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AFROCUBAN

MANUEL
MENDIV
E
OSHN BY
MANUEL
MENDIVE, 1970.
TEMPERA ON
HEAVY PAPER,
16 1/2 X 21

MENDIVES HISTORY:
Mendive, Manuel (b. 1944): Manuel Mendive was born
in Havana, Cuba, to an Afro-Cuban family of Yoruba
descent. Mendives family was active in the practice
of Santera, which heavily influenced the artists style
and artistic interests. The artist graduated from the
Academy of San Alejandro, and is considered one of
the most important living, contemporary Cuban
artists. Mendive made his first trip to West Africa in
1982. The artist lives and works in the outskirts of
Havana, and continues to promote Afro-Cuban art
and culture through his painting and sculptures.

WHAT IS AFRO-CUBAN ART?

Mendives art reveals a lavishly imagined, mythic world,
populated by his interpretation of Afro-Cuban religious spirits
and their stories of regeneration and reverence for nature
itself. Such spirits represent a particularly affecting instance of
New World syncretism, the combining of different, often
seemingly contradictory beliefs through the blending of
practices of various schools of thought.
In their transformed existence in Cuba, African spirits were
often intermixed with Catholic saints, once West African
Yoruba religious customs had migrated to Cuba after surviving
the so-called Middle Passage. This cross-cultural migration
began when captured slaves were transported from their
homeland in West Africa to work in sugar cane fields in the
Caribbean.

THE
MAJORITY
OF PEOPLE
WERE
BROUGHT
OVER
BETWEEN
1780 AND
1860. BUT
IT WENT ON
FOR
CENTURIES
UNTIL
SLAVERY
WAS

Sugar cane, tobacco and coffee plantations

SANTERIA & YORUBA MYTHOLOGY

When West African people were overrun by the Spanish and sold as slaves
they went to different countries. One of these countries was CUBA.
The Spanish focused on deculturalizing the slaves, stripping them bare of
anything that identified them to their African heritage, including their
YORUBA FAITH. The Spanish forced them to become Catholic.
Santeria evolved out of this deculturalizing process. In Cuba, Santeria is a
faith that blends catholic ideas and Yoruba ideas. It is a faith that travels
through oral traditions based in Yoruba mythology (Yoruba religion began in
WEST AFRICA. )

PHASES OF ARTWORK:
Mendive, born in 1944, belongs to the first generation of Cuban
artists to study at Cubas National Fine Arts Academy, San Alejandro,
following Fidel Castros rise to power in 1959. He was also born into a
family with close ties to Yoruba religious customs.
Painting
Mixed media
Sculpture
Performance
Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjXj3c2tMRo

 In the painting Pao sagrado

(Sacred Cloth, 2007), Mendive
transcribes his own narrative of
transformation and beginning
anew, evoking a parallel with
countless stories folded into AfroCaribbean culture over many
years.
Yoruba deities and motifs provided
in the shows catalog, a humanbird figure is linked to the
exchange of messages from this
world to the next.

MENDIVE EXPLORES AFRICAN/CUBAN

HERITAGE
His work is significant because he explores the marginalized
African roots in his Cuban culture. AFRO-CUBAN.
Another artist CHOCO, is exploring the same ideas in a
different medium.
After learning about some of Mendives heritage, lets look at
more of his work:
http://www.cernudaarte.com/artists/manuel-mendive/ Artwork
link

SOFT SCULPTURE

Mendive became interested in textiles

in the 1960s.
This sculpture suggests a watchful
gaze of a participant in religious rituals
or can be seen as an emblem of
truthful guidance through lifes journey.

El ojo que mira I (Seeing Eye I) by Manuel Mendive,

1985. Soft sculpture cloth and canvas, 47 1/2 x 21x 3
1/2 inches. Courtesy of Ramon and Nercys Cernuda
Collection.

KEY WORDS
Afro-Cuban
Regeneration
Interconnectedness
Syncretism
Transformation
Yoruba faith
Santeria
Asymmetrical shape
deculturalization

RESOURCES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjXj3c2tMRo MAGICAL
FOREST LINK
http://
mofa.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Education-Packet-R
evised-2162016.pdf
CUBAN history pamphlet link
http://pubhtml5.com/tbqz/npwx MENDIVE UNIT PLAN LINK 9-12
grade
http://www.cernudaarte.com/artists/manuel-mendive/ Artwork
link
https://www.howard.edu/library/reference/cybercamps/camp20
02/YorubaFaith.htm

THINK CLOUD-REFLECTIVE JOURNAL PAGES

After looking at Mendives work, what kind of creature can you
create to represent an aspect of your own personal
transformation?
We will create a SOFT SCULPTURE of your personal
representation of transformation. This can viewed as a power
symbol of growth for you personally.
Think about everything we have talked about, Mendives
cultural heritage, the slave trade, Santeria faith, Yoruba roots.
What is your cultural heritage? What are your ROOTS? Do you
have a spiritual faith?
In your artist journal, sketch ideas of what your transformative
symbol or creature might look like.