September 20th 2023.
Harmonia Rosales’s new exhibit at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art seeks to blend West African religion and faces with the classic Renaissance art. According to CNN, the 20 pieces center around returning to one’s identity and have been created over the past seven years as a shift away from the white-centric model of Western art.
The exhibit, “Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative,” includes the deities and stories from the West African religious tradition of Yoruba. Brittanica states that this faith comes from Nigeria and other nations in the surrounding region. Its highest state of existence is found with Olódùmaré, the creator of humankind. Subsequent deities, called Orishas, have their own rules while being closely linked to the natural environment.
In her work, Rosales has featured certain Orishas that relate to the artwork’s theme. For example, her take on the Virgin Mary in “Lady of Regla” instead portrays Orisha Yemaya, the mother of the world. This worship was spread to Cuba and Brazil through the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and is now practiced throughout the diaspora.
Rosales’s decision to build upon this tradition stems from the restriction on practicing this religion for enslaved Africans, who were forced to abide by white slaveowners’ beliefs and therefore had to leave their original culture and spiritual guidelines to the margins. She hopes that by blending this faith in with Greco-Roman and Christian history, she can bring wider attention to it and educate the masses.
She has maintained some critical techniques from the artistic foundation, especially in her depictions of the Black figures that are the stars in her works. She uses thin coats to make their skin look so natural that a viewer almost feels like they could reach out and touch them. “Creation of God” reimagines Michelangelo’s mural on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, replacing Biblical characters with Orishas and furthering her vision for the collection.
Rosales’s work is unintentionally but unavoidably political, especially in the current national fight to ensure Black history is told. It is a story of empowerment that the artist hopes her people can use for upliftment. The exhibit continues to be available for viewing at the Atlanta-based gallery until December 2.
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