Yoruba culture was one of the last to take root in Brazil – a country marked by the diaspora, kidnapping and slavery of African population, having decimated and exploited them and branded their flesh. The peoples from Sub-Saharan Africa, who only arrived in the 19th century, comprised kings and queens, political and spiritual leaders who never ceased to be sources of ancestral knowledge and possessors of different technologies. This network of exchanges and teachings, rituals and worldviews made for the vitality and the heritage of an Afro-American population that spread throughout the country.
Different knowledges came together. Jeje myths were added to the Yoruba or Nago ones, generating a composite tradition called Jeje-Nago. These colorful mythologies, full of natural elements and role-playing, penetrated deeply into Brazilian history. We are talking about the charming worldview that originated candombles, which are still persecuted and threatened on a daily basis. Different legends and itàns have presented to us African deities, Orixas and Vodun. These stories are still played out in city streets, in novels, books, samba schools and above all in oral culture. Legends tell us about a sinless world, in which there is a complementarity between humans and animals.
Ayrson Heráclito (Macaúbas, 1968) introduces the strength of this universe into visual arts. His work represents a great poetic and politic reinvention of Yoruba Brazil. It comes from a Nago Bahia whose daily life has incorporated oúnje, foods and seasonings, iyọ̀, salt, and above all palm oil. According to the artist, the latter is an element in an impossible mixture in the Atlantic Ocean, where oil and salty water (omi iyọ̀) separate. Palm oil is then liquefied and transformed into bodily fluids such as saliva, semen and blood, and Yoruba gods and goddesses are repeatedly “seasoned” with it during rituals.
Ayrson reworks this Brazilian memory in order to heal historic colonial wounds which were opened with the start of sugar-cane cultivation by the quest for riches through the exploitation of bodies. This remembrance involves recovering the biographies of people who have never been known, imagining their faces and echoing their suffering. For this reason, Ayrson’s gestures take on the meaning of a cleansing, a purge. His works often feature a sacred, performative walk which incorporates struggles, ecstasies and rebellion, for the Nago people has always had to fight against the stigma of subordination, starting with their very name: the negative designation “anagonu.”
The artist moves through art history, from the Baroque to 1980s Trans-Avantgarde painting. In a dialogue with Joseph Beuys (1921-86), he updates the understanding of art’s spirituality in a contact with invisible ancestral forces. For that reason, when he “returns to Bahia painting” he imagined a Salvador dyed with palm oil – an ointment spice, a charm oil.
In his trajectory of about 35 years, Ayrson has established himself as one of the most important Brazilian artists to build a work dedicated to the creation of healing rituals, negotiating different relationships with a nefarious past which is constantly shaken and ritually removed through herbal baths (ìwẹ̀ orí), fresh waters (omi odò tó ń sàn) and the food offered to the heads of deities (borí), so as to preserve a balance between body and spirit.
Marcelo Campos