Ayrson Heráclito, Doté Amilton Costa and Jane de Hohenstein, Brazil

LIFE AS ART

Afro-Brazilian Festival at the Weltkulturen Museum

A vida é arte – life is art!
For an entire week, the Weltkulturen Museum spotlighted urban Brazil today, a society where everything is closely interwoven – art, spirituality, daily life, science and politics. 

Through artistic performances by Ayrson Heráclito (Salvador da Bahia, Brazil), visitors could empathise with the suffering of enslavement and were cleansed of negative energies. At the themed evening "Black Venus and White Mary. Black and White Women in Cult and Society in Brazil" , Jane de Hohenstein (Anthropologist, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil) and Nádia dos Santos Águiar (Anthropologist, Gießen) discussed the image of women and opposition in everyday life. The Candomblé priest Doté Amilton Costa (Salvador da Bahia, Brazil) established contact to the gods through an oracle. Furthermore, artist Ayrson Heráclito, curators Mona Suhrbier and Jane de Hohenstein, as well as Doté Amilton Costa offered special insights into the exhibition "ENTRE TERRA E MAR. Between Land and Sea. Transatlantic Art."

Performance “Transmutação da Carne - Transmutation of the Meat”
With Ayrson Heráclito (artist, Salvador da Bahia)

“The enslavement of black people, inflicting pain and wounds on the entire world, affects all of us. Everyone is invited to attend the ‘transmutation of the meat’. A glowing iron placed on the ‘skin’ (garments of dried meat) awakens primeval memories. Noise, odour and smoke – wounds needing to be transformed by art. We must never forget them. The energy of the spirits of the dead is transmuted into a force revolutionary, positive and transformative. Hearing, seeing and feeling teaches us things which literature and history cannot.”
(Ayrson Heráclito)

Performances “Sacudimento” and „Buruburu”
With Ayrson Heráclito (artist, Salvador da Bahia)

With sacred leaves from cultic practices in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, Ayrson Heráclito cleansed the museum’s rooms of the negative energies of the past in his performance “Sacudimento”.

Ayrson Heráclito also conducted the ritual “Buruburu” cleansing of visitors using popcorn, the sacred food of Omolu, god of illness and healing.