In January 2016 we were in Ouidah, Benin, doing a residency at the Fondation Zinsou to start our project on the journey that African religions did with the slaves and the transformations of their entities along the way. We stayed one month in the small coastal city where most slaves were taken to the Americas crossing the Gate of no Return.

We attended as many ceremonies as we could, understood part of what was explained to us and got involved as much as we were allowed to. We were determined to bring some light to the pantheon, rituals and cosmogony of a religion that has generated very little interest in the Western World apart from the well known characters of the cannibal, the zombie and the the black sorcerer.

The deities (Orishas) seem however quite accessible. There is a goddess for the river (Oshun), a goddess for the sea (Yemanja), the god of justice (Chango) , the god of iron (Ogun), one for winds and storms (Oya) and even a transgender deity that takes care of rainbows (Oshumare), rings a bell?

During 2016, we continued our journey in Cuba, with Santería, and in Brazil, where both Umbanda and Candomblé treasure the most faithful representation of what arrived in the continent together with the forced workforce. We decided to focus on one of the most annoying entities in the Yoruba pantheon, the one that missionaries identified as the devil when the time came to synchretize and conquer the spirituality of the natives: Legba, or Exu (in Brazil), or Elegguá (in Cuba) or Papa Legba (in Haiti).

Exu is a totem in West Africa, it has no real anthropomorphic representation, it is a child in Cuba, a young seductive man in Brazil and an old man in Haiti, and with this evolution as our own narrative structure we started the journey.

Exu is the energy for change and mutation. It is hard to define whether his influences are good or evil, but to say the least they are challenging. He is the one in charge of the communication with the other Orishas, he is in charge of the crossroads and he is the one placing obstacles on your way for you to redeem the control on your won life. Exu is annoying because it is hard to define and even harder to control but represents what most people fear for: duality and change.

There is no surprise in having some African cultural manifestation misunderstood and disparaged, but in these times of rising fanaticism, we believe some fresh air could eventually come in handy.

The actual advance of Evangelical churches in Africa, Brazil and Haiti and the historical ban on all religions in Cuba is literally threatening the survival of African matrix religions and compromising a quite unique cultural heritage that could bring some substantial input to the non-official version of History. Exu has definitely a role to play here with its capacity of transformation and adaptation to new realities.

With this project we aim to bring an accessible representation of one of the most enigmatic entities there is in contemporary spirituality and provide an approach to African religions based on both documentary record and visual transcription of the myths and legends.

This is an ongoing project that will be finished in the last months of 2017 with a last trip to Haiti that would complete the journey.