Visiting UCLA's Fowler Museum: Axe Bahia

My husband and I were lucky enough to visit the Fowler's Axe Bahia exhibit's opening night. It was wonderful and challenging. There is rich history to savor and there are still wounds to heal. Like Beah, these stories come from across the water, but they do not stop at the crossing. They can inspire us with hope and beauty while cautioning us to never let such things happen again. And they should remind us all to cherish our own beliefs and ancestors because they are as fragile or as strong as our love and our memories.

AXÉ BAHIA: THE POWER OF ART IN AN AFRO-BRAZILIAN METROPOLIS
SEPTEMBER 24, 2017–APRIL 15, 2018
​Axé Bahia explores the distinctive cultural role of the city of Salvador, the coastal capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. Since the 1940s, Salvador has been an internationally renowned center of Afro-Brazilian culture, and it remains an important hub of African-inspired artistic practices in Latin America. This exhibition is the most comprehensive presentation of Bahian arts to date in the U.S., and features the work of such modernists as Mário Cravo Neto, Rubem Valentim, and Pierre Verger, as well as contemporary artists Rommulo Vieira Conceição, Caetano Dias, Helemozão, Ayrson Heráclito, and others. Axé Bahia features more than 100 works from the mid-20th century to the present, including a stunning array of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and installation art. While adding to popular understandings of core expressions of African heritage such as the religion Candomblé, the exhibition explores the complexities of race and cultural affiliation in Brazil, and the provoca­tive ways in which artists have experienced and responded creatively to prevailing realities of Afro-Brazilian identity in Bahia. From the Fowler.

History of Candomblé

• Candomblé is an African-Brazilian religion. It was born of a people who were taken from their homes in Africa and transplanted to Brazil during the slave trade.
• The religion is a mixture of traditional Yoruba, Fon and Bantu beliefs which originated from different regions in Africa, and it has also incorporated some aspects of the Catholic faith over time.
• The name itself means 'dance in honour of the gods', and music and dance are important parts of Candomblé ceremonies
• Practitioners of Candomblé believe in one all powerful God called Oludumaré who is served by lesser deities. These deities are called orixas. (They can also be called voduns and inkices.)
• Candomblé practitioners believe that every person has their own individual orixa which controls his or her destiny and acts as a protector.
• There is no concept of good or bad in Candomblé. Each person is only required to fulfil his or her destiny to the fullest, regardless of what that is.
• Candomblé is an oral tradition and therefore has no holy scriptures.
• The first official temple was founded at the beginning of the 19th century in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil.

​"Candomble." Religions. BBC. 2014.

Fowler Museum

Info: BBC- Religion: Candomble

Brazil: Atlantic goddess brings religions together