The Afrocentered Visual Poetry of Oríkì Ìwòran
Lisette Lagnado

I – “My art is not didactic; it is initiatory,” Ayrson Heráclito once told critic and curator Paulo Herkenhoff, and this statement continues to resonate, enunciating the performative function of art from a contemporary approach to rite. In one fell swoop, it embraces the meaning of his work and its public reception. This is no small feat if we consider that the artist, today an Ogã of the Jeje-Mahi nation, dedicates himself to multiple academic and curatorial activities. In the prolific crossing of the university, the institutional art system, and the terreiro sociability, he forged for himself a counter-colonial consciousness inherent to the resistance of traditional peoples.

Not to yield to documentary grammar imposed itself as an active principle, his ...