Ibiyinka Alao
The Perversity Of Life (Girls And Greener Environment)
Ca. 200118" x 24"
Tempera
This is the painting that won the first place in the 2001 United Nations International Art Competition amongst 61 countries. In this painting, I have chronicled the life of a woman from infancy to old age, and how her values keep changing with time. For a woman, emotions, moods and values in life change so rapidly that it is sometimes difficult for any one man to understand. This is why I have used a woman in this picture, but the message applies to all men.
From the time when she is an infant, all a woman wants to do is to be like the girl child after her. We think, “I can’t wait to be like this person or that person that is older than I am “. We want to wear the clothes they wear, build the houses they build, buy the kind of cars they ride in, marry their kind of partners and eat the kind of food they eat. While this kind of desire may get us good role models and thereby prevent us from getting into social ills like drug abuse, prostitution and crime, we find out latter in life that everything fades, and the things we desired while we were children, no longer appeal to us when we become adults. For instance, a child that loves candy may dream one day that when he becomes old like his father, makes some money and can afford it, he will stock his house full of candy. But we all know that this is only childish fantasy, for when he gets there, his values have varied.
So the girl child becomes the young woman and the young woman becomes the mother. The Mother becomes a grandmother and the grandmother becomes a great grandmother and so on. When the end comes and she is not able to work on the farm anymore, then she will sit down and ponder on her life. It is then that she will realize that all other things she desired have passed away and that the only thing that has remained constant in her life is love, the value of which never changes even as we get older. A child has and needs love as much as an adult does. All other values changes with time, and such is the perversity of Life.