Figs
ANCESTRAL HANDS
Figs: acts and gestures for symbolic transfiguration – ritual
The human hand writes the gesture – ritual. Once right, once left, she goes around crossroads, mysteries, and ancestral knowledge, becoming Fig: an action in which the thumb inserted between the index and middle fingers transposes the eloquence of the gesture and materializes in a symbol.
The set of works “Figs, ancestral hands” are representative of an investigation that seeks to update the meaning of the Fig symbol from the Afro-Brazilian experience gesture. The fifteen hands: their shapes and signs configure the photographer’s concerns in the imagery composition of elements and practices that are part of his surroundings. Roque was born in Santo Amaro da Purificação, Recôncavo Baiano, space: body-territory of cultural and religious resistance. In this locus, his sensitivity is amplified, becoming a Force to manifest genealogies and memories through visuality.
In a self-perceptive experience, “Fig Omolu” lapsed into my field of senses and triggered in me a psychic state of the memory of childhood clinical pictures connected with the skin, the marks of ancestry, skin diseases... seconds - a flash of memory; a shout. Then came the silence that contorted my mind, and what initially had meaning in the realm of individuality acquired a wider connotation, or expanded perception, an ever-increasing totality that I might call the ancestral connection of the power of the gesture-ritual or the “trance” that the images choreographed by Roque Boa Morte provoke us.
Juci Reis
Curator
The serie ‘Figs, Ancestral Hands’ come from a process of aesthetic experimentation and research on the layers of symbol and meaning incorporated into the icon which its birth in Mediterranean until it arrival in American by African hands.
It is the most popular amulet in the West which, on the other hand, until today, has not been investigated visually and symbolically in an Aphrodiasporic context; although some works on Creole jewelry or even on finds from archaeological sites brought notes about him.
At this starting point, I propose the construction of visualities and research with two Afro-brazilians communities in their uses and customs of the aforementioned amulet, within the Banto-Yorubá tradition, very pulsating in Bahia.
Each fig was materialized in the hand of the respective son of the Orisha related to it, who contributed with his axé jewelry, knowledge about the deities and tradition of the amulet in the context of his group.
According to this construction the arrow found in Fig Oxossi in the form of a bracelet, the color of the bead that surrounds Fig Yansã's hand, the type of metal used and the conch shell in gold jewelry in Xangô, the total white in Oxalufã and the trident in Exú, were used as keys to move the observer to the historical memory contained in each icon juxtaposed with an amulet.
The production process of the works relied on the research of oral tradition and bibliographic sources.
Aláfia!
Roque Boa Morte
