Jose Bedia’s Tribal Artifacts
By Margery Gordon
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Digg thisBedia explains that this Cuban ceremonial costume was sent to him by a friend still living in his estranged homeland. “It has no nose and no mouth, because it is supposed to represent the spirit of the dead,” says Bedia. “However, it’s not something to be frightened of, but to respect. People go to these figures, call them Tata (elder), and ask what to do.” The artist points out other renditions of the character that appear in his studio: It plays instruments in a colorful burial scene that hangs in the bathroom among works by other indigenous artists; it also appears as a figure on Bedia’s altar (which is laden with stacked offerings of cigar butts) in an alcove at the end of a long wall pinned with canvases in progress and dripping with fresh paint.
The artist’s obsession with tribal objects dates back at least to the 1970s, when as a young art student in Havana he was more interested in mining folklore than in painting still lifes and figure models. One teacher understood and introduced him to books and ephemera about indigenous cultures, developing Bedia’s eye for the old Margaret Mead films he watches and the artifacts and oral histories he collects. “For me it’s more than a collection, it’s like an open-book library. I collect objects because I like physical proof of what I was looking for, that I was onto something.”
Bedia’s spiritual and anthropological leanings have long marked his large paintings and drawings peopled by elongated devils and warring natural and mechanical forces. His new exhibition, “First Hand,” at Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami’s Wynwood Art District from December 7 to January 5, reflects his efforts to connect with the beliefs behind the objects he collected during several visits to northwestern Zambia between 2004 and 2006. His participation in rituals and exchanges with natives there informed his understanding of the objects he will display alongside the paintings they inspired.
“Everyone knows that I base my work on those things. I don’t want to hide anything,” Bedia says. He gestures toward the found image of a tribal elder flanked by idols that he has embedded in the trunk of a hulking figure, tracing his finger-marks in the paint he applies freehand, using brushes and oil sticks only where needed for detail. “I try to recreate the power of that spirit force.”
In a sacred place beside the altar is a memento with special meaning for the artist, a photograph of the medicine man his mother took him to when he turned 18. The artist continues to practice Bantu, an Afro-Cuban tradition that reveres Mpungos, abstract life forces that manifest as natural elements like the ocean, river, lightning, moon, and sun. The erupting volcano and giant whale that appear in several recent canvases represent such natural forces. In one work, two tiny male figures carry a pregnant woman down the side of a spewing volcano, and Bedia’s trademark Spanish script spells out the “manifestation of something unpredictable.”
These primordial forces become politicized when he pits them against symbols of American military might like fighter planes and battleships. A toy aircraft carrier fills the corner of his crowded workbench, and another table across the room is topped by a bronze arsenal (cast with the help of Carlos Gonzalez, an artist friend with a neighboring studio). Bedia explains that his slotted sculptures of munitions are modeled after the piggybanks distributed by the U.S. government during the Spanish-American and World Wars to encourage war donations—but these are “open at the bottom, like a metaphor: the money goes nowhere.”
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