MY EXILE is in my head
Channel: Qudus Onikeku
Date: 2010-04-12

"Exile is poignant because it is bracketed by loss, it is not so much about movement, relocation or departure as it is about loss: of territory, of the familiar and the familial, of certainty, but most frighteningly, by the grave probability of the loss of memory. Exile is a rupture, the cessation of things previously taken for granted, the collapse of a world of relative certainties - and therein lies its stings. Through art the exiled may return, in a manner of speaking, by reconstituting the past, participating in the present, as well as envisioning a new world."

Olu OGUIBE
( Nigerian artist, art historian and poet exiled in USA)