UMA HOMENAGEM
Video, 1m23’
Festival Oferendas + Balaio Virtual
Curator: May HD
Lalá Casa de Cultura
Salvador BR
2021
In 2021, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Yemanjá festivities were cancelled, in Brazil.
Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea, Yemanjá is one of the most important divinities in the country. Particularly, in Salvador da Bahia, a city with the largest black population outside of Africa in the world.
A virtual exhibition/festival was created and a group of artists were invited to send their gifts.
The main caracterisctic of the Yemanjá festival is the act of offering gifts, mostly flowers, to the sea, intended to the deity.
‘t Wed is a pond in the middle of an evocative landscape near the Dutch coast, between the dunes. It was February, winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and at ‘t Wed the temperature was 3oC.
I brought flowers followed by a poem in the memory of those who perish in the pandemic, like a prayer of hope.
From the cold to the warm waters.
The soundtrack is “Cantilena, in Bachianas Brasileiras” by Villa-Lobos, solist Bidu Sayão, 1945 (public domain).
Odoyá, Yemanjá!
http://festivaloferendas.blogspot.com/