USA Africa Dialogue Series - THE HOLY FAMILY : THE AGORSOR CONSTELLATION

                                                                                                                             The Holy Family

Visual and performance artists Kofi Gamamiwosror Agorsor  and Nyornuwofia Agorsor, with  young children and a painting  of Kofi's , within a naturalistic space. 

Who are these lovely children?

Are they the children of Kofi and Nyornuwofia?

Could Nyornuwofia have had these lovely children and still retain the  exquisite blend of her delicate boyish face and her superb figure that ululates deliciously as she dances to magnificent rhythms?

If so, there are secrets of self  nurture and of care by Kofi, her husband,  that  those who aspire to such supple grace in motherhood would be fortunate to learn.

In the African sense, the children would be their children in terms of care and responsibility, at the very least, since they seem to constitute a family defined by a close relationship.

Kofi's hairy chest is in view, while Nyornuwofia is tying a wrapper round her neck in a traditional African style.

She looks away from the camera in a relaxed gesture that complements, by contrast,  the earnest  frontal focus of Kofi and the younger ones..

A powerful domestic/artistic family portrait.

Kofi is looking so proud.

The children seem obedient to whatever scheme the adults have involved them in, while the youngest  one hides her  face, perhaps out of shyness,  while the eldest  child  takes it boldly, the immediate younger resigned to this antic of the adults, as he stands directly  in front of the camera but shifts his  eyes away from it.

Marvellous, just marvellous.

I dont know why I find this family portrait so moving it brings tears to my eyes.

What is my spirit seeing that my mind does not understand?

The Agosors consistently give us a rich mosaic of images  of their lives  behind the artistic works  they create.

It is a great honour.

Does the spirit of togetherness, of family unity, evoked by the human figures, resonate with the congregation of figures suggested by the painting?

May the constellation of live human forms, in tandem with Kofi's characteristically poignantly elongated painted human figures, be seen as resonating with the small cluster of plants behind the human tableau?

May this constellation of human beings, painted human figures,  and living plant forms be seen as enjoying a visual, spatial and ontological rhythm with the hair rising to the surface on Kofi's chest, hair gracing the heads of mother, father and children, hair fed from roots  within scalp and chest, as the plants are fed from roots within the soil?

How does the Ifa poem put it?

At the beginning of all

the world  came into existence  through a  basketful measure of dust poured upon by the earth

motes of dust, motes of life, motes of consciousness, motes of infinitely replicative possibility

falling to gather into clumps

thereby creating the earth

clumps of togetherness

as grass grows together to form a savanna

as plants  grow into trees and together  constitute a forest

as hair grows on the head and chest to form a living carpet

as father, mother, children, grow together to make a family

as the works of an artist, the children of the artist's  imagination and skill, come together to form the family constituted  by his creative universe

Lord of Togetherness, come to me!

so may we conclude this adaptation of the Ifa poem presented in Akinsola Akiwowo's "Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry".

Interpretation:

The motif of the Holy Family, of Jesus as a child, with   his father and mother, is recurrent in Western art.

The idea of holiness, however, may be understood in different contexts, one of these being the idea of the sacred character of the family. 

This notion of the sacred is suggested, rather than stated, in this response to this most engaging picture from the Agosors. 

The interpretive framework used in developing an  understanding of the holy in relation to this picture  is an English translation of a  Yoruba poem  from the Yoruba origin Ifa system, a poem depicting the creation of the earth  in terms of the aggregation of forms  from primal nuclei emanating from the divine creator.

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