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MENDIVE: CUBAN NATIONAL, YORUBAN SOUL
The Jamaica Observer December 13, 2003
By Ann Margaret Lim
Cubanow.- Always dressed in full white with white flowing locks and a wooden cane, world-renowned Cuban artist, Professor Manuel Mendive, could easily be mistaken for an African spiritual advisor.
In some ways he is, for Mendive’s art is deeply rooted in African spiritual practices and meticulously reflects symbols of tribal worship. Whilst appearing simple, his pieces are often two-tiered, following in the African tradition of proverbs, simultaneously entertaining and teaching.
The artist who paints and sculpts in iron, wood, plastic and metal, exhibited at Jamaica’s National Art Gallery in 1996 and recently revisited the country to unveil his contribution to UTech’s Caribbean Sculpture Park last week.
Mendive has exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean and creates Afro-centric pieces that express the Yoruban, Orisha religion which defines nature. Yorubans are an African tribe, mainly from Benin and South Western Nigeria, who along with the Ibos were transported to the New World during slavery. To this day traits of their culture are seen in Caribbean art and practices.
Known in Trinidad and Tobago as Shango or Shango Baptist, Cuba as Lucumi, Puerto Rico as Santeria and Candomble in Brazil, the Yorubans had many gods, called Orishas represented by specific symbols and colours. These Orishas representing aspects of nature are the subjects of Mendive’s pieces.
A painting depicting Oya, the Orisha who rules the winds, which appears frequently in his work would, for example, be in maroon or a variegated nine colours and represented by a mask.
“My pieces are inspired by free-flying thoughts in the air and this specific one at the Park is a free-thinking idea, emphasising that there should be nothing that breaks free thought,” says Mendive.
The sculptor/painter who says that “art is the way to creation which is beautiful and pleasing” was joined by dancing Cubans at the Utech unveiling weaving a complete story as he added the final touches to his creation at the cultural showcase held at the Sculpture Park last Thursday. Mendive says that his piece which now adorns the lawns of Utech “began as a dream.” The mostly blue sculpture, he explains, represents “dream, fish and water.”
It is difficult to disagree with the description of Mendive as a more sophisticated version of renowned Jamaican artist Kapo, as both prominently feature animals fowls/birds and masked human figures. Both also share similar cultural/religious practices, with Kapo’s revivalism heavily influenced by Yoruban ritual and cultural remnants.
Both are referred to as intuitives. Mendive’s colouring is however more variegated whilst Kapo works mainly with primary colours. Both however draw inspiration from nature and reflect this strongly in their works.
Born in Havana in December 1944, Mendive graduated from the San Alejandro School of Painting and Sculpture in 1963. He actually began exhibiting before graduation, with his first one in 1961 at the Municipal Gallery at the Cathedral Plaza in Havana Cuba, at 17 years old.
Dr. Guillermina Ramos Cruz, who doubles as the artist’s translator on this trip, says that Endive’s main inspirations are the Orishas and the energy conveyed through nature. She speaks of the artist’s 2003 tour of Africa, specifically Nigeria, Benin and Ghana in which he primarily sought to recount the African ancestral might and artistically retell and rewrite the African story.
Ramos Cruz explains: “He is no different from the Egyptian artist whose main motivation was the cult of the deceased seen by their elaborate tombs and artwork therein. Through this, the Egyptian architecture and cults are committed to posterity. His depiction of the Orishas is similar to this, but Mendive seeks to free enslaved African spirits.”
For example, he painted the Ghanian dancers and had them dancing like the Cuacuadebi bird in flight, so that the spirits of enslaved Africans could fly freely home to their ancestral land. He did this in front of the Castle of Cape Coast in Ghana, where thousands of slaves were packed in dark passages and heaped onto slave ships headed to the New World.
And according to Professor Edward Sullivan, from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Mendive’s dedication to the Orisha form, “demonstrates his loyalty to his own visionary sensibility instead of adapting a more trendy market-imposed look. He has kept the poetic and subtle evocation of spirits.”
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