Oracle Quest : Situating Bruce Onobrakpeya's Artistic Oracle Series in a Global Cognitive Universe

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

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                                                                          Oracle Quest

                     Situating Bruce Onobrakpeya's Artistic Oracle Series in a Global Cognitive Universe

                                                                 Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                             Compcros

                                                   Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems       

                                      "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

The time is a thousand years from now. The Oracle series of mixed media works by the 20th-21st century artist Bruce Onobrakpeya, first presented in the 2015 book Onobrakpeya: Masks of the Flaming Arrows, and adapting the visual structure of the opon ifa, a central symbolic and functional form of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge and divination, have long been missing,  rumoured to have been scattered to unknown locations across the world in order to prevent the arcane knowledge they embody being available to any one person,so dangerous these perceptions are whispered to be. Someone, however,  determines to track them down and unearth the mysterious cognition they enable. This series, combining art criticism, art theory and broader philosophical reflection within the compressed evocative and narrative power of the  short story and rich in detailed  visual and verbal engagements with each element in each of these works of art, represent this person's account of the quest. 

The story so far:

1."The Discovery of Oracle 1 : Bruce Onobrakpeya's Circle of Being and Becoming" 

Stumbling on Oracle I in a cave in India, the suggestive force of its balance of geometry and seemingly random assemblage in striking colour symmetries inspires  probing into the role of geometry in cosmological investigations in various thought systems, beginning from a comparison between the goals and methods of Ifa divination and cosmological physics, the latter represented by the theories of Albert Einstein on matter, energy, space and time.

2. "Illumination in Darkness : Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracle II"

Acquiring Oracle II at great cost from a secretive art dealer in Berlin, the writer's captivation by its balance of mysterious power and explicit beauty leads him into the intricacies of the convergence of the arcane and the evident, the ineffable and the near to hand.

3. "Encounter in the Marketplace: Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracle III"

Finding Oracle III in a market in Cairo, the writer is compelled to explore relationships between the artistic piece and the dynamism of the market, in the spirit of the classical African understanding of the world as a marketplace, adapting the title of Nkeonye Otakpor's 1996 essay on that conception in Igbo philosophy. 

4. " Suffusions of Colour: Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracle IV"

"All men by nature desire to know.This is demonstrated, above all, in the delight we take in the sense of sight, for it reveals the differences between things", goes the first line of the Metaphysics by the 4th century Greek philosopher Aristotle. Can the multiplicity revealed by sight be traced to an underlying, unifying principle, he proceeds to ask, this inquiry forming the driving force of this book that institutionalized the philosophical field of metaphysics.

The encounter with Oracle IV in the possession of an Eskimo shaman who uses it for inter-dimensional voyages inspires the exploration of various forms of rationality in efforts to arrive at the foundations of existence.

 

5. "Paradoxical Aesthetics : Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracle X"

Oracle X, discovered by the writer in an asylum in Buenos Aires, where its previous owner had been confined because  the spell of the work had rendered her incapable of any other activity as she gazed continuously at the artistic piece gripped in her hand, inspires reflection on the tension between the human quest for ultimate, summative meaning and the possibly paralyzing paradoxes involved in this search.

Eighteen of these Oracles are presented in Onobrakpeya : Masks of the Flaming Arrows, meaning the quester has thirteen more to find. What more is the seeker prepared to do,

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what spaces on earth or beyond, is he willing to go, what cognitive vistas, what further zones of knowledge will he plunge into in this compulsive search that unearths  intersections of art, the corridors of the self and the global network of thought and experience across time and space? Hang on for the ride so you can find out.

This series is being presented exclusively on Facebook at present and  can be accessed through the links above  even if you don't have a Facebook account. I am motivated by the informality and multi-media resources of Facebook and other social media and do-it-yourself online publishing platforms in the spirit of my commitment to learning as an individualistic quest for ultimate meaning using whatever resources are most accessible, in dialogue with others, employing these platforms as primary enablements  from which I fan out to more traditional media.