The first time I entered the hills, Godmother asked me to put my hands on the ground and then bring them to my mouth and kiss them. She told me to go around the kapok tree three times, the guardian of the hills’ eye where she buried her staff, and to look up waiting for signs of permission. As I was looking at the sky, a few drops fell on my face to the beat of a flutter of birds dancing with the prayer that Godmother was whispering, embracing the roots of the mystery.
yenyere guma good evening, good evening
yenyere guma, good evening, how are you?
In this edition of the Picnic Sessions 2024, we’re going to put our hands on the earth, ask for permission, head back to the bush. We’re going to connect with the Ashe, with gestures, myths, rites, wisdom, listening. We’re going to dance resistances and fleetingness, celebrate the differences of this living hill-Caribbean-archive. On the museum’s terrace between 30 May and 4 July, we are going to activate a ceremony in six stages (Rupture, Prayer, Supplication, Trance, Manifestation, Coronation) to break away from ethnographic lenses that burden our bodies, territories, geographies, spiritualities and creations with exoticising, simplifying tales. We’re going to bless ourselves with the Caribbean pica-pica before crossing the sea with the permission of the dead women who replenish it with tears every day, with the license of the blood, chains and Orishas that live there.
We’re going to paint the body with soil and salt; mark each step in the sand while the echoes of the calling drum resonate in the thickness. Check each leaf and each stone as part of the legacy that sustains and narrates us. Look at the sky and talk with the clouds, with the stars, with the sun and the moon, who guide our walking and our singing. Feel the wind that carries our ancestors’ secrets, that whispers stories of freedom and forgotten struggles. Each step in the hills is an act or recovery, an act of memory that challenges the imposed oblivion, that unearths the truths concealed under the weight of history written by others.
Godmother said that there was a tunnel under the tallest caguairán tree on the mountain, which led her directly home whenever she wanted to embrace her Nigerian great-grandmother. Godmother believed in witches and shapeshifters, in güijes —local mythical creatures— and in the two-headed boa that predicted the future on Saint John’s Eve. Godmother flew on a traditional twig broom and was familiar with all the good and bad herbs for remedies. Godmother listened to the owls, the moon and the foolish snakes in the mangrove swamp from her swinging rope over the coloured earth. Every Friday she blessed and cleansed with basil, verbena and red flowers. At some point in the ceremony, she fell into a trance and her body was occupied by the old Sarabanda, who always came singing:
I went to the hills and brought back
something nice for you
something nice for you
something nice for you
José Ramón Hernández (Palma Soriano 1988)
He is a non-disciplinary Afro-Cuban artist who graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte of Cuba. He is the founder and artistic director of Osikán – Creation Incubator and the Afronteriza Residency of the Centro Cultural Espacio Afro in Madrid. His practice ranges between artistic direction, dramaturgy, choreography, curation, installation, performance, education, mediation and cultural management. He is a spiritualist, babalocha and palero.
His creative investigation focuses on Afro-descendant rituals, performativities, peripheral bodies, materials, spiritualities, memories, migrations, cartographies and desires. He tests the boundaries between fiction and reality, work with non-fictional documents and the tools of the senses to affect and intervene in social and community processes.
He won the Circuito de las Artes Plásticas Award of the Community of Madrid in 2022 with the installation Ojú inú yàrá, the Villanueva Critics’ Award (Unión Nacional de Artistas de Cuba, UNEAC, and International Association of Theatre Critics) and the Aire Frio Award (Asociación de jóvenes escritores y artistas de Cuba) for the 2016 work BaqueStriBois; and first prize at the 2006 La Fiesta de las Relaciones for the work Maferefún pa Antonia.
His works have been shown in Cuba, Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Brazil and Spain.
In this edition of the Picnic Sessions 2024, we’re going to put our hands on the earth, ask for permission, head back to the bush. We’re going to connect with the Ashe, with gestures, myths, rites, wisdom, listening. We’re going to dance resistances and fleetingness, celebrate the differences of this living hill-Caribbean-archive. We’re going to bless ourselves with the Caribbean pica-pica before crossing the sea with the permission of the dead women who replenish it with tears every day, with the license of the blood, chains and Orishas that live there.
Design: La flor del Tamarindo
