Andrea’s Room

“The same way a beautiful flower needs a diverse and fertile soil to grow, so does the spirit, which is nourished by offerings as diverse and fertile as soil.”

Padrinho Jorge Callejo Hernandez, Habana, Cuba, January 11, 2017.

Andrea’s Room is an environment juxtaposing organic and scientific iconographies of the natural world that seem unseen, forgotten or discarded against established aesthetic and moral taboos associated with Yoruba syncretic religion.

Nature offers unlimited beauty revealed through patterns observed from micro to macro. In experiencing such patterns we unite with the essence of the universe and nourish our souls.

It is pursuing the understanding of how intrinsic ecologies and cosmologies are connected to our physical, emotional and spiritual perceptions that I started to collect digital offerings generated in Instagram under the hashtags #andrearoom #andrearoomofferings and I invite you to do the same.

Claudia Jacques, PhD, MFA, is a Brazilian-American interdisciplinary technoetic artist, designer, educator and researcher.
http://claudiajacques.com

Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, despite Catholicism being the country’s official religion at the time, it was common to see different syncretic religious expressions on the street of Rio. Exposed to Umbanda by a nanny and later long time friend, Gelcira, I was often conflicted between fascination and fear of its iconographic entities, representations, symbols and offerings portraying life and death, beauty and decay.

In a research trip to Havana, Cuba in 2017, which despite being Communist embraced the religious syncretism of its people, I was able to visit an Yoruba syncretic religion house and interview the babalaos  Minerva and Jorge Callejo Hernandez. Here is a link to part of the interview in raw in a mix of Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Later, in 2018, my friend and business partner, Andrea Nalerio relocated to Uruguay. A follower of Santeria, she had to leave behind many of her iconographic statues of saints, where each entity represents an aspect of life, which I offered to keep them for her.

After Havana and having the saints around the house, I knew I had to work with offerings which led to Andrea’s Room show at UCLA Art|Sci Gallery in 2019.  In the show I built an environment with my own iconographic representation of 14 entities in Umbanda/Yoruba and their corresponding references to the physical and spiritual worlds.

Focused on the semiotic iconographies and relationships of life and death, beauty and decay, I had collected a bunch a “stuff” to represent my understanding and didn’t realize that the environment I created, was the antithesis of what Umbanda call for: a profound physical, emotional and spiritual relationship with sustainable ecologies and cosmologies.

It is pursuing this found understanding of how intrinsic sustainable ecologies and cosmologies are connected to our physical, emotional and spiritual perceptions that I started to collect digital offerings generated in Instagram under the hashtags #andrearoom #andrearoomofferings and I invite you to do the same.

THE 2019 FUTURIST MANIFESTO by Claudia Jacques

1. We  want to sing the love of earth, the habit of life and connectedness.
2. The essential elements of our art will be courage, audacity and consciousness.
3. Art  has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of love, kindness, respect, and balance.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of quietness. The sound of earth breathing…. The infinite networks connecting and giving life to energy, is more beautiful than representations of life.
5. We want to sing the essence of all nano to macro sounds, the enchanted voices of energy, connecting all there was, is and will be.
6. The artist must quiet the soul to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements of life.
7. Beauty exists only in quietness. Closer everything is a masterpiece. Art must whisper gently winds of love and respect to all that was, is and will be.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! It’s by looking behind and quieting our voices that we open the mysterious shutters of the impossible. Untangled Time and Space. We are already eternally connected, through the omnipresent frequencies of light.
9. We want to highlight love – the only cure for the world – empathy, acceptance, kindness, the embracing gestures of fluid exchanges among all there is, was and will be.
10. We want to demolish the walls that separates and segregates body and soul, living and nonliving, nano and macro, genre, Gaia’s wealth and health.
11. We will sing of the nanoparticles, connecting matter and energy,  life and death; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of connectedness: the nocturnal vibration of light influencing all that is, was and will be: the bee that seeds life; the mushrooms that nourish the trees; clean air, rivers, earth for all and eternity.

We will embrace our entangled energies.

Original Futurist Manifesto, F. T. Marinetti, 1909 which set the tone for a century of human-centered ideologies and the advance of new technologies employed for segregation and duality. The 2019 Futurist Manifesto calls for a complex and collaborative Earth-centered approach to sharing our human existence and technological developments.