Lucas Cardoso (Brazil): Ajagunã

Ajagunã which means in a free translation strong warrior in Yoruba, usually revered to Oxaguian (son of Oxalá or even himself in a younger version). The video performance Ajagunã intends to bring, in gestures and symbols, the references of one of the oral histories, known as itans, which narrate facts and build the immaterial and liturgical universe within the candomblé terreiros (religious african-brazilian spaces) for the worship of the orixá Oxaguian here in Brazil. This relationship of the act between the construction and deconstruction of one’s own head is portrayed in the itan that narrates the birth of this orixá. In the performance, an apparently rigid tool is used, such as a dagger or Ogun’s own sword, but made of raw white clay that breaks and mixes with another type of clay of a darker color, incorporating its head into the mix, two masses of origins. different forming one. Clay and water are the feminine elements that are present and oppose the masculine energy of Oxaguian, who according to itan was not born from a uterus but from a snail shell needing the help of Ogun and his sword to shape his balanced head. . The search for balance is the very teaching of the feminine interior of these two warrior orixás, almost like a movement of cutting and breaking outdated patterns to build something new and updated. The performance Ajagunã is built by bringing in images with the body the movements of the stories passed orally and that naturally bring the orixás of Africa to Brazil within the terreiros and families of Candomblé around here. This video is born almost as an unfolding and one more possibility of a telling of the stories heard and observed within the experiences in an african brazilian religious space.

I’m Lucas Cardoso from Brazil, I am 28 years old and my works as visual artist is informed by the places where I came from, encounters with family stories, the city where I was born, dreams, visions, and spiritual experiences, all which take place in the form of images, both painted or invented. Recently, my works in progress, include the research of natural materials, and their histories with painting. With the manipulation and utilization of mineral pigments (earth) and vegetables (mostly coal), I evoke a connection between nature and ancestry, and art. Recently I’am exploring other visual forms to my visual thinking, such as video performances that I began in my recent time as artist in residence at Mirante Xique-Xique in Bahia, Brazil.I have done a form of academic exchange in visual arts where I was able to study in Germany in Freiburg, in Hochschule fur Kunst Design und Populäre Musik.