Unmaking Race, Remaking Soul: Transformative Aesthetics and the Practice of Freedom

8.The Syncretism of Native American, Latin American, and African American Women’s Art: Visual Expressions of Feminism, the Environment, Spirituality, and Identity

INTRODUCTION This chapter discusses aspects of traditional Native American religion/spirituality and traditional African religion/spirituality that are evident in the art of Latin American, African American, and Native American women artists. Artists that fuse both African and Native American religious symbols in a syncretic manner as well as those who are inspired by only one of these cultural sources will be highlighted. Emphasis will be on twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists, particularly those whose art work coincided with social movements of the 1960s through the 1990s that referenced black nationalism, pan-Indian identity in the United States, indigenismo in Latin America and the United States Southwest, women’s liberation, and identity politics in general. In Native American cultures the arts, beauty, spirituality, and activism are intertwined as symbols of the spiritual and physical worlds that enrich daily lives and ceremonies. As protectors and reminders of the living universe, symbols bridge the gap between the spiritual and physical realms. Public life brings together dancing, poetry, and the visual arts, uniting them in a single function; ritual serves as the all-embracing expression of life. Contemporary Native American women artists explore ancient art traditions, styles developed during colonialism and reservation confinement , and newer, experimental art concepts. Their art often functions 181 8 The Syncretism of Native American, Latin American, and African American Women’s Art Visual Expressions of Feminism, the Environment, Spirituality, and Identity Phoebe Farris as social criticism by using content that expresses alienation from the dominant American culture. Whether the work is abstract in form or more representational , it usually has a social context. In looking at the art of African American women from the 1960s and continuing today, it is evident that many have been inspired by symbols from ancient Egyptian culture such as pyramids, ankhs, and hieroglyphs , west African cosmology from Benin/Nigeria and Asante/Ghana, and Islamic cultural influences from North Africa. African traditions are often expressed visually through the syncretism of Christianity, Native American beliefs, Judaism, and Muslim traditions in a shamanistic approach to art that stresses the sacredness of nature, the healing power of art, and racial/ethnic identity restoration. Women artists from mixed cultural /racial backgrounds often incorporate religious/spiritual motifs from the array of Native American beliefs still prevalent in the Americas despite conversions to Christianity. For women artists in the United States such as Yolanda Lopez, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Adrienne Hoard, and Betye Saar, the eagle, the Egyptian pyramid and ankh (cross), and the Virgin of Guadalupe have meanings that signify “solidarity by suturing the heroic and the ordinary, the real and the spiritual, the local and the spiritual, the local and the global, the past and the present, man and woman, Mexican and Chicano or Chicana, African American and African, and all Third World peoples” (High 1997, 127). LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth century the Latin American aesthetic was “revolutionized and conditioned by political unrest, social circumstances, avant-garde groups, the search for a national identity, tenuous cultural boundaries, struggles of independence, the colonization of pre-Hispanic peoples, the influx of blacks from Africa, the infiltration of European traditions, crossbreeding , and racial integration” (Sánchez 1999, 126). The only European tradition that had a significant impact was surrealism, and in Latin America surrealism fused with indigenous spiritual, mythological, and cultural traditions. The paintings of Tarsila do Amaral and Tilsa Tsuchiya acknowledge the aesthetics and spirituality of their indigenous roots in Brazil and Peru respectively, incorporating modern surrealism with native beliefs. In Mex182 PHOEBE FARRIS ico Frida Kahlo’s influences were pre-Columbian imagery, syncretic folk Catholicism, and surrealism. A contemporary artist who is especially proficient in fusing both African and Native American religious symbols in a syncretic manner is Regina Vater. Working in both the United States and her native Brazil, Vater’s installations and videos embrace the hybridization of European, African, and American Indian beliefs with an emphasis on nature’s sacred forces. Vater references the metaphysical and shamanistic rituals of indigenous and African traditions as they connect to the sacredness of nature—making art that is both modern and organic/natural, art that is created not just for aesthetic purposes but also for its energy fields (Sánchez 1999, 126). Examples of Vater’s work that highlight her use of syncretism are Verve (1997), an installation influenced by African ground paintings and Navajo sand paintings that...