***directions to enter a layered collective sight: ***

collective sight/// a set of three eyes

**REVERENCE: **

In my spiritual practice we always give homage before beginning any ritual and any undertaking. Modupe, I give thanks. Modupe Olodumare, the creator, modupe Ifa, the most honest oracle, the one who gave me the name Ifamodupe, modupe Orunmila, the custodian of Ifa, the one who has deepened my gratitude for living this life, modupe Ori (my destiny), modupe Egungun, modupe Osun, modupe Sango, modupe Egbe, modupe to my elders, modupe to my mother Grace Akinwande-Akinyode, modupe to my Father Bernard Akinyode, Modupe to my spiritual teachers, Agbongbon Oluwo Ifalowo Adeola,Modupe to my Olori Iya Fabunmi Trinice Adeola, Modupe to my Baba Sango Bolanle, Modupe to my Iya Osunkemi and Iya Ifatoyin Bogunbe, and the priests that initiated me into Ifa, Osun, and Sango. Modupe to all my comrades on this earth and in heaven. Modupe to all the seen and unseen spirits and forces that continue to uplift my destiny. Modupe to the destiny of the one reading my words.

**Fellowship Reflection: **

**Tuesday November 18, 2025 **

**10:04 PM **

Baltimore, M.D.

The audio piece above is my audio offering as I invite you all into the rivers that are consistently flowing in my brain. A preparation for a soon to be revealed moving image initiation for the piece you are actively reading right now. I have spent so long letting words bubble up in me. They love when I let them out, choosing to release them, allowing them to take shape in this realm. I cannot be greedy, they too want to feel the taste of this air.

I approached this page to write about the gift of repetition and how repetition is mirrored in all that I do. In this piece I invite you into the reveal of how the gift of repetition has come to visit me in exploring archives on Flickr along with the physical experience of going through photographs in my family’s photo albums and collection.

This experience of looking and seeing (with my eyes, without my eyes, with my mouth, with my ears, and with the eyes of others) has been a deep point of joy for middle school Oreoluwa who was given the “curious george” award in middle school. In this searching on Flickr and in family archives I have allowed the spirit of curiosity to stay with me, with growing gratitude and discernment. In this experience I have been deeply transformed in what the stories decided to reveal itself to me and the stories that have re appeared. These noticings and conversations that are sparked from looking at archives on Flickr has allowed me to approach my family and our family archive new curiosity. I am so deeply invested in all of the surprise convos that come from looking at individual posts that were posted in the early 2000s from their personal archive from the mid 20th century. In my noticings I find myself wondering what led a person to upload their photo archives from a portion of their life on a day 40 years prior. I find myself curious to know what conversation a person might have had that day, that month, that year that prompted them to share. I find myself curious to know if the spirit of curiosity visited them 20 years prior to uploading an image, with a list of people that would come to find this image, wondering if Oreoluwa Akinyode was written on this list, knowing I would personally find this image one day. I wonder if they heard a song that day, that month, or that year, which reminded them of the night they met the love of their life and pushed them to upload in the archive an image from that night. In these curiosities, I find myself thinking of the last 5 years of my trying to enter my family’s brains concerning the images they have been able to keep of their/our history across time. It is in those moments of my questions I find myself so deeply nosy to know what song my elders may have been dancing to, searching to see what song came out that year and month and day, to get a visual soundscape of the stories they share from the images I gently beg them to tell me about.

t(his) stone has traveled, fallen, rose, fallen and rose.

**Big Daddy Ebenezer Akinwande in the late 60s/early 70s. **Scanned by Oreoluwa July 23, 2021. Re revealed in my files October 2025.

• From a visit with Big Daddy Dipo Akinwande, his brother, eldest living, we give thanks.

• Big Daddy Dipo also made images and has a large archive of the images he made of his friends and family in Nigeria and upon coming to the states from the 60s and onwards

• ***This image first made itself known to me a month before starting school for photography in August of 2021. ***

• Question written to the image of my Big Daddy Ebenezer Olusegun Akinwande (returned home to heaven in the year of 2013).

• Olusegun- God’s victory!

• **Ebenzer= A stone of support **

• Big Daddy EBENZER was /is the life of the party, the one who brought the family together. When he died, no one could understand how our flame could be taken so abrupt from us. They/We miss him so much. It has not been the same and was never meant to be the same, the beauty and challenges of life.

• **Our flame made his presence known. **

• **His flame fell and rose, burning and making room for something new. **

• **Pure Alchemist! **

**MY FIERCE FLAME THAT GUIDES AND PROTECTS ME. **

***Found this funeral program this past October 8, 2025 while visiting Big Daddy Dipo and found a statement I wrote at age 11. *******

• **During this visit to visit Big Daddy and Big Mommy, my sister, Funmi, joined me. Joy was in the air and guided me to this unexpected surprise in a box of surprise photos. Our collective laughter (collective sight) guided me to these pictures. **

“Le non écrit”

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Uploaded on June 11, 2019

Photo by Adeosun Olamide on Flickr (c) All Rights Reserved

***A series of question written to the image “Le non écrit” which translate to “The unwritten” ***

Did you know I would find my name embedded in yours?

[We share two names here, revealed to me in the upper right corner of the image is a signature, including the name Ayo(joy).]

• Ayomide is my middle name

• Adeosun = Osun carries the crown

• I am a recently returned Osun priest and named Osungbemi, from a lineage of former Osun priests.

• **Osun is everywhere! Iba Odu Ifa Ose Otura. **

WATER IS EVERYWHERE!

Who is that spirit besides you? The vessel so clear?

• ***their head up: yours down ***

***Who are those spirits above you, surrounding you, enriching you, encompassing you? Made of you. Made from you. ***

• Do you see what I see?

• ***A fierce team guiding and protecting you, whether seen and unseen, a fierce team guiding and protecting you. ***

Questions written to the two images together

• What title would you give yourself?

• What gesture would you perform for each other if given feet and hands to dance?

• What next form would you like to inhibit in this world?

• What is a photo studio?

• A crafted designated space “inside”

• Outside is also inside.

• The studio is the space we create images, the site of creation, the site of everywhere.

***Some of my favorite questions reveal more information about what interests me about a person than a statement telling me exactly what they say. ***

This fellowship is my first research fellowship postgrad and as I have embarked on this I have often found myself feeling shame for not “producing” outputs. I found this to be a similar struggle during my study abroad experience in Bournemouth, England last year. It was so humbling to travel to a new place and try to make images and films. I had to learn the story of the land, the people the land called to inhabit it (for however long, within a college or elder whose family is from the land). This experience made me also think of a moment in May during my internship at the Baltimore Museum of Art. After sharing my studio practice with my colleagues, I received such great questions. I forget who asked me at this moment, but I was asked how I might imagine working outside of a classroom prompt. I was not able to imagine at that time, being so deep into my thesis project, titled “a fragmented whole,” being presented the following week or two, I remember thinking “oh thats a goooood question”, because so much of my time at school was pure curiosity that allowed me to make work that has deeply changed me, reflected by the last 4 years of spiritual transformation tangibly transforming my life. So much of my work these last 4 years were guided by prompts at school that actually often times ended up being way different from what was turned in. I kept many of these unsubmitted images, knowing would soon knock on my head to tend to them, images that call me back every 3 months, every 7 months, every 4 years, and so on. Schooling had tied my idea of producing and making tangible material as a large proof of worth. This fellowship, working with Tori and George, has allowed me to safely challenge myself and what I have been trained to see as output as value. My thoughts, questions and conversations with friends, crushes, colleagues, peers, elders, junior ones, experiencing of media, and immersed in a whole life filled with my people and my spirits is what is of true immeasurable value that allows for these written reflections along with the physical manifestation of an visual/audio output to enter this world. A medium is a medium (art medium and spirit medium! same thing! A way to get out and get clear and get out and get clear).

The two images shown in this blogpost are two images that have caught my eye and led to the calling of another image that wishes to speak to each other. To exist on this page together, they wish to tell a story and I thank them for trusting me to reveal what my eyes have seen and to share this with you. I ask that you sit with these two, returning to them whenever they call on you to tend to them, to witness them, to trust they have a message and story to tell you, seemingly and unseemingly connected to my story and yours. Digest them and take things bit by bit, it is how one can intentionally appreciate what a story has to tell.

Gratitude:

Thank you to all my friends, mentors, and community who have been so supportive in answering my questions and giving great advice for my fellowship.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will be inviting you into the next act of this multimedia performance along with a resource recommendation list of media I have been piecing together that has supported me in my formalized curiosi****ty, as Zora Neale Hurston has used to describe research. I embrace and call on the spirit of this research as circular, spitting out life in every movement and questions tossed in the air. To the fierce wind, Oya, who gave me this idea in the wind and air I breathe gratitude to you. The air in my fire, circling and gusting life into my fire.

Warm regards,

Oreoluwa Ifamodupe Akinyode

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Our second stop on the European conference circuit was Paris, for the Sixteenth International Conference on The Image where George and Tori shared the release of Data Lifeboat and the importance of citizen-driven collecting.

International Conference of Cyber-Humanities Recap

Tori shares her reflections on a recent conference in Florence, where she detailed our progress on the Data Lifeboat alpha alongside the value of collecting from social media for heritage practitioners.