Bahian white: the dispersion of candomblé imagery in the public sphere of bahia
ABSTRACTFor most of its history, candomble was a marginal and persecuted spirit possession cult. From the 1920s onward, however, the cult evolved into the “trademark” of Bahia, a state in northeastern Brazil. The color white—a spotless and impeccable white—has come to dominate the public face of the cult: evoking positive connotations such as cleanliness and purity, the color helped to portray candomble as the splendid cultural heritage of the Bahian state as well as a respectable African religion. However, the “politics of white” has always been intersected by a “poetics of white,” as Bahian artists, writers, and other image producers sought to destabilize the condoned meanings of white. Hinting at that which is absent from the impeccable surfaces of candomble's public appearance, this “poetics of white” produced a layered public understanding of the cult. As people engage in speculations over the “true” candomble that lies hidden behind its public facade, claims to be “in the know” reconfigure the notio...
Transforming the Orixs: Candombl in Sacred and Secular Spaces in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
Heather Shirey In the streets and plazas of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, representations of the orixás, the deities of the African-Brazilian religion Candomblé, are visible throughout the city. Mural paintings appear on walls and signs where they blend in with advertisements and graffiti, allowing motorists to contemplate the entire pantheon of orixás while filling up the gas tank (Fig. 1). A sculpture of Exú, the guardian of the crossroads and the orixá who oversees all forms of communication, is positioned, most appropriately, in front of the city’s central post office (Fig. 2); a painted mermaid associated with Yemanjá overlooks the sea (Fig. 3); and on the Dique do Tororó, a large lake and recreation zone in the middle of the city, a group of orixá statues dances in a circle on the surface of the water (Fig. 4). Richly varied in scale and medium, visual references to Candomblé in the streets of Salvador are so frequent that they blend in with the surrounding urban landscape, merging with the multitude of colors that adorn nearly every surface. Although most Candomblé ritual practices take place in private spaces, the frequency of public art with a focus on the religion makes the presence of these images in the secular realm seem as natural and acceptable as advertisements for toothpaste and legal services. The movement of imagery from the sacred space of the Candomblé terreiro (temple) to the city streets, however, requires extensive intervention, as the complicated aesthetics of Candomblé must be recast in a way that is comprehensible and palatable to a broad public. The group of sculptures on the Dique do Tororó by the Bahian artist Tatti Moreno is arguably the most famous public and popularized representation of Candomblé in Bahia.1 This sculptural project effectively illustrates the artistic mediation that is necessary in order to present Candomblé effectively in the public sphere. This transformative process in the realm of public art, explored here using Moreno’s orixás as a case study, parallels the popularization of Candomblé in festivals, most notably Bahia’s carnival and the annual summer festivals dedicated to Yemanjá and Nosso Senhor do Bonfim/Oxalá (Crowley and Ross 1981:56, Crowley 1984:13, Pinho 2006:275, Shukla 1998). Given that Candomblé is rich in its aesthetic principles and that engagement with empowered objects is central to ritual practice, one must ask how, and to what end, are these secularized images constructed? In what ways, for example, does a representation of Oxum in the city ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
O2 constraints from Paleoproterozoic detrital pyrite and uraninite
Redox-sensitive detrital grains such as pyrite and uraninite in sedimentary successions provide one of the most conspicuous geological clues to a different composition of the Archean and early Paleoproterozoic atmosphere. Today, these minerals are rapidly chemically weathered within short transport distances. Prior to the rise of oxygen, low O2 concentrations allowed their survival in siliciclastic deposits with grain erosion tied only to physical transport processes. After the rise of oxygen, redox-sensitive detrital grains effectively vanish from the sedimentary record. To get a better understanding of the timing of this transition, we examined sandstones recorded in a scientifi c drill core from the South African 2.415 Ga Koegas Subgroup, a mixed siliciclastic and iron formation–bearing unit deposited on the western deltaic margin of the Kaapvaal craton in early Paleoproterozoic time. We observed detrital pyrite and uraninite grains throughout all investigated sandstone beds in the section, indicating the rise of oxygen is younger than 2.415 Ga. To better understand how observations of detrital pyrite and uraninite in sedimentary rocks can quantitatively constrain Earth surface redox conditions, we constructed a model of grain erosion from chemical weathering and physical abrasion to place an upper limit on ancient environmental O2 concentrations. Even conservative model calculations for deltaic depositional systems with suffi cient transport distances (approximately hundreds of kilometers) show that redox-sensitive detrital grains are remarkably sensitive to environmental O2 concentrations, and they constrain the Archean and early Paleoproterozoic atmosphere to have <3.2 × 10 –5 atm of molecular O2. These levels are lower than previously hypothesized for redox-sensitive detrital grains, but they are consistent with estimates made from other redox proxy data, including the anomalous fractionation of sulfur isotopes. The binary loss of detrital pyrite and uraninite from the sedimentary record coincident with the rise of oxygen indicates that atmospheric O2 concentrations rose substantially at this time and were never again suffi ciently low (<0.01 atm) to enable survival and preservation of these grains in short transport systems.