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Jude Papa Loko- Art Basel 2011
you ought to learn that dance
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"When one commences to piece together the scattered references to deities and spirits of African-Diasporic spiritual traditions who are associated with gender and sexual diversity, one realizes that this phenomenon is among the most cardinal and widespread elements found in these traditions, especially in the Fon/Dahomean-influenced tradition of Vodou, with divine beings referred to as lwas (also, loas), and in Yoruba-influenced traditions, including Candomblé, Candomblé Caboclo, and Lucumí/Santería, with divine beings referred to as orishas. In Vodou, lwas associated with gender and sexual diversity include Ayizan, Mawu-Lisa, Nanan-bouclou, Silibo-Gweto, Legba, Ayida Wèdo, Danballah, Ezili, La Sirènn, Labalèn, Ogou Sen Jak Majè and Ogou Ferraille, the Gedes (including Gede Masaka, Gede Ossou, and Gede Nibo), and the Barons Limba, Lundy, Oua Oua, and Samdi."
Randy P. Conner, “Rainbow’s Children: Diversity of Gender and Sexuality in African-Diasporic Spiritual Traditions,” in Fragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World, ed. by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, pp. 145
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"Moreover, in numerous African cultures and African-Diasporic spiritual traditions, same-sex intimacy and transgendered behavior or identity have been linked to spiritual role. Gender and sexual diversity may be discovered in sacred images and tales relating to divine beings. They have also occasionally been expressed within ritual contexts for a limited duration, as in the phenomenon of temporary “possession” by, or embodiment of, a deity or spirit, or by the ashe (divine energy) of that entity. In other instances, they have formed part of an individual’s character and may be manifested throughout that person’s lifetime in various ways, including as a priest, priestess, or other leader or servant of a spiritual tradition."
Randy P. Conner, “Rainbow’s Children: Diversity of Gender and Sexuality in African-Diasporic Spiritual Traditions,” in Fragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World, ed. by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, pp. 143-144
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Voodoo Girl by Mitch O’Connell
add it to the collection (i.e. representations of voodoo that follow the europeanized narrative of voodoo as overly sexual and scary and unintelligible)
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![afrodiaspores:
life:
Few religions are as misunderstood and as steeped in often-cartoonish misapprehension as Haitian Vodou. Countless people around the globe, shown images of a ceremony, might confidently say, “Yes, that is Vodou.” But very few, when pressed, could coherently discuss the core tenets of the belief.
For photographer Anthony Karen, who has traveled extensively in Haiti over the years, Vodou is at once a fascinating subject and — in a very real sense — the gateway to his vocation.
“About 13 years ago,” he told LIFE.com, “I was in a difficult, transitional point in my life. Out of nowhere, I felt Haiti calling to me. I traveled there, and saw two Vodou ceremonies in person. On the same trip, I discovered my passion for photojournalism.” Here, LIFE.com presents previously unpublished pictures of a June 2011 Haitian Vodou ceremony, along with Karen’s insights into so-called “marginalized” groups and his own work as a photographer.
see more — Inside Haitian Vodou
While Karen is obviously talented, I have to say that there is little here to challenge most viewers’ preconceived ideas about Vodou (as metonymic of Haiti). The very same images have been circulated since the earliest literary and photographic representations of Haiti emerged in the nineteen-‘teens: upturned eyes indicating possession (although the theological mechanics of it are almost never addressed); fire juxtaposed against darkness, suggesting that Haiti remains a ‘jungle’; the drinking of blood in orgiastic delirium; knives pressed against heads and tongues; writhing Black bodies, underground and on the ground; partially exposed breasts and bands of vaguely sinister-seeming women singing untranslated songs. Nothing novel, except the angles and brands of equipment employed to execute the images.
Some of Karen’s slides are highly graphic scenes of sacrifice—which, while probably not staged for Karen’s benefit, are also sacred, and I believe are remarkably exploitative in the context of a mainstream North American publication. It was perhaps Life’s decision not to include text explaining what is happening in the photographs in any specificity, but it is also the photographers’ responsibility to his subjects to provide context and refuse the use of material that is only being included for its potential to titillate viewers. Quotations from Karen only stir my disquiet:
“A goat in distress or pain can sound like an infant crying,” Karen says. “Obviously, it can be really disturbing. I’ve seen so many ceremonies by now that I’m aware of the process, and know when it’s coming. Still, in all my years of witnessing Vodou rituals, I’ve never seen a sacrifice as intense as the one that I documented in June. When five people, in a frenzy, began to suck the blood out of the goat’s neck, I had goosebumps racing up my spine — because of what I was witnessing, and because I was in the perfect spot to capture it with my camera.”
It’s typical for the scholar or artist engaged with Vodou communities to project the “goosebumps racing up [their] spine” onto their subjects. No surprise there. Yet Karen’s purported concern is to ‘capture’ this event in order to illuminate a marginalized tradition. His project as a whole merely threatens to further malign it by showing that the stereotypes are indeed ‘true,’ because one of ‘us’ has been ‘there’ and witnessed the ‘reality.’ ”It’s raw, and it’s primitive,” Karen says, with what Life would have us think is the authority of a practitioner. While Karen seeks to disarm critique by pointing out the extent of his participation in rituals and esoteric knowledge—“I won’t even get into the cleansing ritual preformed on me involving the blood of a chicken”—his statements chiefly serve to legitimate his presence in what he recognizes are exceedingly ‘intimate,’ ‘vulnerable’ settings.
The last photo in the series is of Karen (a self-described “big white guy”) with a Haitian child, with text that painstakingly enumerates his praiseworthy deeds as a volunteer for different organizations. This is not sarcasm; I do admire his commitment to the groups listed. I’m afraid, however, that this parting shot only reinforces the dichotomy between ‘irrational’ Haitians and the American ‘saviors’ forever depicted as coming to the rescue. This may be the most pernicious trope of all, formulated as the U.S. first used to invade and occupy Haiti between 1915 and 1934, then to intervene militarily and diplomatically throughout the twentieth century. It’s unfair to lay all of this at Karen’s feet, since it’s not clear he understands the pictorial and ideological history he stumbled into. But I’m left wishing he would have realized the artistic potential of showing that “people tend to have everyday, general conversations” about Vodou. That would have been something new.
all of this, thank you. i thought the same thing when i saw the photo series.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo9vm0hanf1qbz9meo1_400.jpg)
life:
Few religions are as misunderstood and as steeped in often-cartoonish misapprehension as Haitian Vodou. Countless people around the globe, shown images of a ceremony, might confidently say, “Yes, that is Vodou.” But very few, when pressed, could coherently discuss the core tenets of the belief.
For photographer Anthony Karen, who has traveled extensively in Haiti over the years, Vodou is at once a fascinating subject and — in a very real sense — the gateway to his vocation.
“About 13 years ago,” he told LIFE.com, “I was in a difficult, transitional point in my life. Out of nowhere, I felt Haiti calling to me. I traveled there, and saw two Vodou ceremonies in person. On the same trip, I discovered my passion for photojournalism.” Here, LIFE.com presents previously unpublished pictures of a June 2011 Haitian Vodou ceremony, along with Karen’s insights into so-called “marginalized” groups and his own work as a photographer.
see more — Inside Haitian Vodou
While Karen is obviously talented, I have to say that there is little here to challenge most viewers’ preconceived ideas about Vodou (as metonymic of Haiti). The very same images have been circulated since the earliest literary and photographic representations of Haiti emerged in the nineteen-‘teens: upturned eyes indicating possession (although the theological mechanics of it are almost never addressed); fire juxtaposed against darkness, suggesting that Haiti remains a ‘jungle’; the drinking of blood in orgiastic delirium; knives pressed against heads and tongues; writhing Black bodies, underground and on the ground; partially exposed breasts and bands of vaguely sinister-seeming women singing untranslated songs. Nothing novel, except the angles and brands of equipment employed to execute the images.
Some of Karen’s slides are highly graphic scenes of sacrifice—which, while probably not staged for Karen’s benefit, are also sacred, and I believe are remarkably exploitative in the context of a mainstream North American publication. It was perhaps Life’s decision not to include text explaining what is happening in the photographs in any specificity, but it is also the photographers’ responsibility to his subjects to provide context and refuse the use of material that is only being included for its potential to titillate viewers. Quotations from Karen only stir my disquiet:
“A goat in distress or pain can sound like an infant crying,” Karen says. “Obviously, it can be really disturbing. I’ve seen so many ceremonies by now that I’m aware of the process, and know when it’s coming. Still, in all my years of witnessing Vodou rituals, I’ve never seen a sacrifice as intense as the one that I documented in June. When five people, in a frenzy, began to suck the blood out of the goat’s neck, I had goosebumps racing up my spine — because of what I was witnessing, and because I was in the perfect spot to capture it with my camera.”
It’s typical for the scholar or artist engaged with Vodou communities to project the “goosebumps racing up [their] spine” onto their subjects. No surprise there. Yet Karen’s purported concern is to ‘capture’ this event in order to illuminate a marginalized tradition. His project as a whole merely threatens to further malign it by showing that the stereotypes are indeed ‘true,’ because one of ‘us’ has been ‘there’ and witnessed the ‘reality.’ ”It’s raw, and it’s primitive,” Karen says, with what Life would have us think is the authority of a practitioner. While Karen seeks to disarm critique by pointing out the extent of his participation in rituals and esoteric knowledge—“I won’t even get into the cleansing ritual preformed on me involving the blood of a chicken”—his statements chiefly serve to legitimate his presence in what he recognizes are exceedingly ‘intimate,’ ‘vulnerable’ settings.
The last photo in the series is of Karen (a self-described “big white guy”) with a Haitian child, with text that painstakingly enumerates his praiseworthy deeds as a volunteer for different organizations. This is not sarcasm; I do admire his commitment to the groups listed. I’m afraid, however, that this parting shot only reinforces the dichotomy between ‘irrational’ Haitians and the American ‘saviors’ forever depicted as coming to the rescue. This may be the most pernicious trope of all, formulated as the U.S. first used to invade and occupy Haiti between 1915 and 1934, then to intervene militarily and diplomatically throughout the twentieth century. It’s unfair to lay all of this at Karen’s feet, since it’s not clear he understands the pictorial and ideological history he stumbled into. But I’m left wishing he would have realized the artistic potential of showing that “people tend to have everyday, general conversations” about Vodou. That would have been something new.
all of this, thank you. i thought the same thing when i saw the photo series.
(via fylatinamericanhistory)
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One of the best things I’ve seen all year.
“Ezili” is a music video project directed and performed by dancer, choreographer Adia Tamar Whitaker. The name Ezili describes a spectrum of goddess personalities that have become figures of love, beauty and womanhood in the pantheon Haitian Vodou. Ms. Whitaker’s project is an artistic representation of the complex relationship she continues to build with her art. There are as many Ezili personalities as there are phases of the moon. Featuring music by Tommy ‘Soulati’ Shepherd and collaborations with Brooklyn based filmmakers/visual media artists Jennifer Samuel and Joshua Bee Alafia, “Ezili” tells the story of a modern day moon goddess transforming struggle and sacrifice into love and grace.”
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WORD: Dayan on Erzulie, Loa of Love in Vodoun →
“Erzulie, the goddess, spirit or loa of love in vodoun, tells a story of women’s lives that has not been told. A goddess was born o the soil of Haiti who has no precedent in Yorubaland or Dahomey. In her varying incarnations, her many faces, she bears the extremes of colonial history. Whether the pale and elegant Erzulie-Fréda or the cold-hearted, savage Erzulie-gé-rouge, she dramatizes a specific historiography of women’s experience in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean.”
Dayan, Joan. “Erzulie: A Women’s History of Haiti.” Research in African Literatures 25 (Summer 1994): 5-32.
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God is too busy to rescue drowning children, too busy to stop the flow of blood, too busy to notice the suffering of Haiti, so Gina Athena Ulysse prays to other gods. From behind the curtain, before her entrance on the La Mama stage, she sings a Vodou song.
Ezili, save us as we are drowning she chants repeatedly as if in a trance, as if it were an incantation, as one endlessly says a rosary, and it is interminable this chant, as one says a rosary, Ezili, save us as we are drowning, because as one says a rosary endlessly, repeatedly, interminably, one keeps in memory events or mysteries in our history and it is true that we are drowning and it is true that we should be saved, Ezili, save us as we are drowning.
Weaving her powerful storypoems with these chants, Ulysse is ruthless, tender, sassy, and sometimes heartbreaking in her one-woman performance “Because When God is Too Busy: Haiti, Me and the World”. Whether exploring her rage at the dehumanization of Haitians: because they are too dark, too rebellious, not French enough, never, never, ever French enough…the ones Soeur Cecile called burnt potatoes and for whose salvation Ulysse prayed nightly Forgive her God for she does not know what she is doing, or reminiscing about spending the night on her knees, punished by her father and praying God whom she appointed as father, disowning her real father as Ponce Pilate, she sends us messages from the interior which are at once intimate and generously collective in a fascinating interplay that blurs the lines beween herself and her country:Gede
Look what the mortals are doing to me
I planted corn
it turned into a reed
the reed turned into bamboo
it turned into a knife
to stab me…
Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani