Cuban artist Wifredo Lam was a frontrunner of a cross-cultural state of style that subsumed Western modernism with African and Caribbean symbolism. His search for an artistic standpoint brought him in contact with the avant-garde movements of his age, movements that all had great significance in his work.
Ritual objects express the philosophical and aesthetical maxim of life. Ritual performance functions as a framework that enables entrusting one’s self to the unexpected, uncharted way of 'traumatic' reality in which the sublime emerges.
"In the exhibition were three small Fon bocio figures. They had a kind of mystery that I had been trying to bring into my own work. Seeing the Fon figures was one of those moments when the lightbulb went off in my head."
"With bocio figures, one can always see the wood. If the whole piece is ‘sacrificed’ from top to bottom (and even underneath), then you can be almost certain that it is a fake. A natural sacrificial patina is built up, little by little, over time."
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