The Art of Magic in the Afro-Iberian Atlantic World, 1400-present

This panel explores the expressive cultures of magical practices in the Afro-Iberian Atlantic. Across time and space, institutions claiming moral authority—from the Inquisition to Central African colonial missions to contemporary police bureaus—have targeted magic for suppression. While often dismissed as superstitious, fraudulent, and fetishistic, magical practices remained central to the spiritual lives of millions from La Paz to Luanda. Its performances harnessed the heritage of diverse aesthetic traditions toward dynamic new ends; its materials served as spaces of correlation for trans-Atlantic systems of belief. And its practitioners continue to attract individuals from different racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds—a testament to magic’s enduring efficacy.

By interrogating the expressive dimensions of magic, this panel seeks to emphasize the fluid ontological nature of images, materials, rituals, and forms. Under the stewardship of African diasporic spiritual practitioners, images became relics, as occurred with a watercolor of Saint Martha in New Spain. Drawn seals, transcribed in trial records, summoned ancestors in Cuba. Meanwhile, in Central Africa, figures and vessels called minkisi authorized pacts between humans and spiritual forces. The panel uses these and other magical practices as a means to reframe art historical inquiries into the nature of Afro-Atlantic images and objects. What role do aesthetics play in magical practices? How do we contend with the plasticity of images and objects, and their resulting social and cultural meanings? How are images, objects, and materials invested with spiritual power? In taking magic seriously, this panel centers African diasporic epistemologies and experiences in the Iberian Atlantic.