Ino Adjani Kodjo

Ino “Odd Johnny” Kodjo is an ogbanje psycho spiritual surrealist, alchemical painter and musician. His works entitled DreamLand are meant to study and sort of spotlight the intrinsic relationships between love, death, grief, psychosis of human nature, decolonization,  and the dream time.  Can healing be found in the valleys connecting these feelings/spaces in the body? In the earth?

Kodjo takes to alchemical symbols as a sort of Time Machine through his works. This practice started shortly after Kodjo was assaulted while working as a painter in Portland, Oregon and suffered from Prolonged memory loss as a result.

“With my schizophrenic mind, I am able to find more connections between things that others don’t see. I can use ancient symbols to connect to personal memories, those connect to dreams. Dreams connect to a higher or collective source of consciousness. There are shaman even, who track dreams that reoccur in the same geographic locations over time. What would you do if you found your own?And you recognized it, some faint call in the wind from long ago.

Dreamland is exactly this. It stands as its own boisterous yet delicate command for reconnection, reclamation and restoration of innocence, peace and natural magic. For everyone, but especially for the Black/African diaspora.

To connect to one another this way is to connect to ourselves. To connect to ourselves is inherent reconnection with the natural world around us. I dare us all to take a step further into my mind: from its slimey hellmouth to the peak of honey suckle mountain. I once was a man with no memory at all. Now I have so many. I am so many dreams at once. It was my own nature that saved me. It’ll be yours too.