Arturo Lindsay © 1997
Santerķa is a syncretic religion of Yoruba traditional beliefs and Roman Catholicism, fused during the days of slavery in Cuba and continues to proliferate wherever its devotees migrate. Santerķa is comprised of a complex mythology, a pantheon of hundreds of deities, referred to as orishas, and a system of symbols, signs and ceremonies.
The tenacity of the Yoruba to cling to their religious beliefs is evidenced in the survival of their orishas as living gods through European colonization, the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and religious persecution by Christian zealots in the New World. Yoruba-Cubans covertly preserved their religious traditions and therefore the existence of their gods from one generation to another through oral tradition, music, dance and to a lesser extent the visual arts. African art historian Robert Farris Thompson informs us that "The Yoruba assess everything aesthetically - from the taste and color of a yam to the qualities of a dye, to the dress and deportment of a woman or a man. An entry in one of the earliest dictionaries of their language, published in 1858, was amewa, literally "knower-of beauty," "connoisseur," one who looks for the manifestation of pure artistry".
The presence of Yoruba orishas in Latin American music is well known. Latinos have been singing and chanting the praises of the orishas from times of slavery in secret ceremonies in the cane fields of Cuba, to concert halls in New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Miami. The presence of the orishas in the visual arts, however, has largely been confined to sacred objects until this century.
The search of European avant garde artists at the turn of the century for new perspectives and influences in their work lead them to a closer examination of African religious relics that were arriving in Europe at that time. In part, Modern art owes its existence to this aesthetic examination. While most modern artists were influenced by the physical properties of African art, Latino artists, their Afro-North American counterparts during the Harlem Renaissance, and the Surrealists sought to explore deeper cultural and spiritual meanings in these objects.
The first internationally recognized Latin American artist to explore the use of Santerķa religious symbolism allegorically in his work was Wifredo Lam. Lam was born in Cuba of Asian and African heritage. His art was an aesthetic investigation of the mythical/magical aspects of the orishas. Santerķa Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art is the result of an on-going research that continues Wifredo Lam's investigation.
After a brief review of Lam's Santerķa inspired works, this lecture focuses on the presence of the orishas in the work of contemporary Latino artists whose art emerged in the last two to three decades. With the erasure of the bi-polar political and cultural hegemony, pluralism, appropriation and hybridization in this postmodern era, many Latino artists have begun to deconstruct outsiders' stereotypical images of their culture and are reconstructing new images based on self representation. Using performance, conceptual art, body art, installation, video and photography, Latino artists have recycled aesthetic qualities of Santerķa into postmodern art. The artists discussed include Manuel Mendive, Ana Mendieta, Juan Boza, Juan Sanchez, Jorge Luis Rodriguez, Jonas Dos Santos, Angel Suarez Rosado, and Arturo Lindsay among others.