Yorùbá culture is as alive in Brooklyn as it is in Benin, Nigeria, Brazil, and other p

Yorùbá culture is as alive in Brooklyn as it is in Benin, Nigeria, Brazil, and other parts of Africa and its diasporas. To open the exhibition One: Egúngún on February 8, a small group of Brooklyn Museum staffers joined members of the local Yorùbá community in a private blessing ceremony. Guests were welcomed by the exhibition’s curator, and then led in prayer by Chief Ayanda Clarke, a local community leader and Ajibilu Awo of Oṣogbo (Nigeria), as well as a contributor to the exhibition. During this deeply moving moment, libations were poured for the ancestors (all who have come before us and influenced us in so many ways), the collaborative work behind the exhibition was celebrated, and meaningful relationships were reinforced.Throughout the ceremony, participants repeated the word àṣẹ. Àṣẹ, which underlies all things in the Yorùbá worldview, is conceived broadly as an effective life force present in all animate and inanimate things as well as spoken words. A generative power, àṣẹ makes things happen: it is àṣẹ that enables an egúngún to bridge the world of the living and the ancestral otherworld, and àṣẹ that amplifies ancestral blessings. And it is àṣẹ, brought forward through blessings in both English and in Yorùbá that filled the galleries with positive energy.It is with this spirit of positivity, celebration, and collaboration that the galleries of One: Egúngún opened. In just two weeks, they have already welcomed visitors from Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, Scotland, and the United States to a space filled with àṣẹ.Posted by Kristen Windmuller-Luna -- source link

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