Return to Shomolu in Search of Perfection: The Further Journeys of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art Part 1
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Return to Shomolu in Search of Perfection
The Further Journeys of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art
Part 1
Abstract
On 24 June 2026, a meeting in a modest printing office in Shomolu, Lagos, Nigeria became the culmination of an intellectual journey spanning more than eighty years, three continents, and several generations. Gathered around a proof copy of the second edition of Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, I joined the book's printers in discussing how to perfect a work whose origins lay in Rowland Abiodun's childhood immersion in Yoruba culture, his scholarly formation in Nigeria, Canada, and the United States, and its first publication by Cambridge University Press.
This essay argues that the production of the book's second edition in Nigeria represents far more than a publishing project. It symbolizes the return of African knowledge to the cultural landscape that first gave it life, in a journey that mirrors larger patterns in the global circulation of knowledge from the African diaspora. Once compelled to seek validation through prestigious Western institutions, this project points to the possibility of that knowledge now increasingly entering a symbolic and practical homecoming through initiatives in Africa, such as local African publishing.
Interweaving autobiography, intellectual history, reflections on publishing, and meditations on books in the digital age, the essay follows the intertwined journeys of author, editor, printers, and text as they converge in the effort to make one of the most significant works on Yoruba art and philosophy accessible to the people whose civilisation it interprets, as well as readily available to the world at large.
The essay also explores broader questions concerning the global networking of knowledge, the continuing authority of books in an increasingly digital world, and the possibility of relocating Africa from the margins to the centre of intellectual production. Ultimately, it presents the making of the book not simply as an act of printing but as an event of cultural restoration, historical justice, and civilisational renewal.
At the centre of this narrative lies the Yoruba concept of oriki, understood not merely as praise poetry but as a dynamic mapping of identity across time and space. The migration of the book thus becomes an oriki of African intellectual life itself—a narrative of departure, transformation, return, and renewed global circulation in an age increasingly shaped by digital technologies.
Between the Shrine and the Library
Varied forms of knowledge constellate at the intersection of nature, sculpture, books and pictures in the space of a person seeking their convergence in human potential.
The owner of this library and these shrines is seeking something through these assemblages, seeking to develop configurations of knowledge that will act as a frame to illuminate ultimate reality.
This person is seeking the thread of possibility running through these human and nature creativities, the palpitation of being and becoming, emerging in the glory of the sunlight, the beauty of leaves, the radiance of pictures, the configurations of sculptures, the ideational condensations of books.
This image may be seen as incidentally evoking Rowland Abiodun's
cognitive journey demonstrated by Yoruba Art and Language, as elaborated in the''Autobiographical Preface'', appearing for the first time in the book's second edition.
The picture may suggest Abiodun's biographical progression from early integration into the universe represented by a
shrine such as the sculptural tableau on the left, consisting of figurines from indigenous Yoruba spiritual culture by
Osogbo artists Afolabi Esuleke and Olujide Francis Adesina.
The view of the tree from the window may also evoke Abiodun's experiences with nature in the Yoruba cultural context, such as accompanying his grandfather hunting at night.The library in the picture may project the
distillation and interpretation of this Yoruba cultural universe through
Abiodun's Western education. These varied developmental experiences are at the core of
Yoruba Art and Language.
Picture by myself of library and shrines in my apartment in Ikeja, Lagos.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Contents
Image and Text: Between the Shrine and the Library
Oriki Migrations
Image and Text: The Ring of Deliberation
Image and Text: The Book from Shomolu
The Long Journey of a Book
Abiodun's Life and the Emergence of Yoruba Art and Language
My Own Journey Toward Yoruba Thought
A Search for Meaning through Books and Spiritual Practice
Image and Text: Arrival in the Shomolu Industrial Nexus
Why the Book Had to Return
The Paradox of an African Classic Being Largely Inaccessible in Africa
Image and Text: Soaring Ambitions in Humble Space
Cambridge and the Global Geography of Knowledge
How Prestige and Accessibility to Knowledge Too Often Diverge
The Paradoxical Imprimatur of Cambridge
Image and Text: Visionary Creativity
Books Transmitting the Fire of Knowledge Across Space and Time
Image and Text: Journeys in Outer and Inner Space
Africa and Africans in the Global Knowledge Network
Image and Text: The Return from Shomolu and the Corn Roaster and her Community
Physical Books in the Age of the Smartphone and the Laptop
Image and Text: Trans-Atlantic Journey
The Cambridge Cognitive
Constellation
Image and Text: The Magic of Bookshops
The Precious Love that Eventually Proves Not Enough
Re-Making Yoruba Art and Language
Image and Text: Offices of KHL Printing
The Return of Knowledge
Image and Text: Celebrating a Milestone