UMA HOMENAGEM
Video, 1m23’
Festival Oferendas + Balaio Virtual
Curator: May HD
Lalá Casa de Cultura
Salvador BR
2021
In 2021, the festival of Yemanjá in Brazil was silenced by the pandemic. She, the mother of waters, remains one of the most revered presences in Afro-Brazilian spiritual traditions, especially in Salvador, where each summer the sea is filled with offerings, flowers, gifts, prayers, entrusted to her currents.
Far from those shores, the gesture is re-situated at ‘t Wed, a pond held between dunes along the Dutch coast, where another act took form. It was February. The air was near freezing; the water, only slightly warmer. A threshold between elements.
Flowers were carried. A poem was spoken. Names remembered.
An offering made across distance—
from cold waters to warm seas,
from absence to presence,
from mourning toward continuity.
A quiet invocation.
A passage.
Camera: R v Lier
Soundtrack: “Cantilena, in Bachianas Brasileiras”
by Heitor Villa-Lobos
Soloist Bidu Sayão
1945 (public domain).
Odoyá, Yemanjá!
http://festivaloferendas.blogspot.com/