Afro-Latinx Power and Religion: Nuyorican and Afro-Brazilian Artistic Intersections in the 1970s

As a repressive military dictatorship overtook Brazil in 1964, black artists and intellectuals fled the country in the hopes of finding like-minded communities in the United States or Europe. The Afro-Brazilian artist-activist Abdias do Nascimento settled in New York in 1968 and began painting after he integrated local African American and Puerto Rican artistic communities. Nascimento’s work depicts monumental orixás (deities) from the African-derived religion Candomblé accompanied by Black Power symbolism like the raised fist, different types of arms, and the desecrated flag, images that also appeared in Latinx art from this period. Nuyorican artists including Marcos Dimas and Jorge Soto Sánchez as well as other Caribbean, New York-based artists like the St. Thomas-born painter Ademola Olugebefola presented their work alongside Nascimento throughout the 1970s, also drawing inspiration from Afro-Caribbean religions and Black Power imagery.

This essay explores artistic intersections between Afro-Brazilian and Nuyorican artists in the 1970s, focusing specifically on visual expressions of Afro-Latinx religions mixed with Black Power symbolism. I argue that through such exchanges, artists constructed a new visualization of Afro-Latinx identity, one that fought for anti-racism and the recognition of previously marginalized African-derived religion both in the United States as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. While artists produced these new types of images, community organizers like Marta Moreno Vega increasingly organized events and exhibitions to allow for exchanges, leading to global meetings like the Orisha Conferences in the 1980s that included other Afro-Brazilian artists like the priest and sculptor Mestre Didi.