Literature

Angelus considers the relationship between elements and images found during the artist’s research, culminating in a haunting canvas that crosses time and space. The two falling figures to the left are borrowed from a photo in taken on July 22, 1975, an image of Diana Bryant and her goddaughter Tiare Jones falling from a collapsed fire escape on Marlborough Street in Boston, Massachussetts. Although Diana perished, Tiare survived.

The remembrance of this tragic image from American history speaks once more to the notion of Sankofa, a recurring theme of the exhibition. Sankofa is an Afro-Brazilian word which captures the act of looking back to acquire the knowledge to look forward, emphasizing the importance of one’s cultural heritage and history. Obá writes, “I exist and am what I am thanks to those who came before and laid the ground beneath my feet, where I now stand.”

At the center of the painting, a figure in the repose of the Pietá lays beneath a fiery tree, dreaming of the past, of histories and memories. To the right, five children ascend from the flames below them, perhaps the same fire from Marlborough Street, in a kind of baptism or transmutation.