 I'm Michelle DeMarzo, I'm the curator of education here at the Fairfield University Art Museum. Thank you for joining us for tonight's lecture on the art of Manuel Mendeve, who is one of the artists featured in our current exhibition, Archives of Consciousness, Six Cuban Artists. And I am delighted to welcome our speaker, Dr. Barbro Martinez Ruiz, an art historian whose work focuses on Afro-Latin American and Caribbean visual culture, art, and aesthetics. Dr. Martinez Ruiz earned his BA from the University of Havana and his PhD from Yale University. And he is currently, as you can see from his title slide, splitting his time, he is both Tanner Opperman Chair of African Art History in honor of Roy Sieber at Indiana University, and he is also a senior research fellow in African and Afro-Latin American arts at Trinity College University of Oxford. If that wasn't enough, he also holds the title of Honorary Professor in the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. So a very busy world traveler is our tonight's speaker. Dr. Martinez Ruiz has published numerous books and articles in both English and Spanish, including Green Machine, The Art of Carlos Luna, that came out in 2016, and Congo, Graphic Writing, and Other Narratives of the Sign, that was published in both English and Spanish editions in 2012. And his current project, Engraving the World, Rupestrian Art and Migration in Central Africa, is forthcoming in 2020. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Martinez Ruiz. Good afternoon. Thank you, everyone, for coming today here. One of the things that worries me the most is the microphone. I try to kind of find my fear to microphones. But I wanted to say thank you to Fairfield University, and the Archives of the Department, and the Museum for these kind invitations. And I want to also to extend my thanks to Carrie Marks Weaver, the director of the museums, Michelle DeMarcel, for being so kind and organizing this talk. This is maybe one of the things you think you will never will go back and kind of revisit. After I did an exhibition, a retrospective of Mendebe, 60 years his career, I thought I never had to go back and talk about his work. And I think it is kind of the first time I kind of go back and kind of pulled my memories about why I think his work is relevant. Why we should confront certain issues that haven't been answered onto today about his work. Something I try to address through the exhibition is very different when you had to kind of write in a book or a catalogue. And I think one of the most important issues in Mendebe's work is his African foundations. We hyphenate Mendebe as an artist that have his work is related with an African culture, or African culture in the diaspora, specifically the Yoruba traditions. It's one of the four religions in Cuba. I raise an important question about how this Yoruba culture, Yoruba aesthetic informs Mendebe's works. And he's aware of how he negotiated this relationship with the Yoruba tradition, Yoruba cultural traits. And the second kind of layer is how aware he is with the Yoruba tradition back in Nigeria, Togo and Benin. This is kind of another set of impossibilities in his work. We assume his quintessential artist that his work is embedded with the specific African religion. And I just wanted to kind of show a map of Nigeria that is right now the location of a culture, a Yoruba culture that goes back to 500 B.C. Just to get a sense of how important is that culture. And I think it's specific to the ones that have to do with the migrations of and transportation of African slaves through African Nigerians through the slave trade. Confront per se part of Edo. Edo was an important kingdom. And the collide is pretty much in the border with what is Cameroon right now. And I think most of the Cubans Yoruba tradition come from that particular region. It's very different as Yoruba is so diverse. And it's what we know about Yoruba culture. And that is very different in the way Cubans understand Yoruba. It's a Yoruba culture in the way our historian, African art historian, think about Yoruba as Yoruba civilization. It's kind of complete different arguments. What means civilization versus them only have a culture. And it's possible to talk about civilization in the context of African diaspora. But Yoruba is famous for putting together a metropolis, a city. And was a civilization that grew around urban centers. And we have a lot of records from 400 years of understanding, trying to oral count or travel narratives to try to understand how this particular closure managed to create these incredible urban places. And this is just one of the photographs from 1668 of a view of Yoruba civilization that is highlighted through the idea of having a metropolis like London or Paris or Amsterdam. And there's a lot of comparison between the metropolis of Benin with the metropolis of Amsterdam at the time. But the oldest material culture we have from the Yoruba go back to 250 BC. The cold front knock is an archaeological site in Nigeria. And they have this beautiful terracotta. Pretty much most of the fissure you will find in Yoruba art, specific terracotta and the aesthetic of Yoruba art. They are kind of related to this particular piece, the clurry voice, the design of the eyes, the body language and post-search. Pretty much those pieces become kind of like a textbook for future understanding, implication of this particular visual aesthetic in future art among the Yoruba people. And now we kind of show a map that showed the traffic of humans for 500 years between Africa, Europe and back into the Americas that was so-called transatlantic slave trade and the creation of the African diaspora. And I think here they show the specific numbers of 11 to 10 million of Africans being dislocated into the diaspora. And you can see pretty much the Spanish empires around 2.5 million people in which 300,000, 350,000 being relocated in the context of Cuba. And I think that's another example that show a different comparisons of numbers arriving to the diaspora and number leaving Africa. I think it's just, I know you can see here, specifically from West Africa when Yoruba culture is related and the incredible diversity of culture next to the Yoruba culture that is sometimes taken as equal. But the Yoruba have a very distinctive understanding of religions and cosmogony of Yoruba religions. And they believe in a creative God, an almighty God that is responsible for every living microorganism in the world. But also Yoruba believe in the pantheons of army and God and goddesses that have more responsibility in their everyday life. And also they believe in the importance of ancestor in that structure. And the end is the world of the living that had to do with us as human living in society. And I just want to show here a specific example of deities, the ways, the names that being changes from Nigeria or from the context of Nigeria, West Africa and Benin, two Brazils on Cuba and all the different. It's pretty much what you have is a perfect match in the carrions, the names. It's just changed as a notation from Portuguese or French or Spanish. I changed the spelling, but that's pretty much the same name. But one of the, I think is the second important issue in Mendebe work it had to do with how Yoruba people define art. And Yoruba have a particular concept that define not just the artistic practice but also defined the entire attitude in life, how they understand life and living. And call Ache. And Ache is translated as vitality or life force. And also they believe in another important concept they call Iwa, character. They believe in having good and bad character. It's something that affect your projections and understanding of life. And it too, too, is the translates as a mystic coldness. And that has to do with how you exchange yourself with other people or we call generosity. And these three concepts are very important in Yoruba culture. But Ache, Yoruba believe in order to understand art, in order to call something art, need to have Ache inside. And this idea of Ache is something that gives a power to the object. You have to feel it, but you have to understand how Ache is negotiated into something that we call art. That is the rule number zero in Yoruba art. The kind of bring an interesting question is Mendebe is aware of Ache as an important element in defining an artistic practice, in the processes of making art. That is something I think I would like to address through the presentation. And I just want to give you a sense of how diverse is the pantheon, the army and God and goddesses that kind of represent different aspects of life. They have a specific intervention in different aspects of our living and our behaviors as humans. It's kind of classified in an arbitrary way just to get a sense that God and goddesses, they are more related just for you to understand how diverse is that system, religious system. And also Yoruba people believe in traditions and traditions I think is something more like historical, something that happened in time. Tradition I have a very bad connotation for African art. Tradition is a synonymous of bad having negative implications. If something is traditional, it's kind of associated with wishcraft or black magic. In the field of our history it's tried to renegotiate the use of this particular concept. But traditional is that something is clear for an African practitioner. It's very different in the way we write about what means tradition in the context of our history, our African art. And also the idea of tradition in Yoruba art is associated with a particular mode of expression style. And also they believe in ancient traditions that go back before our human condition, before the creation of the urban center of the city. And also they believe in tradition that can be passed from one generation to the next. And also they believe in... Yoruba people believe every situation is subject of creating a new conceptualization, a new understanding. You will be able to create new traditions from the start on. But one of the challenges for the exhibitions, and also about Mendebe's work, I wanted to understand when everything starts, the beginning of everything. And maybe it's kind of an art historian curiosity. I just didn't want it to jump into the most significant work in the 70s and in the 80s. I just wanted to go back. And Mendebe studied in the San Alejandro Academy. And also he studied in the same place. We have a kind of connections that way. We both came from a working class black neighborhood, African descent neighborhood. It's another connection. And you can see Mendebe, this is the first drawing from the left, from 1952 won a prize drawing competition in Japan. Mendebe submitted as a kid. And later you can see all the work. And his curiosity for religion was something from day one in Mendebe's work. And you can see the depiction of Jesus Christ was an important and current themes in his work in his early time. All people of importance, like his grandmother, important writers, uncles and aunties. And what I wanted to show to you is not just someone as a kid who is able to have this naive drawing on the left, but also he can develop a different kind of, assess a different kind of styles, like still life like flowers, religious archetype himself as a portrait, and other people including his own neighborhood. And you can see the range of themes he's kind of informing his own curiosity as an artist until 1963. And this is the kind of displays of early drawings front from Mendebe. But this is what I consider the first, first, first work of Mendebe. And it's the beginning of the 1960s. You can see he's using organic material. He's using recycled material. He's using things they've been throw out, specifically like sacks, rotten blankets, sheets that people use every day life. And you can see the most of his work in the early, in the early, the two on the left on the early 60s, he did in collaboration with family members. But I think the most important feature here is the, he tried to align human bodies. He tried to create a new type of embodiment that could be human or could be something else. And you can see these hybridities that kind of insisting in those hybridities of those creatures that are not easy to recognize. They are kind of uncanny compositions. Or you can see these faces with eyes or one single eye. And they are so stitched into those material. But also this kind of work at the beginning, Mendebe used to like to have the impact of time. He used to make a drawing or stitch those figures and he had to leave it on the floor and the people had to kind of walk on top or get rains or salt to water. And the impact of nature was important for him. Grieving a new meaning into this object. But Mendebe is the kind of artist that decided to explore other things that other people, other Cuban artists didn't explore like performance art. He was the first one in Cuba who started doing performance kind of without apologizing, without asking for authorization. Also he was exploring with terracotta. But I just wanted to show you one example of terracotta from you can see on the left. There's a terracotta from Yoruba. The Yoruba piece from Ife. Ife used to be the state city among the Yoruba people. This is 200 BC. And there is an association with Yoruba. In general to African art and Yoruba art, they are not quick. They are not able to understand realism. But you can see you cannot be more realistic than the pieces on the left. And now it's one of the assumptions we have about African art has kind of been kind of destroyed in one second. We have other terracotta that are designed as a religious object for libations or refreshness of the person. The idea of a mist of coolness is to bring that kind of confidence and freshness is in the water. That is hole in the piece on the middle. And on the right, this is kind of a Cuban understanding of this ceramic by replacing by porcelain from China. I think we have modernity kind of plays a different role in the way African people reconstructed their own tradition in the diaspora. But nevertheless, the idea is still the same. The conceptual framework is still the same. So the materiality, they are very different. And this is what Mendevere decided to do. I think Mendevere's art is defined by his desire to tell stories. He is a storyteller from day one. And that's why we saw at the early work is the desire to look for embodiment that they can use to tell a story, to narrate something. He is looking for archetype of human conditions. It could be from God or a single mortar. And what we have here is the kind of terracotta tradition he did in Italy. He did 20 something terracotta in Italy. He is now in the interesting crossroad in which his fascination and love for Western art plays an important role in his own training. And he tries to kind of find a way to negotiate his understanding of those type of representation in Greek and Roman antiquity and how he can kind of replace that back into his own religious belief. And here is the themes that I had to do with water, different kind of water, fresh water, salty water. These are important themes representing archetype like goddesses like Yemaya or Shun. It's become an important fascination in his work because they didn't have in the work of art those kind of images that have been produced at that time. He's now pushing a new boundaries in Q and R. He created morphology. He created an embodiment that allowed to every single person, not just artists, every single person in precision to understand how to understand those dates. And it's now, the challenge just moves to another level. But pretty much when you see all medieval work in the early time, it was rejected by practitioners because they thought his work was a transgression of the norm. You had to wait 15, 20 years in his practice when he kind of trained people to understand what he wanted to do. It's just examples of this terracotta. And we can see he's looking for themes that had to do with water like mommy water, a spirit that represents water. They are pretty much what we find in every society in Africa. Now he's not specific about Afro-Cuban religion. He wanted to create an art that speaks to all African traditions, just early particular practice. Or he think about specific signifiers or symbols that people related to specific deity using representation of fish or animals. They are related to emblematic of, and it's very simplistic at that sense. But what we have here is the archetype of a woman, the roles of women in Cuban society. I think it's what he's kind of playing around. And when you think about Diane's in antiquity and how Diane can be replaced by the power of a woman in Afro-Cuban society, not just being initiated a woman like, you think about the deity like Oshun, what people associate in Cuba with money. And Oshun is associated with confidence. It's a confident woman, know herself. And now we have a, Mendebe realized they have a problem. There is a two understanding of Afro-Cuban themes. One that only resonates in the context of popular culture. And the second one is the one that operate for people who already know the religions. And those differences, they are important for Mendebe work. And sometimes they contradict each other. And his work is kind of in the middle of these contradictions what, how popular culture imagine the religion is different from how the practitioner leave the religion and understand this meaning. And now his early work is what I call mythological paintings. And this is the paintings we might know from Mendebe. This is what made him popular. And most of these paintings there are straight translation of a religious archetype. He's depicting God and goddesses from the Yoruba and Pantheon. There's something that most of the Afro-Cuban practitioner didn't like it because the Yoruba tradition in Cuba have their own visual culture. That is not, they have to do anything with being trained in the Fine Art Academy. And being there for many, many years, you don't have to go to that school to be fully burst in that tradition. That is one of the problems. And they have a professional artist who's kind of reflecting into a tradition that is not asking for authorization to the Fine Art Academy to be accepted. And I think that is the kind of tension. Nevertheless, Mendebe is seeking, he's looking, searching for a language. That is what I think. Mendebe is searching for a language that he hasn't even found yet onto today that would allow him to understand the Yoruba experience, the religious experience. That religious experience is complicated. It's messy. Because Cuba is in a very complicated historical crossroad, multiple culture, multiple temporalities. They come together, political. Very dysfunctional place as a political space. All of these, he has to negotiate at the real time. He's almost like building an airplane when he's flying the airplane. And what I created a series of categories that allow me to understand Mendebe's work. And the first one I had to do more with his idea of Mendebe as a narrator. Mendebe was the one who wanted to tell the story. And I use the concept of visual poetry. And the idea of poetry for me is because poetry is not tangible. It requires a lot of imaginations. And I think that is the reason that maybe Plato believed poetry is more precise than anything else. But I think it's opposite to Mendebe in the way I use it in here. But this is the first, first, first known work from Mendebe from early 60s after the experimentation I showed from the beginning. This is used now. He's a professional artist. He has an exhibition in an important gallery. And he uses recycled material. Windows, doors, wall panels, floor panels. In which the life of these materials has been reflected in the surface of this object. That is the first thing. He's choosing that. And also this is the time Mendebe also come into realisation how Yoruba religion will play an important role in his life. He had an accident. The recent expression in Cuba when the doctor cannot find a solution for your problem is that you had to walk. And this is what he did. The idea of walking is the finding for solution for your current situation. And he became a member of Yoruba in Yoruba religion. And now he has a relationship with a religion that doesn't come straight from the family history because a family is to be Catholic. He's come into religion through a sense of trauma. That is, I think, it's important for me to understand Mendebe's work. And there is a temporality in addressing his own psychology, his own suffering at that time. Now you have Mendebe who uses art as a way he understands his new spiritual awakening, his renaissance as a new kind of individual after this accident. And he tries to also back into this archetype of a religion as a way in which he can negotiate his way in understanding how this religion function and how it will define his own life. But this is, for me, I consider the best Mendebe work. Maybe it's in my own personal choice. This particular piece on title, but it's not really on title. It's a representation of the god Ogun. Ogun in Yoruba tradition is the god of a cutting age. It's the god of technology. It's the god of labor and making. And everything I had to do with labor is in the hands of the cleverness of this god. And that is what he's responsible for, computer, everything that, you know, gives meaning to a modern life. He's the god of modernity, if you want to think it that way. But Mendebe tries to understand all the different interpretations as understanding of what Ogun means, that in the popular imaginary, he's associated with a grumpy, roughy old man that is angry all the time, angry at everyone. He's subject of betrayed. He cannot control himself and violent his is final. That is the way it being portrayed. And dirtiness is associated. It's one of the most important attributes in the popular imaginary. That is completely opposite what Ogun is at the end of the day for Yoruba moral philosophy. And now you can see Ogun is depicted as a hill and he's placing a house on the top of the hill as an altar. He's creating a new iconography by relying on his early representation in the imagination of the people, how to depict or how to associate Ogun. Ogun is the mountain, is the hill. Ogun also could be a tree associated with a snake and also rain. Ogun is this old man with a traditional dress like a priest. Now he's looking, you see here multiple representation of the same theme that kind of depicted in a fractal way that I think is the concept we use in Africa and in our fractal instead of tautology. There is a significant difference between the two. And here, what I tried to show you here from day one in early world from Indira he wanted to tell the story and how he wanted to tell the story. He used in that this series, he created those banners and each understanding of Ogun is displayed in each of a section he put together as a whole. Now we have a sense of seriality through time and the fragmentation we can use as a way to understand the time, the organization of time, progress of time and the idea can be deployed on a particular space. There's another example from also Ogun this is the same dating. So on the left we have maybe the first depiction of Ogun in Cuban art and as maybe driving these images from maybe a coffee table book of African art the few from the early 60s and 70s and on the right is all the association in the popular imaginary about Ogun violence, these abusive husband, abusive man who beat his wife was on the right. And now he's co-writing these two understanding of Ogun. Ogun as a portrait of a deity that you had to understand for his own aesthetic, his beauty as his embodiment on the left and on the right is the opposite to that is how the people related in the popular imagination, the popular space and that is Ogun is the collision of these two understanding. That is what made his work so relevant to me because he's bringing that contradiction and better into a Cuban society into this hybrid space into this syncretized space if you want to use those fancy words. And the last from that series is that called Endoko and Endoko is a piece that is related to a concept of love and the idea of love. And again, you can see now he's using not just the idea of these banners to display a different understanding but also he's using repetition of a similar thing to kind of close the story. The idea of a couple as a love, a signified love on the top also is on the bottom and you have this love as a way to compress a story in the middle. There's only way you wouldn't say the love is by understanding what happened in the middle. And this is the Mendeve understanding of his, a concept of love and I also had to do with love as there's something already happening in his life. This is a painting Mendeve did on the floor. He wasn't able to move after the accident and he wasn't able to move after the accident and he was, the piece of wood was on the floor and we had to paint from the top all the way to the bottom of the painting after he finished because he was kind of coring back into the painting for the accident. But here you can see the Mendeve negotiation of the archetype of Oshun that in the mythology Yoruba is the wife of the lover of Chang'e is that love is the unpredictable and also raise other issues about the love that is upside a merry couple is interesting and he's kind of bringing that into and the final cardinal love on the reproduction and the idea of continuity of a human race as on the one on the button and later when I asked he said I tried to get the sense of what represents the relationship between animals and human on the right and he used animals to create different metaphor and qualification of love he's kind of quantifying love experience that had to do with him and love experience that had to do with becoming that religious person his spiritual awakening. But when you move into the 80s after the 70s Paul's impersonist work that we saw before with the dots that was something he's still in his work onto today and we can see three important elements that Mendebe used as a resource to build his own visual language in his looking for that language and one is flying, the idea of flying hovering of images that you will find in pretty much in all his work from day one and the idea of hybridity this creating new entities that could be human, that could be monsters and iconic narratives now he combined to different elements to try to tell a story and sometimes a story they are related to a specific oral account that people knows and that tells or could be a fragment from the pataki is one of the important Yoruba literature tradition but have pretty much all the morals, archetypes of Yoruba religion they are embedded in that body of writing and now he has a way in which those narratives that come now into a different way in the language in which he can empower to tell those kind of story but this is a base in conversation with Mendebe the fascination, the specific reference that he used like flying or hovering that came from important masters artists that plays an important role in Mendebe's work and specifically what is the, I forget his name now on the right, William Blake sorry, William Blake, the two images on the right and there is an exhibition of Tate I finished tomorrow on William Blake and the Bible is an amazing show you should go and see it we have an artist that also want to represent religious archetype and this is what he is choosing, William Blake in which hovering and flying is one of the most important themes in William Blake interesting enough, William Blake did a lot of images of exploitation on the violence toward the human and African body there is something that Mendebe doesn't do not use in his work and the idea of hybridity is that he used to signify that relationship between human and the deity, I think is what is underlined his work and here hybridity is based in a specific artist that has been referenced in conversation with him and Blake is still pretty much one of the main artists that have informed his work and you can see a specific depiction of this psychological disposition toward religious archetype or God and the energy one and here you can see a map of all of the different themes and concepts that Mendebe used to reshape his own work but now in relation to the Bible, in relation to Christianity it is in relation to space in which Christianity plays an important role in dealing with African traditions and that is what he had to find a way to negotiate those translations and I think I don't like translation I like more shifting but anyway the translation sounds like something you will understand but here I wanted to show you images from Mendebe pretty much from 1987 you can see I realized Mendebe was making painting out of styles most of the art historians have this fascination to talk about Mendebe of the 70s and the 80s but I find out Mendebe through all his work he started making painting from styles from 20 years before and somehow he is like unfinished painting, unfinished project he is doing in 2000 and it is the one in 1989 and it has been seen as a new painting now in 2000 but it is just based in the painting he did in the late 80s and you can see pretty much from 1992 to 1992 but this was the title I used for Mendebe exhibitions and the catalogue I wrote because I had to do with impossibilities I think it is the way I see we wanted to know everything about Mendebe and I realized we cannot know everything about Mendebe and that is an impossibility I can maybe have an approximation to Mendebe works that is what I tried to do and Mendebe has this paper on cloth, what we call applique fabric is another term and you can see sewing cutting, pasting on and also it is ultra dimensional he is now making any determination in the kind of objects and material he wanted to use in his frame and you can see the one from 1965 and the one we have in the gallery is similar to the one from 2005 those are more aligned with the one from 1965 but also this is the one he produced in 2010 and this is a tapestry I produced for Mendebe in a photo exhibition in Los Angeles and we made it a Jacques Hart loom and we recreated 500 colors from Mendebe painting and I think you wanted to understand that Jacques Hart looms you only can have three colors, every color you see in the tapestry here and kind of continue of Mendebe work and this is just the work from Mendebe from that time from 2010 in which he go back to these typical things in his work flying figures but now flying figures have to be more precise and also he now looking for a different way to engage the audience and now the idea of a share had to do more with the process of cognition so I don't mean maybe the way I kind of frame how he bring a share into the creative process these pieces you have the three sections but the one, the number three that cloth you have to lift it up and there is an image only can be understood by unveiling what is behind that cloth and the completion of understanding of this painting the site is by unveiling the mystery behind that painting that physical actions of having access to a private space of a painting I can maybe translate as a way his understanding of what a share mean that kind of animation that had to be there for understanding and here you can see the progression from he use a specific technique in Western art to kind of empower his own tradition but now he now he bring a specific understanding of hybridity, the visual language we know from him also he wanted to still going back to how to depict those archetype, religious archetype like Olokun is the button of the ocean how he is looking for a way in which to represent the button of the oceans that is associated with the great art in the context of Jiruba a moral philosophy in the context of contemporary art and now he had to give a new body to that deities is the one in the middle or how you depict the world of the living, the world in which we inhabit and we have our mysteries and problems and happiness and he is now using a new way in which he can engage the audience to continue following his search for this language that can be used to map how this new psychological crossroads I just wanted to show one of the things like most of the people who saw the African art they think that Jiruba art did not have a graphic writing system this is an example of graphic writing system from Nigeria the Jiruba people and this writing is made out of drawings they made on the grounds that are still used until today and most of the practitioners in Cuba don't believe that Jiruba has this graphic writing system I just want to bring back into there also an important signifier that Mendebe used in his work the funds, the idea of coolness, the idea of confidence in Jiruba art, how he can translate into his own practice again another example from Jiruba graphic writing system that simultaneously taking place in Africa at the same time Jiruba people also have their own graphic expressions in a similar way Mendebe is looking for that language that's what I tried to say just an example of a religious space in Cuba it's very different from what Mendebe is doing translating through his paintings or the space of a deity could be a crossroad or being by the ocean or an altar and now we're back into Mendebe in which there's a sonic kinetic into something flat as a painting and how it's possible through the language of a painting and the limitation of a painting to represent something complex like this I showed before in the Jiruba tradition so I think it's that negotiation is what is still relevant for Mendebe that is what performed this example from the Jacques Hart loom from Mendebe I produced Manolia 2012 I did two of the top three and Mendebe followed through his own work and this is just samples from the exhibitions but when you think about various specific themes like depictions of a deity like Eshu or Eletba is the deity of a crossroads of consciousness or truth and it's depicted in many different ways in the Jiruba as you can see there are anthropomorphic figures and this is an example from the diaspora this made out of this clay that it's translated in Cuba as a child that is the way also Mendebe used it in his painting or you think about deities that represent the human soul this is the Jiruba tradition in the religion this is also in Nigeria we have the birth on the tub to signify the human soul the idea of ability to fly and the message is back to God and the graphic writing system that kind of repeat the same depiction I saw from before or depicting Ogún with the rifles of those hills or stones on the left or the caldrons in the Jiruba traditions or when you... the Jiruba tradition you represent or chose the god of hunting or realizations or directions the arrow on the bowl and this is Mendebe who responds to that now he brings independent individual god and goddesses they have a specific iconography independent iconography in the Jiruba tradition and he brings them back into a system now he creates a new way of understanding a system that allows to bring different god and goddesses in a conversation in an interaction between them and here you can see how he related to Ledba now he's represented as a child as a baby on the left, a small child and then repeated again Ogún is with the feathers and the dots and Ochozi on a shunt with the feather on the top and there's a fourth date it's kind of bring together in one ensemble there's something never happened before in Afro-Cuban art now he having a conversation the Jiruba religion of making a statement is you have to understand as a system of independent individual deities and he have also problems of struggling with a specific depictions that are important like Shango is represented as a god of fire of aligning so it's associated with fertilizing the earth rain that is in the Jiruba religion and also Shango is not a subject of representation it's that natural phenomenon at the end of the day and this is an example of the depiction of Shango as a god of thunder aligning and this is a few examples from classic historical Jiruba art in which the issues of yender plays an important role now Shango the archetype of the macho Cuban macho strong beautiful now is a woman it's not just a woman it's a mother in the Jiruba iconography that also isn't completely clashed with the way Cuba understand that particular archetype and this is Mendebe's response he's bringing the symbols the emblem of Shango and plays all the stories all the contradictions inside the frame of a double axe and Shango is all the different interpretation over time and just to finish I just wanted to show one thing that is very important for Jiruba art is bronzes this is an example of a non-naive art from the Jiruba people the 13th, 14th century if it's a realism plays an important role in those kind of bronzes and coppers and this is another example we know from the British Museum is now in conversation but I want to be repatriated back to Africa and you think about depictions they are enhanced and they have to be recognized in society it's about a queen mother or it's about a wife and portraits play that important role in understanding what this image represents and you cannot be more close to realism than those images you're just going to bring a little bit of flavor into this primitive Jiruba art that we know is not the only person can rival that is a short close but anyway those are another example of Jiruba art reflecting into cultural encounter when Portuguese arrived to Jiruba land in the 16th century the Jiruba art find a way to depict those emblems of power of Portuguese be your person not because he's a foreigner it's because he represents certain kind of power that had to do with exchange and it's the Jiruba reflecting on those historical phenomena that you want to see that way this is Mendebe response to Jiruba bronzes now what you can see he's animating his representation from before now making more to the dimensional that is what and this is the way I display in order to animate that I use those mirrors in the back and you feel like you're in an army of bronzes kind of bringing back this idea of a shea it's overwhelming it's almost incomprehensible and the final word from Mendebe that's something he rejected until today people call soft sculpture there is a tradition of softness or recycling material in Jiruba art called Ale in western art we call art de polvara but it's a famous movement in the 70s in Israel and this is the work that kind of related to that as a garbage and I think was important for me to kind of bring those up into the context of understanding what Mendebe wanted to do because now they are not the dimensional they are fully embodiments they are alive in the context of the gallery you had to wonder around then they are two dimensional they are moving around and hybridity and hovering and floating still in those images when the way he displays them maybe two times throughout his career and just an example how I did in the gallery and the final one is like he did those pieces before with his performance and what I did I took all this mask and I show in the gallery like the mask and the soft sculpture that I look into themselves is more like introspection the only way Mendebe will understand what he want is by looking inside himself but I ask him Mendebe work to look to themselves into the projection and maybe it's like a metaphor of the work they have in life of themselves thank you very much I went a little bit more than the time but that is my assessment of Mendebe Mendebe work I think we have time for a couple questions in the beginning you showed us a couple that you said were made out of recycled materials and they were they had been on the floor and stepped on and then later you showed us after he was in his accident he was working on another one that was on the floor and you said he had to kind of crawl backwards and I was wondering if they have they ever been displayed on the floor or have you ever seen them on the floor do you feel like they have different meanings the two the only time those pieces have been on display is when I did the exhibition at the African American Museum in Los Angeles next to the space museum I think they are the one the first one the three pieces they are a steel shell the panels are there are only two that survived that time this one is in Cuba and it is mounted on the wall and this one is on Mendebe Mendebe house and I think he doesn't think this work is important that is my observation I think maybe we have to do with a particular moment he is changing as a person he is a spiritual dimension he is changing he is discovering himself but he is not discovering himself because he won I think he has been forced by the accident I think when I asked how you painted I couldn't move but if I start painting from the bottom I will destroy my own work I will make a technical decision to start painting from the top it looks almost like a baptism you think about the idea of painting it is like you are rubbing yourself on the surface of the wood and the painting is all the chemical you are using at the time it is like getting under the water I was thinking in a religious experience I could be translated to that moment but that is the only the one at the National Museum is the only on display now more people are paying attention to this particular work I think I don't know why I think it is that people ignore this particular piece he is in an interesting moment in which he relies there are two understanding of religion that he doesn't understand he get all this notebook when you initiate it they give you a notebook in which you have to write it is like a memoir you learn from someone else who tells you all the monday the exegesis and the moral philosophy you understand it you have to read all the text from other people but what he remembers from his own personal life from industry and people talk about religion is completely different and he is in the middle of this negotiation and crisis in a way and he brings that into the painting that for me is a contradiction that is still on to today in human society that what I think is relevant does painting more than anything else any other complaints obviously it is a very individualized style did the Cuban art schools encourage abstraction and finding ones on style or would see painting more academic he was trained most on academic in San Alejandro you had to copy the massive Rembrandt I used to love copy Rembrandt but in the way the San Alejandro Academy functioned today is in the same way there is no way in which he can bring the visual culture of Afro-Cuban religions the plural of four religions into the curricula this one was a problem and also he was the way he was framed as an artist in the 70s was like this in this exotic guy who wanted to live outside the city he doesn't want to live in Havana he lives in a farm and his entire work is about the farm he thinks he is close to God on the goddesses and there is a little bit of eccentricism that the cultural institution in Cuba used the way to frame him also to create a sense of value he is not a good artist he is dealing with popular culture that was what was there but in the late 70s Havana Cuba was an institution only for artists from the 70s and he is invited back into that to be one of the artists in that institution they are still in Cuba they only exhibit they only promote artists from that time the government created a generation of artists an institution that worked with a specific generation you feel comfortable in working with those particular curators but that is something that happened also Mendebe is struggling with other demons you wanted to the issues of equality they are visible in his work something he has an address on to today open knowledge for everyone and it could be very good for Cuban artists someone like him to really address the issues he hasn't on to today and I think that is another you have an artist he cannot he is not ready society is not ready to understand his own identity he prefers to be seen as his naive artist he is playing with his naive work until you start kind of digging in his work he is more complex than being naive he is kind of manipulating that work with a specific goal that is still relevant for his work today that who wants to does he see any of his works as having a possible liturgical function given his Christian background or some of the symbolism that do any of them or is it just a personal it is just personal he doesn't see it as a viewer he can call you to have any sort of response to the work you know a blonde soldier when he lived up to you the whole experience it is very difficult to extract something from him when you ask what do you think about what do you mean with this why you have a rooster he likes it he is making a specific decision he has to go around the red rooster is associated with a particular deity and when you sacrifice to be red oh yeah I know this you know he knows he don't want you asking for a specific meaning because his work should be open to multiple interpretations and I think it has to do with the idea of the music he I mentioned before he likes classical music because it inspires him it doesn't mean African meaning in his work that is a procedure that has to do with creative impulse and he is very clear when you think your question in that is something that could devalue his work he gets very defensive and he says whatever you think it is an open interpretation art is universal this is the kind of words he used all the time he doesn't want to be confronted so he face those kind of rejections in the early world most of the practitioners didn't like the depiction of the deities now we have to kind of get deeper why they don't want that kind of depiction from the deity coming from him now he has to understand who is Mendewe he is a gay man in Cuba depicting the religion why they have a problem with that issues and now this is what we don't want to talk about but that is in the middle why he is rejected it doesn't have to do with the actual depiction itself of what I mean in Cuba and he is in the middle of that conversation he never talked about it no one wanted to address this but they are there and I know it happened just with him they are human writers they can masquerade their entire practice to be acceptable by society Mendewe used the biennales as a way to get attention and no one could compete with him at the Havana Biennale he organized a party at his farm and all the foreigners that went to Cuba ended up at his house the Cuban government couldn't compete he was more clever than the government couldn't compete with him he was at the end this artist that is in the 17 he is important now we call the master but that wasn't before that wasn't before and also we had to be responsible in telling those kind of stories because now as a superhero we had to acknowledge all the difficulties and the suffering he went through in his life even now he has a comfortable life enjoying good moments as an artist with that and that is what happened at the end now because they didn't want him to depict Oshun or Chagol it's because who he was he wasn't a straight man people have issues with him at the time as a person