ANN ARBOR —Artist, scholar, philosopher, and performer Olabayo Olaniyi, artist-in-residence at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, and U-M’s Center for Afroamerican and African Studies will offer a performance of “ONA MI (My Road)” at the Media Union Video Production Studio on U-M’s North Campus Jan. 25 at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Olaniyi’s artistry includes drumming, dancing, theater, and plastic arts, all of which help him share his vast knowledge of Yoruba culture. The Yoruba of West Africa constitute one of the largest ethnic groups south of the Sahara and for more than nine centuries has impressed the world with its economic, political and social structures, and art forms. Because of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Yoruba cultural and artistic legacies are visible in the Americas through descendants of Yoruba slaves.

In traditional Yoruba culture, beads were reserved for the royal families, adorning their royal staffs, crowns and other regalia as a sign of the family’s power and the society’s affluence. Male artists who combine ancient symbolism and newer artistic influences have traditionally done the beadwork for the kings. Olaniyi continues this tradition by creating beadwork murals with themes that range from the traditional to scenes of modern life and his own imagination. His techniques include layering strings of beads while blending colorful arrays of loose beads in a bed of epoxy on plywood backing.

But Olaniyi doesn’t stop with the traditional, he also works in batik on rice paper, and clay, which to the Yoruba is a body of flesh given by the sky god to a deity responsible for molding and making of figurines for the creation of the world and its inhabitants. Tie dying is one of the most popular Yoruba art forms, practiced mostly by women and documenting histories, events, and daily life patterns of Yoruba society. Yoruba carvers also are known for their works in wood, stone, ivory, and gourds.

During his U-M residency, Olaniyi introduced his students to all these Yoruba art forms ending his classes with the Yoruba tradition of giving his students Yoruban names.

Olaniyi was apprenticed as a youth as an artist, drummer, and dancer and has complemented his local African education and training with schooling in the United States. His performances range from solo dance, drumming, and story-telling to large scale theater extravaganzas with student and community participation in everything from costume making and set building to drumming, dancing, and acting.

Olaniyi is the first son of Chief Twin Seven Seven and Nike Davies, two of Nigeria’s most renowned artists. His home is the town of Oshogbo, considered the center of Yoruba culture.

Olaniyi’s performance will feature drumming, dance, slides and video as he takes the audience along the path he has traveled as an artist, “Making viewers part of the fabric of the performance.”

Olaniyi’s residency at U-M is supported by U-M’s Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.

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