Imna Arroyo
New London, CT
Imna Arroyo is an Afro-Puerto Rican artist whose work weaves the threads of heritage and ecological veneration into a contemporary artistic dialogue.
Message
LEGACY, 2002-2006
Mixed media
Voyages Series, 2002
Xylography woodcut printed on satin and framed with Kente Adinkra cloth from Ghana, West Africa
Ancestral Thread, 2004
Busts: Cast cotton fiber, inlaid Adinkra symbol relief prints, Kente cloth from Ghana, hanging paper beats and milagros made of aluminum sheets
Boats: Metallic fabric and abaca fiber and stamped Adinkra symbol.
The Ancestral Tread Legacy installation which communicate the ancestors crossing the Trans-Atlantic during the slave with their guardians accompanying them in their journey. The theme began with Arroyo's Voyage series in which she incorporates three-dimensional figures representing the five African Orishas Elegua, Obatala, Yemaya, Shango and Oshun protecting and guiding the Ancestors in their journey to the Americas. The works speak of journeys, physical, psychological and spiritual. She infers that "The Ancestors brought with them their memories from the homeland." In this work the artist attempts to re-capture these memory fragments of the Diaspora, pasting together a legacy.
The boat metaphor is strongly used in this work. Water remains a strong theme in my work. I have been working with the theme of water since the 1990 when I began working with the Goddess, divinity in many cultures is connected with water. For me water is everything! Water is life. Water is the amniotic fluid of creation. Water is motion, expansion and transformation.
--- Imna Arroyo
DESCRIPTION
The Legacy installation is composed of five boats and five African Orishas or Deities from the Yoruba Pantheon in the Diaspora. The Orishas served as guardians to the ancestors while they were crossing the middle passage during the Trans Atlantic slave trade. Those who survived the journey brought their multitude of memories from the homeland. Arroyo’s work attempts to re-capture these memory fragments of the Diaspora, weaving together the legacy.
The five Orichas included in the installation are:
1) Elegguá--Divine messenger. Guardian of the roads opens and closes the doors of life. Represents balance.
2) Obbatalá --Lord of the White Cloth. Creator and father of humanity. Represents peace, purity, and intellect.
3) Yemayá-- Mother of fishes. Goddess of the sea. Represents motherhood and the abundance of life.
4) Ochún-- Goddess of love and of the river. Represents fertility and the sweetness of life.
5) Changó-- God of lightning and thunder. Owner of the sacred drum. Orisha of justice, virility and fire.
MATERIALS
--- BUSTS: Encaustic three-dimensional prints. made from cast cotton fiber with inlaid Adinkra symbol relief prints and Kente cloth from Ghana, West Africa with hanging paper beats and Milagros made of Aluminum sheets. Size: 25” H x 18” W x 10 ½” D
--- BOATS: Legacy Ancestral Thread boats: Boats made from metallic mech casted handmade paper made out of Abaca & cotton fibers & printed with Adinkra symbols. Size: 18”H x 25” L x x 10½ D
--- PRINTS: Journey/Travesias, are woodcuts printed on Satin and framed with Kente cloth that have been stamped with Adinkra symbols. Size: 45” H x 140”
- Created: 2004
Puerto Rican artist devoted to exploring connections between the African continent and the Diaspora in an on-going endeavor to reclaim a lost and scattered heritage. Arroyo draws upon the imagery, symbolism and language of the Yoruba traditions of Africa to express a majestically complex and sophisticated worldview. In her multidisciplinary practice, she finds inspiration in the concept that art-making can be a ritualized form of healing.
"It is my intent to create Art that heals the deep-seated collective wounds of history, as well as to celebrate the vibrancy and relevance of a long denied ancestral legacy of self-expression", Imna Arroyo
Renowned scholar and Caribbean art and cultural critic, Yolanda Wood writes “… Imna Arroyo remains continually focused on those junctures where everything that is located outside the practices of hegemonic power, in the domains of the undervalued and subaltern, somehow meets. Settling within the space/time of these multiple references, she has inserted her own poetics based on life stories, autobiographical details, gender imprints, and the memories that inhabit them, all inscribed on the skin and in the reflections of the African subjects enslaved in times of modernity/coloniality and their descendants—which in fact we all are—and whose condition of existence the Barbadian writer George Lamming has identified as “a historical experience” in the Caribbean, yet one that certainly extends beyond the dominion of the plantations. From her migrant status, yet the bearer of a U.S. passport, Arroyo has succeeded in penetrating these silenced and hidden areas”.