MASP

Abdias Nascimento was a Brazilian Black artist, theatrologist, thinker, and activist. He worked in various fields, such as painting, theatre, and academic research. He was also a politician, federal assemblyman, and senator for the state of Rio de Janeiro, being one of the few black men to occupy these positions at the time. Nascimento only started to paint in 1968 at the age of 54; soon after, he went into exile in the United States. His production is fundamental within a 20th-century Brazilian art tradition of synthesizing symbolic and figurative elements, often through geometrization. In Okê Oxóssi (1970), the painter uses Oshosi’s emblem, the bow and arrow (which is called “Ofa”), to recreate the Brazilian national flag. Oshosi is the hunter Orisha, the one who captures his prey with a single arrow; guardian of the forests and its inhabitants; divinity of hunting, abundance, and nourishment. Aimed up, the arrow here is red and the flag axis is rotated in a vertical direction. The expression “Order and Progress,” associated with the foundation of the Republic in 1889, is replaced by the evocation to Oshosi: “Okê okê okê okê,” simplified here as “Okê arô,” which means “Save the great hunter” and is chanted by the sons of Oshosi. Both the evocation “Okê” and the stars, related to the Brazilian states, appear four times, a number linked to Oshosi. The blue circle of the national flag is cut by a semicircle in darker blue, used as a basis to the Ofa figure.

— Adriano Pedrosa, Guilherme Giufrida, Laura Cosendey e Tomás Toledo, 2020

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