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Choosing Self  (2023), Slow down | Se jéjé (2023), Reckonings of Joy (2024)

Poetry, Sublimation Prints on Polyester fabric

(96 x 66.5cm each)​​

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“Writing is not done in stillness, it is done in movement and in the living”

 

Olumide considers her presented collection of poems honest and vulnerable, not embedded in shame but strength!

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Choosing Self (2023) expresses an unapologetic priority of oneself alongside the intricacies and complexities life offers and that one navigates through. 

 

“It is a love note to take all you are and have been through and unapologetically say ‘I adore you no matter what! Move! Keep going! Start somewhere! Finish! You’ve got this!’.”

 

Slow down | Se jéjé (2023) is a call to action to rest and be present away from a cycle of self deterioration, it offers an inner voice that holds one accountable and acts as an elder or counsellor, a sort of tough love letter to actually ‘take care’.

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“If I had a big Sister, I hope she’d hold me down like this”

 

‘You need you and we need you, but the need that we need of you can only be needed if you are here to need you. If you are here to fight for you.’

                                                                            excerpt from poem Slow down | Se jéjé (2023) 

 

Reckonings of Joy (2024)​

There is reassurance here, pouring from a full cup which gushes out testimonies of knowledge of joy from intimate understandings in personal contexts to the ‘God factor.’ Olumide mediates between humanistic experiences of her Joy between life passages to more physically intangible yet prolific expressions of her Joy found in her Christian faith which she benefits from “a constant assurance that all will be well.”

 

Olumide sees her faith as a bedrock of strength and nurturing, where the world, passages of life, her interactions with others and things in between do not hold fort for her internal joy which she recognises the source of being ‘God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’

 

Mo fowo re sayan 

 

Assurance

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