Cabeça de Yansã, from the series "Bori" (Feed the Head)

Artist and professor Ayrson Heráclito is ordained as a priest in Candomblé, a Brazilian faith that blends the West African Yoruba religion with Catholicism. (Photographs showing Santería, a leading religion in Cuba with similar sources, are on view in the preceding gallery.) Feed the Head began as a performance in which Heráclito encircled the heads of participants who represent the 12 major divine forces (orishas) in Candomblé. Heráclito chose a variety of raw and cooked dry foods, each appropriate for the given orisha.

Olodumare, the omnipotent godhead, is an unreachable, abstract being whose presence is mediated through the orishas. Heráclito’s comestible arrangements can be appreciated as fields of color, similar to the paintings of Mark Rothko that he deeply admires. Feeding the orishas nourishes the godhead, and it can also enrich the mind of ordinary souls such as the participants in and viewers of this work of art.