This is an appreciation of the "Peace Doves" by master carver Adeyemi Victoria Ajewole-Fakeye known popularly as Yemi. The appreciation is by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo. A publication of African Centre for Community and Development copyrights2011 African Centre for Community and Development. All rights reserved.

1. Yemi’s Peace Doves appreciated by Arrey
Mbongaya Ivo
Author: Arrey Mbongaya Ivo
©2011 African Centre for Community and Development
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2. The history of doves as peace birds is not new to man. Indeed without them Gods
covenant to man through Noah would only remain an abstraction instead of a practical
symbol that we can see flying from Trafalgar to Limbe. However this work seems to
briefly limit doves within the periscope of the “Peace Doves” by the artist Adeyemi
Victoria Ajewole-Fakeye popularly called Yemi. This artist is a consummate master
carver from Ibadan, Nigeria who has exploited carving in wood to new heights for over
20 years, even though she also expresses herself in paint and stone. Her marriage to a
husband of the Fakeye traditional carving lineage has in no small way helped in the
explicit works she has been known to deliver and add authority to the liberty of
expressions in her works or her reason for creating her peace doves. Therefore in true
tradition to her words that “I can work on any style whether abstraction or realism” and in
recognition of the abstractions and realities of the cosmic logic and geography of Ibadan,
Nigeria and Africa where she hails from, one can only say that her works are relevant to
the realities of her space. No one can cover her expressions in ink and a bronze-aged
paper neither can the full power of her “peace doves” be measured here. Indeed I have
constricted her work to the contemporary relevance of her theme to issues around her and
the world.
Firstly contemporary divisions between children of Oduduwa or Old Oyo or the historical
Ife exist. Some have not exempted the historical curse from Alafin Aole on this
somewhat divisions but indeed one can readily see post modern Afonjas in may villages
and families or even in the interpretations of cosmic realities that one can rightly suggest
that Yemi through her peace doves is yearning for the classical oneness of her immediate
peoples which are in many ways divided. Their division is a microcosm of Nigeria where
we have cultural and religious conflicts between the North and South and even greater
Africa that we swiftly apprehend is facing conflicts in Congo, Sudan, Somalia and many
other areas.
Her use of women to hold the doves is a revolution against the traditional prototypical
African male ambassadors over times that have indeed not guaranteed security for her
peoples. This is not to negate the historical role of queen mothers across African
chiefdoms and mothers who have been noted to broker peace in the past or to seek it.
That Yemi returns to this might simply be an attempt at women empowerment or the

3. renaissance of a culture that is not seen in the rapes of Congo or Liberia for the purpose
of wars.
While doves symbolize peace, they also intimate flight and indirectly heighten the drama
in the wish of Yemi. Women should play bigger roles in modern peace processes and
should not be the victims of abuses, if these processes have been denied them is the
message we get in the almost ritualistic pose of her figures. Women in long braids
holding the birds add an African touch to the carving as their hair work can be likened to
“Rasta” or dreads that every one knows can be seen every day from Bamako to
Ouagadougou to even the Diaspora lands of the Caribbean Islands. These women also
definitely add a Khemetian angle to her carving that cannot be dismissed.
More so, there is an almost prophetic angle to this work. Two symbolizes a whole that is
seen in the symmetry of creation: two eyes, two ears, man and woman, two hands, two
feet and many more. However her two that i imagine is ordained in her perhaps
unconscious inspiration from her metaphysical forces is that one that has seen two
African women Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee. That there is a third woman
reduces in no way the prophecy for as the braids chain along these women may simply
have chained with Yemen’s Tawakkul Karman to make women advocacy for peace and
peace in general the new story of this century.
Thus Yemi’s “peace doves” have a cultural, historical and modern relevance that
transcend old prototypes and old limitations to meet the modern procrastinations and
realities of the 21st Century’s landscape which is affected by various wars including
desertification, climate change, hunger, poverty, floods and diseases. Her carving is
therefore as relevant to the woman in the Mekong Valley or the people of Afghanistan or
Pakistan as it is relevant to Tahiri Square or Abuja. She is indeed a veritable master
carver.

4. Yemi’s Peace Doves exposes the almost ritualistic posturing of the women.

5. Back view of Yemi’s Peace Doves exposing the long braids.

6. A close-up view of Yemi’s Peace Doves

7. Adeyemi Victoria Ajewole-Fakeye (Yemi) master carver and creator of “Peace Doves”
Arrey Mbongaya Ivo (Author) of this Literary Appreciation
©2011 African Centre for Community and Development. All Rights Reserved.