that Mrs. Adamson was born with a gift from the gods—

was blessed with talent of painting with water

and painted the little things

and not little things that she saw.

And so it is was at Museum The Best,

(now funded by money from great EU

and built on corporate image of modern mind)

when school bus arrived,

from far-off valleys and school-like-prison,

down road of wonder,

clacketty-clacking,

that pupils cried out with awe and shock

to see strange pictures of “The People of Kenya."

African Pride.

2008-01-04T21:04:00.000+01:00

The Boy who Lost his Penis. 1

2008-01-03T18:42:00.000+01:00

Formerly, my grandparents went into market places

where Obokano Minstrels or Nyatiti Minstrels,

always sang the songs we should ever remember…

that once upon a time,from the heart of Europe,

there came to this country of theirs,

a first young lady with strong chin and blonde hair;

and the young lady arrived, yes, yes ,yes,

to make her home among the acacia where lion roars.

It was there that young lady met her bridegroom,

a British man,

with goatee chin and powerful witchcraft

who tamed the savage in the savage lion

and (whom like an English poet)

tamed nature red in tooth and claw.

Until from a marriage without a child

There grew nyakumahinya.

That is:

human-love for-mother-earth-and-her-living-beings.

The Boy who Lost his Penis.

2008-01-02T23:19:00.001+01:00

This satirical story will be published here soon.
Hope you all will enjoy!

Orokie.

Orokie's Narcissus.

2008-01-01T22:23:00.002+01:00

The myth of Narcissus is well known. In the story told by Ovid, Narcissus falls in love with his own image in a mirror-pool. Over the centuries, that myth has become concerned with error. Narcissus represents incurvatus in se: the sin of curving inwards to worship self above all else. The word Narcissism has come to represent two evils. Firstly, political narcissism (as seen in Kenya today) where the individual places his own body above the body of the state, where self-worship (born out of little knowledge of self) is mirrored falsely as the people’s wishes. Political narcissism is so deluded that it can justify violence and murder as the means to a beautiful dream. Secondly, personal narcissism, celebrated today in the word “metrosexual” whereby the body is a thing to be endlessly satisfied, where image is all and the surface matters more than spirit.

The history of painting shows many forms of Narcissus, but most take the path described above. In early Renaissance drawings, Narcissus is caught in the act of worshipping his image. The tale carries a simple, moral meaning: pride in self leads to a fall.

In the work of Caravaggio, a more complex gaze appears. Here, an elaborately dressed Narcissus is absorbed by the water that holds his image and his sinister hand plays with the medium that holds his face. Two lovers, who are one, meet in an erotic exchange.

By the seventeenth century, the broader narrative had come to dominate. So Poussin substituted the central sexual self-absorption of Narcissus with an allegorical, heterosexual meaning. Narcissus languishes, having spurned Echo, whilst Amor stands impotently, dwarfed by the arrow of love and bearing a weak, sexual flame.

It is this narrative tradition which passes on into Waterhouse and the nineteenth century. Now, Echo is fore-grounded, her heterosexual bare-breasted lure to the viewer cancelling out the homosexual attraction that exists in the gaze of Narcissus. Behind this idealised Victorian Classicism there exists a plain, Biblical morality that self-absorption in beauty is ungodly and leads to vice.

Narcissus had continued to influence modern minds. Dali’s “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” is the ultimate joke, for the narcissistic Dali presents a painting in which Narcissus does not appear: he has been absorbed into the flower, into the psychological pool of the painting.

Modern photography, in a similar way, has absorbed the Narcissus myth into its method: the photographer gazing through the viewer is caught up within the pool of vision and its perfect, air-brushed, enhanced plastic imagery. If there ever was a medium made for Narcissus it was photography. As can be seen above where the black male watches himself and more is revealed in the reflection than in the "real world" outside the mirror. The mirror is all.

In Orokie’s Narcissus, there is a return to the single figure of Narcissus. Not surprisingly, the heterosexual narrative has been abandoned (does not even exist as a muted echo!) Instead, this ink drawing shows a beautiful African male in a sacred place, his hand stretching out in an act of creation. This is a Black Adam responding to Black Adam, all of which is summed up in a delicate finger gesture that does not quite touch the surface of the water. Colour begins to spread where reality and image almost meet, as if this is a point of awakening…a realisation of blue and orange, of sun and sky, of political identity? There is no condemnation in Orokie’s drawing, no romantic languishing, no ennui, no lying down— the body of Narcissus is awake and primed, holding the life in his flesh. To the bottom right of Orokie’s Narcissus, a penis surfaces, not an elongated penis, but one shrunken by cold water: it is a double awakening. The figure in the water yearns towards warm flesh. In some ways, Orokie’s Narcissus returns to the very roots of the myth. Narcissus casts off the heterosexual world and its temptations for Platonic wholeness: to the Platonic thinkers of the Renaissance, Narcissus was a myth about wholeness, of man’s unification with the realm of the heavenly (blue) from which an awareness of body and body politic (orange) might come. Orokie’s Narcissus is a beautiful ode to Beauty, to the soul of Africa…which also includes Black men who love men. Spirit seeks body and body seeks spirit.

Facing the New Year/2008.

2007-12-31T19:40:00.000+01:00

African Howl (With a nod towards Ginsberg).

2007-12-31T06:13:00.000+01:00

I saw the best minds of my brothers weeping for freedom, shouting, protesting, screaming their naked souls,
forcing themselves through the black streets at sunrise, looking to a lake still red with sunset,
angel-winged lovers, flaming for the connection to ancestors and the union of navels,
who knew the dance of death in the skulls of mind—
who ran from the trained dogs which sniffed mama’s bra—
which sniffed the youth’s sports socks for the last of his inheritance—
who walked through their day with souls stained by blood—
who still dared to dream in the chaos of looting as the land cracked in two through war and dissension—
who watched the juice of orange turn from citric to nitric—
who watched the devil gorge on his fruits of fallen ashes—
I saw the best, and urge them now, to hear the sentence passed in the sentences of howling,
to trust in love from the wet-dream moon, and not the monied lust that has fucked a generation.

More to mind.

2007-12-29T21:45:00.000+01:00

”The glance on a face may tell more to mind than the dick being forced on paper for display.”

Orokie.

The Kingfisher

2007-12-28T22:28:00.001+01:00

African Pied Kingfisher.
Pied: mottled, often used in poetry to suggest “new spirit”.
Kingfisher/Fisher King, a symbol of a holy quest in poetry.

In essence, this beautiful new image by Orokie captures a moment where youth and nature are linked: the relaxed limbs of the body and the contemplative, listening face are absorbed by the persistent song of a tiny bird. A moment of fixed intensity in a world of watery and cloudy flux.

The Notebooks of Orokie.

2007-12-17T23:49:00.000+01:00

Notebooks offer glimpses of private worlds. Often, through picture and word they speak to both sides of the human brain: the left which controls writing and the right which controls drawing. A double language. William Blake remains one of the most important visionaries and alchemists of the human spirit. In his work, word and picture speak together. They look at the world through double-vision. In his notebooks, his mental processes can be seen in operation. Blake mistrusted the education given by scholars (Reason, the enslaver of mankind, which he named Urizen, You-reason) which he feared took away the gift of intuition. Last night, Orokie wrote this about a new painting for his notebook and his belief in the world of spirit:

“that me ought to try, defend and protect it from preachers and teachers that would always try to put the unseen energy of my spirit in chains cause that was their job.”

His view is the same as Blake’s! In his notebooks on Afriboy—The Moleskin is a good place to begin— Orokie reveals a series of sketches that open up a world of signs and inner thoughts. This world belongs to innocence and experience. For Blake, the universe was dynamic, a cosmos, a seed to be viewed in a grain of sand. And the poetic-art-image as it appears…in Orokie’s notebooks… is something to be viewed in this way. It requires involvement and contemplation.

Drawing Lesson.

2007-12-14T23:14:00.001+01:00

“How much I would like to do drawings like you, but I cannot do.”
Orokie smiled, and asked me,
“You cannot do? Have you tried?”
“Why? I know I cannot do.”
Orokie looked for his pencils, which were small, in a carton box set of 12, half length: some were shorter because of much use. Blue, red, yellow, black, orange, brown; water, heart, maize, line, gourd, soil…
Orokie, then, cut half a sheet from his writing pad.
“Follow me,” he said sweetly.
And he started to draw on half a sheet, leaving me space on the other half. He began to do the line of lake waters on a peaceful day. I followed, not bad. The shore on the left became a triangular piece, then a boat with engine (to go and come back from main market in the village, where shoes and t-shirts would steal our glances): trapezoidal, with shorter line for base, the larger on top. Oh, yes, yes…
“Now you use colour pencils to paint your boat.”
“What colours?” I replied.
“Try and listen to the music that lives in your spirit, close your eyes, you will see the colours to use.”
Amazed, I did see bands of colours like this: pure green, sunshine yellow and red. I was Bob Marley with the Wailers performing their song “Is this love that I’m feeling?”I drew the engine boat, pure green, sunshine yellow and red: then a circle, small, plus a short straight line… made a head with red baseball cap, a crate of the soda with name–Coke (and cold)– then two figures like eggs, sacs full with maize, our principal food, followed by a mama with baby plus elder with hat, then conductor guiding boat smoothly towards sandy shore, without throwing the crew forth with force. I heard Orokie,
“You can do it, you can do it, my friend.”
And I was liking it much, I was feeling the joy, I was singing an overstanding song of love in colour.

A mysterious ambience.

2007-12-09T23:46:00.000+01:00

In 1807, when Abolition was in the air, John Bourne painted “A Meeting of Connoisseurs”. This satirical painting captured well the academic tradition of drawing, in which the black male model is relatively rare, and the strangeness that European artists found in the Black male body. Bourne's particular view of the Life Class is shown as a deadly affair, as the stiff academicians come to terms with the unusual dimensions of the Black male form.

A hundred years later, the Black male presence was being acknowledged as a source of eroticism and beauty by the Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Edward Wolfe. Today, Grant is well known for his inter-racial gay sex drawings, Wolfe less known for his heroic sexual portrayal of South African Black miners. Slowly, the inclusion of the Black male form increased. John Singer Sargent created an art that honestly portrayed the flow of the Black male figure, especially in his minor watercolours.

And the Camden Town painter, Harold Gilman, drew the Black male figure as a sort of erotic idyll:

In the 1930s, a rather different view began to emerge, as the Black presence became more viewable, less a source of exotic fantasy. Glyn Philpot paid tribute in the 1930s to the Black male form

and here is an academic sketch by Derek Fowler from the 1940s:

This drawing’s attention to line and form shows an engagement with the figure such that he becomes a personal subject. In the drawings of Orokie, there is this quality too, for the figures that he represents seem to be an overflow of emotion, as if they have drawn out of him every drop of spirit, every drop of honey or water. It is this high- fidelity tuning towards humanity which gives Orokie’s drawings their particular sensibility, “a special ambience”.

Camelopardalus on Orokie's art.

2007-12-08T23:06:00.001+01:00

La carte du paganisme agreste est aussi la carte du corps nu – et pour Orokie, surtout du corps masculin nu. Entre parenthèses, il se peut fort bien que le point trivial qui permettrait de distinguer franchement le paganisme des religions sémitiques révélées, c’est la honte du corps et la valeur superstitieuse accordée à la nudité, en particulier celle des organes génitaux. Il se peut aussi, bien entendu, que la chaleur torride des saisons africaines, associée aux conceptions païennes du corps comme une simple expression biologique de forces immanentes dans l’univers, ait rendu cette superstition du corps vêtu (et non simplement orné et valorisé) inimaginable. Certaines populations agrestes – les Dinka par exemple – sont entièrement dévêtues, mais d’autres qui portent un manteau semblent le faire uniquement comme une sorte de protection décorative contre les vents froids, comme les Massaï sur les haut plateaux de l’actuel Kenya : le manteau ne dissimule pas, et en particulier, ne dissimule pas les organes génitaux.

Responsible desire.

2007-12-08T17:08:00.000+01:00

"Culture dictates behaviour and behaviour decides the exposure to AIDS. At a time when visual culture is cheap and available everywhere, the makers of images have a great responsibility. For MSM the use of condoms is vital. The correct use of condoms prevents infection, the acquiring of a different strain of HIV and the transmission of damaging sexual infections. If a line might be drawn between erotic art and pornography that line would have to be related to responsibility. The availability of pornography in Africa, among adolescents, adults, and MSM, specifically, is not a safe situation: it encourages unsafe practices. Erotic art recognises the right of MSM to see visible, proud, human images of themselves. When men are visible and respect themselves and their behaviours, the spectre of AIDS loses its invisible line of surprise attack. Different cultures need different solutions and visual rites of protection. "

Orokie.

"I was grown doing drawings."

2007-12-07T22:26:00.002+01:00

That is an interesting way of describing a life in art. This simple expression says more than, “I grew up doing art”. It rather recognises that art created growth. So often, when young people are taught to draw or paint, there is force put upon “How to do it”, or even worse—follow these steps and make what I make. Art becomes coercion. Orokie’s interesting statement does not recognise force. It recognises liberation, the “Why I do it” (against all odds). As teacher to himself, Orokie places emphasis on feeling, not rationality, on an organic link between himself, others, nature. His art taps into the roots and branches of feeling, Eros.

The origins of Orokie.

2007-12-07T22:26:00.001+01:00

Etant adolescent, Orokie (qui est Ougandais) passait les vacances dans la région de sa mère, au Kenya, dans un bled au bord de la mer. Il s’asseyait souvent sous un arbre, avec des amis, et regardait au loin les amusements des garçons dans le sable et les vagues grondantes. « C’est sous cet arbre que je me rendis compte combien j’aimais être avec les garçons. » Il y a toujours une sorte de sensualité âcre, mais généralement inconsciente, ou non érotisée (sauf par accident), dans les jeux de garçons, surtout en liberté et sous le soleil. *

As a young man, Orokie (who is from Uganda) spent the holidays in Kenya: in a lakeside village close to his mother. Here, he would often sit under a tree, in the pleasant shade watching other males, realising how these brought warmth and pleasure to him. The early drawings of Orokie show longing and desire. They offer both a bitter sensuality and a sweet sensitivity. They reveal what many have known-- that sense of yearning and that haze in which friendship holds hands with love on sun-filled days, when liberty feels possible.

Pour un amoureux du sexe masculin comme Orokie, cette sensualité devient évidemment très perceptible, et il a décidé d’user des moyens à sa disposition pour l’analyser et l’exprimer. « J’ai grandi en dessinant (I was grown doing drawings) », m’écrit-il. « Sur mes manuels scolaires (j’ai été très souvent puni). Sur des bouts de vieux journaux. Sur mes cahiers scolaires (encore les punitions). Sur toutes les enveloppes usagées dans lesquelles des lettres nous avaient été envoyées…»

Orokie did not find art easy when he was young. Art does not provide food in Africa; it is hard to paint when water is rationed and paper is scarce; also, the nature of his drawings demanded secrecy and that meant little discussion about techniques. But he was a determined and passionate artist. He drew on envelopes, newspapers and school books. He mixed paints with tea and saliva. Finger nails and feathers became brushes. Orokie was determined to grow through his drawings and become himself.

*This is part of a detailed essay by Camelopardalus.

Welcome everyone

2007-12-07T22:22:00.000+01:00

Welcome everyone to the new Afriboy Blog. Hopefully, this new venture will keep you informed about the work of Orokie Okoth, a free man and artist from Uganda. There is a belief in Africa, which goes like this: when everyone sits down at the communal meal then everyone shares, piece after piece, so as no one is left out. So, we would like to invite you to sit down and enjoy Afriboy, and share in the creative spirit of Orokie… to eat with joy, piece by piece.