AYRSON HERÁCLITO

Curated by Marissa Lôbo & Ivana Marjanović

In his exhibition Ayrson Heráclito reveals the crossing of Afro diasporic healing technologies, heritages of a cultural matrix, providing us with a decolonial path. The demythification of the anthropocene and the integration of ecologies of knowledge of the "yorubaiana" ancestry in his work allows him to navigate between technologies of cleansing, purification, bodily connections, and orality. It is through ancestral knowledge that the diasporic body resists colonial violence and ethnocide. The "yorubaian" universe is a transatlantic voyage that entails sophisticated tools (re)created in the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, which endure to this day as a cure for body, spirit, mind, and society.

The diasporic heritage that Brazilian artist Ayrson Heráclito presents to us in the exhibition "Healing Technologies and Affections" reveals a universe of healing technologies that originate from the Yoruba ethnolinguistic complex. Originating in Nigeria, this ethnolinguistic complex branched out transatlantically, taking root, redefining and unfolding in the expressive Bahian culture of Brazil. The artist draws attention to the deep perceptions of spirituality, rituals, and aesthetics that emerged in the Yoruba-Bahian encounter, which remain to this day, performing a life resilient to coloniality.

The exhibition "Healing Technologies and Affections" is an artistic path that incorporates different media such as photographs, installations and video performances, translating the cultural and religious manifestations of the original Yoruba context into the present. Therefore, throughout the journey that we experience in this installation, Heráclito’s work provokes reflection on identities, ancestral heritage and its future, memory and tradition.

Negotiating memory, the artist’s dialectical work between tradition and modernity explores how tradition resisted the diaspora, understanding resistance as adaptation through fusion with other pre-existing plural and permeable beliefs and practices. Today it represents a form of inclusive, decolonial medicine, where diseases of the soul are social diseases and individual healing is collective healing.

Heráclito’s works use colors and forms reminiscent of rituals, such as the "Bori," a food ceremony for the Ori, the individual Orisha who rules over our heads; the "Buruburu," a ritual dedicated to the Orisha Omolu, in which a popcorn bath (from the Yoruba buruburu) prepared according to the sacred fundamentals of Candomblé becomes a cleansing and detoxifying experience. Furthermore, the "Inventory of Care and Healing Techniques," includes elements such as eggs, acaçá, dendê, lavender essence, among others, which are medicinal ingredients for the Yorùbá.

The exhibition is an evocation of the encounter between the ancestral and the present, the manipulation of sacred energies in millennial practices recreated in a diasporic context, allowing a deep immersion in this cultural, religious and also political universe. Why not? Through the process of enslavement, Yoruba culture became the seed of Afro-Brazilian identity, its reinforcement and the construction of society. Ayrson Heráclito not only glorifies Yoruba culture, but also raises contemporary issues related to racism, religious intolerance, religious racism and the urgency to know, appreciate and preserve the cultural heritage of Afro-Brazilian descendants.

The exhibition "Healing Technologies and Affections" is therefore an immersive and transformative artistic experience that goes beyond aesthetics and connects the audience to the history and healing technologies that aim to promote the healing and well-being of the individual and collective of a people whose cultural influence reverberates in different corners of the world, opening up opportunities to acknowledge and celebrate the cultural power of the African Diaspora.

Ayrson Heráclito is an Ogã of Jeje Mahi in Salvador (Bahia), professor at UFRB in the city of Cachoeira/Bahia, visual artist and curator. PhD in Communication and Semiotics from PUC São Paulo, Master in Visual Arts from UFBA. His works of installations, performances, photographs and audiovisuals deal with elements of Afro-Brazilian culture and its connections between Africa and its diaspora in America. He participated in the Luanda Triennial in Angola, 2010, Bamako Biennial of Photography in Mali, 2015 and in 2017 of the 57th Venice Biennale in Italy and 2023, receives the award, together with partners, the Golden Lion of the Brazilian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. He has works in the collections of the Musem der Weltkulturen in Frankfurt, Museu de Arte do Rio, MAR, Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Videobrasil and Coleção Itaú. He was one of the chief curators of the 3rd Biennial of Bahia, guest curator of the nucleus "Routes and Transes: Africas, Jamaica and Bahia" in the Afro-Atlantic Stories project at MASP and received the Artist Residency award in Dakar from Sesc_Videobrasil and Raw Material Company, Senegal. In 2020 to 2022 he held the exhibition Yorùbáiano at MAR and Pinacoteca de São Paulo.

Text: Larissa Ibúmi Moreira

EVENTS DURING THE EXHIBITION

OPENING
28.07.23, 19:00
HEALING TECHNOLOGIES AND AFFECTIONS / TọJU ATI AWọN IMọ-ẹRọ IWOSAN
mit Ayrson Heraclito

PERFORMANCE
28.07.23 19:00
HEALING AS CLICHÉ BREAKING
mit Ayrson Heraclito, Gina Disobey & Black Community


GUIDED TOUR
29.07.23, 18:00
HEALING TECHNOLOGIES AND AFFECTIONS / TọJU ATI AWọN IMọ-ẹRọ IWOSAN
mit Ivana Marjanović 

PERFORMANCE 
04.11.23, 14:00-15:30
NOSOTRAS POR NOSOTRAS 
mit Vivian Crespo Zurita


GUIDED TOUR
05.11.23, 11:00
HEALING TECHNOLOGIES AND AFFECTIONS / TọJU ATI AWọN IMọ-ẹRọ IWOSAN
mit Marissa Lôbo & Ivana  Marjanović