“The Other Dove” is a 28” x 45” oil painting of a practitioner of Vodou. The work is a play on the Western iconography of the Judeo-Christian white dove.
“The Other Dove” is a 28” x 45” oil painting of a practitioner of Vodou. The work is a play on the Western iconography of the Judeo-Christian white dove.Beginning in the 1500s, people from Africa were forcibly transported to European colonies throughout the Americas to feed the demand for slave labor. By the time the practice ended with the illegal smuggling of the last slave ship to Alabama in 1860, it’s estimated that over 12 million Africans had been removed from their homelands and dispersed to the “New World.” Nearly 2 million of these abductees perishing along the way.
As a descendant of this inglorious chapter in human history and as an artist, from time to time I struggle with the reality of simply wanting to paint pretty stuff, but also having a lot more that I feel about who, what, and where I am in the Western world.
As long as I live in a society where the fumes of chattel slavery still drift in and leave detritus on every surface where I normally should be able to work, live, and play without risk, I will always have to pause from painting things that are simply beautiful to comment on the existential reality of being a great granddaughter, several times removed, of Africa.
“The Other Dove” is an homage to the resilience of people who managed to shepherd their heritage through multiple centuries, despite massive odds.
The Survival of West African Roots
To render African captives easier to control, slavers employed a host of tactics intended to cleave away a future slave’s culture and identity. Some of these methods involved outward acts of physical brutality, while others incorporated psychological abuses such as forced baptism into Christianity and mixing people from different regions so that communication would be difficult.
The process of violent indoctrination cost a significant number of people their lives; however, many who survived this brutal transition period managed to hold on to vestiges of their West African cultural and religious practices. The remnants of their former lives were sometimes expressed in how they groomed, such as braiding their unique texture of hair into patterns that spoke a language their captures didn’t comprehend.
The Birth of Vodou
In the Americas, African captives’ spiritual practices manifested into new rituals now officially recognized as the Vodou religion. The word “vodou” traces its origins to the Fon language of Dahomey (present-day Benin) where the root word “vodun”’ and its variations were used to refer to God or Spirit.
As a pseudo-nouveau religion birthed in the crucible of slavery, Vodou reflects an undeniable West African heritage. However, because captives were forced to adopt Roman Catholicism as part of their indoctrination, elements of Christianity also surface throughout its practice.
It’s hypothesized that Vodou practitioners used Catholicism to cloak their Afro-based rituals and ceremonies to protect them from discovery. Overtime, this, and the natural process of absorption resulted in a syncretic theology where Catholic saints have as much importance as West African Iwa.
Demonizing Africa And Blackness
For most non-practitioners the mention of Vodou or “voodoo” conjures up negative knee-jerk connotations like Satanism, curses, and visuals of violent spiritual possession. What many Westerners don’t recognize, beside that the religion has no African equivalent of a Satan figure, is these associations are a result of an enduring pattern of anti-Blackness that traces its roots back to colonialism.
In specific reference to Vodou, the Haitian Revolution (covered further down in this post) left a long-lasting bitterness with slave owners that perpetuated generations of denigration against its practice. Even in contemporary media, we find cartoonish references to zombies, Voodoo dolls, and bowls of chicken blood that reduce Vodou to a marginalized trope or a scary joke, .
In reality, Vodou arose as a vehicle for spiritual and psychological survival for a people existing under extreme duress. A good book that explores this topic is African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness by Milton C. Sernett. In particular, a chapter called Conjuration and Witchcraft containing the recollections of abolitionist Henry Bibbs bares witness to the barbarism slaves endured and how they turned to their spiritual practices to heal and protect themselves.
This fact ran counter to the popular notion that Vodou was used to place hexes on slave masters. The ceremonies and rituals of Vodou allowed the enslaved respite and communication with the Iwa or spirits of their homelands, something that surely provided some sort of comfort in a world defined by sadism and chaos.
For European colonizers whose religious ceremonies were restrained and formulaic, Vodou ceremonies clearly induced anxiety and suspicion. The desperate writhing of black bodies seeking union with the spiritual plane, the ululations and rich rhythmic chants in cadences that harkened back to a poorly understood world in a far off land, gave shape and sound to the crime of mass kidnap committed by their republic. It must have stricken slavers with absolute fear; fear of reprisal from their God, the slaves’ God, or the slaves themselves.
Slavers’ interest in denigrating all things African was part of the practice of breaking captives down to make them more accepting of their circumstances, but equally important, was quelling the possibility of rebellion.
Haitian Uprising
Haiti is recognized as the birthplace of the Vodou religion practiced in the Americas, with variations of the tradition reflecting regional uniqueness. Regionally significant types of Vodou include Louisiana Voodoo, Cuban Vodú, Dominican Vudú, Venezuelan Yuyu, and Brazilian Candomblé Jejé.
Haitian Vodou is credited as being the main catalyst behind the start of the 18th century Haitian Revolution. Leading up to the revolt, the French colony of Saint-Dominigue had engaged in the rapid importation of African slaves to meet growing demand for coffee and sugar production. To keep such large numbers of people under control, overseers engaged in extreme acts of brutality that eventually pushed the anger of captives over the edge.
On August 14, 1791 a secret Vudou ceremony was held overseen by Dutty Boukman and Cécile Fatiman, a prominent priest and priestess and leaders in the slave community. At this pivotal gathering slaves were rallied to overthrow their French masters. The ensuing violence eventually led to Haiti becoming the first free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere by 1804, but not before Boukman was killed and beheaded in a desperate effort to warn other slaves not to follow his actions.
The fall of slavery in Haiti sent colonists and slavers fleeing to surrounding islands and up to North America where they spread horrific stories of Black rebellion. These vivid retellings became the basis of cautionary tales and admonishments about the dangers of making concessions of any kind to Black people. Incidences such as the 1864 trial that convicted a Vodou practitioner and his associates of human sacrifice were used as defining examples of an entire religion and people instead of a grotesque exception.
These “lessons” fall into the general cannon of anti-Black sentiment and reverberate throughout Western culture to this day. Their lingering influence is not just apparent in how Vodou is regarded, but how attempts to have real conversations about racism and the persisting effects of slavery in the West continue to be met with vociferous pushback.
Animal Sacrifice
Another dichotomy worth noting involves the subject of animal sacrifice. In Vodou, it’s common for a chicken, rooster, or sometimes a goat or sheep to be offered to an Iwa.
While I have personal strong opinions about humanity’s treatment of other species, it’s also not lost on me that condemnation of the practice is made easier by the fact that Vodou is an African-derived religion. In a turn of irony, the same people repulsed by the practice have often no problem eating a steak produced under the appalling conditions of factory farming.
Painting “The Other Dove”
Normally by the time I’ve moved forward with the painting stage of an artwork I have composition and lighting figured out. On some occasions, the work doesn’t evolve as planned and I have to make adjustments while painting, or just completely restart from scratch.
With “The Other Dove” I was clear that I wanted to use imagery that played on the Christian iconography of the white dove of peace, so much so, that I originally made the rooster in the painting the focal point of the work while the man holding him acted as more of a “bezel.” For those unfamiliar with jewelry design, the bezel is the metal casing that holds a gemstone within a piece of jewelry.
Overall, the first version of this painting accomplished the concept I was aiming for, but fell flat. I felt having the Vodou practitioner shrouded in darkness while placing a spotlight on the rooster weakened the impact of the work. It also wasn’t satisfying my intent to highlight the strength and dignity of the figure cradling the rooster. This undermined my intent to present a substantive counter image to those commonly presented by popular media regarding Vodou.
Round Two
I scrapped the first painting completely and literally went back to the drawing board. With the second version, I experimented with changing the figures pose, the position of the rooster, and even lengthening the man’s hair. Ultimately, I decided lengthening the hair was a keeper and the pose itself was not the issue; lighting and background were.
In keeping with the theme of reinterpreting Roman Catholic iconography, I aimed for a more Byzantine treatment of the background somewhat similar to what you’d see in Renaissance altarpiece paintings of Catholic Saints. Adding this glowy, bright background successfully delivered the final impact I was aiming for.
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