Where my head goes

Where my head goes - Ibi Ori Lo

Ibi Ori Lo was inspired by my own experiences and by a Yoruba saying I grew up with: “Ibi Ori da ni si, la n gbe”;where the head, or destiny, places you, there we live. I have always found myself thinking about how much of our lives we are actually able to control. We make plans, we imagine where we will be, and we work towards the life we want. But life has its own way of moving us. Sometimes we arrive somewhere we never planned to be, and with time, we begin to understand that perhaps that direction was part of our journey all along. This became the starting point for Ibi Ori Lo. In this body of work, I use balloons as a symbol of Ori and destiny. They are light, fragile and easily carried by the wind. I wanted to create something that could represent an unseen force; something we cannot hold or see, but that can still influence the direction of the body. In some of the photographs, the balloons are above the subject’s head, almost as if they are carrying or guiding him. In another, they are separated from him, leaving his body lying empty beside the water. For me, that image speaks about what it feels like when we lose our sense of direction, or when we become disconnected from the thing that is guiding us. I also use the body, dark skin, fashion and the natural landscape as part of the story. I placed the subject against the sea, sand and stone because I wanted the photographs to feel stripped back; leaving the body and the symbols to speak to one another. The work is rooted in my Yoruba upbringing, but it is also very personal to me. It is about the experiences that have taught me to accept that I cannot always determine where life will take me. Sometimes I lead. Sometimes I follow. And sometimes, I simply have to trust where my head is going.