paula damasceno
Initiation, an immersive installation
Horace Williams House | 610 E Rosemary St, Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Ended February 25th, 2024
“There is a thing passing in the sky; some thick clouds surround it; the uninitiated sees nothing”
Proverb from Mende people found in bell hooks Art in My Mind citing Radiance from the Waters - Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art by Sylvia Ardyn Boone.
Initiation is an immersive installation in which Paula Damasceno transforms the octagonal room in the Horace Williams House into a space to experience the Offerings - a series of twelve diptychs connecting historical photographic methods to ancestry, colonial violence, resilience, and modernity, within Transamerican African Diaspora practices and visualities. Each diptych's case is made of Iroko wood - a tree and a deity through which the Orishas manifest their ancestral divinity. On the right side of each case, is a tintype suggesting the offering of specific food or element dedicated to a particular Orisha. On the left side of each tintype is a cushion lined with press-printed fabric displaying the colors and abstract shapes referring to each Orisha countering the tintype visuality. Each case rests on top of a black velvet cradle commonly used for special collections' objects reflecting an aesthetic investigation of traditional modes of archive display, the poetics and politics of such display, and the aesthetic choices that make such poetics and politics possible. Each diptych has its mythopoetic text with the silhouette of a runaway printed in litany, extracted from a stamp used both in the U.S. and Brazil in the 19th century.
Additionally to the Offerings, are three archival pigment prints entitled Surrender, an unbound artist book in which Initiation is translated into Risograph prints, and found objects of material culture, arranged to create a multi-temporal atmosphere.
Initiation is an invitation to engage with the intangible aspects of Transamerican African Diaspora histories and cultures then and now.
This project was supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, The Arts Council of Winston-Salem, and Forsyth County, and ArtsGreensboro.
Offerings, 2023.
4x5 tintype, heated press print pad, Iroko wood cases on an appx. 10,5 x 6,5 inches black velvet cradle.
Offerings is a series of twelve diptychs connecting historical photographic methods to ancestry, colonial violence, resilience, and modernity, within Transamerican African Diaspora practices and visualities. Each diptych's case is made of Iroko wood - a tree and a deity through which the Orishas manifest their ancestral divinity. On the right side of each case, is a tintype suggesting the offering of specific food or element dedicated to a particular Orisha. On the left side of each tintype is a cushion lined with press-printed fabric displaying the colors and abstract shapes referring to each Orisha countering the tintype visuality. Each case rests on top of a black velvet cradle commonly used for special collections' objects reflecting an aesthetic investigation of traditional modes of archive display, the poetics and politics of such display, and the aesthetic choices that make such poetics and politics possible. Each diptych has its mythopoetic text with the silhouette of a runaway printed in litany, extracted from a stamp used both in the U.S. and Brazil in the 19th century.