J Michael Walker / "Pages from a Bahia Diary"
|
In January 2011, I was awarded a fellowship for a two month artist residency at the Sacatar Foundation,
on the jungle island of Itaparica, in the bay that gives the Brazilian state of Bahia its name.
Bahia is the center of the African Diaspora in Brazil -
over 4 million Africans were kidnapped and pressed into slavery there, double the number enslaved in the U.S. -
and the ever-flourishing evolution of the cultures they brought with them
provides Bahia with much, perhaps most, of its vigor and beauty.
During my residency I sought a way to portray the people I met in an historical context.
Fortuitously, I had brought with me the disassembled, fraying pages of a long-ago-acquired antiquarian book,
O Brasil Holandês, by Gaspar Barléu: a 1940 republication of an 18th century text
celebrating the Dutch empire of Brazil. Here, then, was my context, and these are my works:
Some of these works were created during J Michael Walker's residence at the Sacatar Foundation,
January-Februrary 2011, for which the artist expresses his gratitude.
All images and text copyright 2011 by J Michael Walker
|
