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Claiming Public Space for Important Gods : Notes on Brazil
Bahian artist Tatti Moreno has put larger-than-human Afro-Brazilian orixas on display in public places. May his work may bring comfort to a nation coping with the pandemic.
This peaceful-looking fellow has a lot to do these days.
Represented here on a much larger-than-human scale is Ossanha, a healer deity who traveled from Africa to Brazil centuries ago. This sculpture was created by Tatti Moreno (b. 1944), an artist from the Brazilian state of Bahia. Bahia is the part of Brazil that has best preserved the nation’s African heritage.
An estimated 4 million Africans arrived in Brazil between the 16th and 19th centuries. They’d suffered the trauma of being enslaved and the horrors of the trip across the Atlantic. These survivors carried with them their own religious beliefs, many drawn from the Yoruba-speaking nations of Africa.
Ossanha today forms part of a patheon worshipped in the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé. Ossanha, or Ossain as he is better know, stands with more famous orixas…
