Through Art and Storytelling, Artist Harmonia Rosales’ First Book Brings African-Centered Myths to Life

Black Feminist in Public is a series of conversations between creative Black women and Janell Hobson, a Ms. scholar whose work focuses on the intersections of history, popular culture and representations of women of African descent.

Artist Harmonia Rosales shook the art world back in 2017 when she created The Creation of God, a Black feminist-infused vision of the divine that flips the script on gender and race in her retelling of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam fresco, the latter preserved on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.

In the wake of that controversy, Rosales went on to enrich her first series of Renaissance-inspired artworks reflecting an African-centered mythos and imaginary, which she titled B.I.T.C.H. (Black Imaginary to Counter Hegemony). She has since evolved a series of paintings and sculptural works that flesh out a mythical landscape that blends history and spirituality.

This visual catalog is now assembled in a new book, Chronicles of Ori, published last month. Reflecting the stories of Orishas from Yorubaland and driven by such historic characters as Eve (as in biblical, as in “mitochondrial”) and the tales of Oris that drive individual destinies, Rosales provides a counter narrative based in African-centered feminist storytelling.

In September this year, Rosales unveiled a new sculpture, Unbound, to commemorate slavery and emancipation at King’s Chapel in Boston.

Ms. contributing editor Janell Hobson had a chance to talk with Rosales last month about her first book and her overall oeuvre. October marked the second half of National Hispanic Heritage and Hoodoo Heritage Month, while also culminating with Halloween and Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos—an apt season to explore Rosales’ Cuban-based heritage and her engagement with African-based spiritual practices and beliefs.

Janell Hobson: What inspired you to write Chronicles of Ori?

Harmonia Rosales: There was a missing void. There was an erasure.

I’ve been telling these Orisha stories through art, and it was too much. The stories went too deep for me. It had to go beyond the actual artwork. And I realized there’s not an entire book to reference. I mean, there are written sources out there, but they’re usually in the academic sense, most of it, which explain the stories, but these are so disconnected. You’re just reading about hundreds of little tales that don’t connect. So, if you want to read a book, you must write it.

I felt that we needed a mythology. When I say “we,” I mean people from the African diaspora. We needed something to connect to besides enslavement, because that’s what seems to be in the Western canon. That’s where our history begins—whether it’s visuals in museums, whether it’s written, it’s always based in chains and survival of those chains, survival of what America has done to us. But we don’t go beyond that.

Hobson: I can appreciate you writing a book to help us move beyond the “origin story” of slavery for people of the African diaspora.

Rosales: I think that capturing something beyond slavery—having a story that can reclaim African gods and tell their story of how they became masked—helps us to take back our power. Something that we can connect to. That’s why I was like, “Oh, let me write this as an entire mythology to sit right next to Greek mythology.”  

Hobson: Do you see these stories as mythology and not as theology? Is there a difference?

Rosales: The Western canon likes to divide between mythology and history, which sees them as separate. In African traditions, they go hand in hand. This is how we preserved our history and our stories through it. It also preserves something more powerful, which is the Black imagination. And that’s what I wanted to fuse together within this book.

Now I’m just calling this book mythology because people understand that term. Unfortunately, we don’t have a different category to describe this book. But it entwines all of it: spirituality, the religious aspect, the story aspect and the history. It kind of forms something new. Because my publishers asked, “How do we categorize this?” I thought, “Okay, let’s play the game in a way that people can understand.” This is why I’m interested in having talks to further explain the concept of this book and the actual categorization of this book.

… capturing something beyond slavery—having a story that can reclaim African gods and tell their story of how they became masked—helps us to take back our power.

Harmonia Rosales

Hobson: Do these traditions represent your own personal and spiritual practice, or is this mostly an intellectual project?

Rosales: Both. I grew up in it. I grew up heavily influenced by my father’s side. I grew up with my grandmother, who is Afro-Cuban, so I’m first generation from his side. And I’m second generation from my mother’s side. My mother, she’s Jamaican-Jewish. She got with my father because she’s very spiritual, so it’s their spiritual connection that brought them together, and that familiarity was always around me. My dad had his Boveda, his altar, and his elekes. And so, I learned all these things when I was very young. But I didn’t become more into it until I was older, when I fell in love with the stories. And I do get my readings, and so yes, I’m very much a part of it, but like anybody that practices, you absorb it your own way and participate in your own way. But that’s why I lean in towards the mythology aspect of it because I think that’s what’s needed now.

Hobson: Why do you think this mythology is important for us at this present moment?

Rosales: History. Again, it holds history beyond the docks. It not only holds history but also points out the erasures around us. So where are these gods? Who are these gods that came with us [from Africa to the Americas]? Where were they hidden? Where did they leave to? Who were they? We need to reclaim this worldview. 

Hobson: I’m curious about what art does for you in terms of mythology, and how does that then develop into the written work that you have?

Rosales: They go hand in hand, but my strong suit is the visual. When I started my career, I wanted to paint, but I didn’t want to further divide the color line. I wanted to promote healing and I wanted to reframe in this beautiful way. So how was I going to do that? What an artist can do is use the imagination to convey something deeper. So that’s what I did. I used these symbols to reference a bigger picture. And by doing that, I had no idea I was writing the story. I was like, how am I going to embody us from the African diaspora? Who’s going to represent us? What character is that? Oh, Eve. If you think of Eve in the Bible, she’s also the mother to all in the diaspora. Okay, great, I thought, let me paint her. And in that way, I’m telling the story in my head, but doing it visually. But then ultimately that is telling its own story. I’m telling these stories repeatedly whenever I display my art and I eventually thought, you know what? It’s already written. The book is already there, so I could wait for somebody to write it, or I might as well just do it. And that’s what I did. 

Hobson: How do you see myths in relationship to memory?

Rosales: I want us to remember us being in a position of power, women being in a position of power. And I do that with everything that I work on, whether it’s a commission like King’s Chapel, for example. Whether it’s writing this book, whether it’s painting, it is creating. What’s interesting about mythology is it’s an art form in words. It’s the same thing I do on canvas by having these metaphors and literally painting a bigger picture. Mythology does that with history, and it was fun to play with that because it wasn’t so far of a stretch from my actual visual art. History itself is fragmented. Myth connects it all. Myth fills in those little gaps. You have the main concept of a history of an event, but then it is flowered over with concepts.

I’m just recreating what we’ve always done with the past. We’ve always held our memory, our history through these stories and these stories have survived. 

Hobson: You mentioned Eve as a character in your art and in the book, and I realize that you have this tension between the Biblical Eve and the mitochondrial Eve in terms of our genetic mother. Is there a correlation that you’re creating, or is that something that emerged out of your imagination?

Rosales: I always compare the two because everything about Christianity has demonized the traditional spiritual beliefs of Africa. So, with everything—the color red, snakes—I’m going to use these symbols and retell them in ways that reflect African traditions more positively, in ways that say this is not evil. This is not demonic.

Now, Eve is always presented as this redheaded white woman, who never resembled me or my daughter. Beyond that, Eve, and just women in general in Christianity, is seen as secondary. I think Eve embodies transformation. She births, and yes, it takes two—the male and female—but it’s the female that carries life. It’s the female that goes through hormonal changes to birth life. And that’s just the concept of creation in general. She’s the womb. She is the mother to all the African diaspora. She’s our ancestors that cross the ocean. In my mythology, Eve is our ancestors, but she’s also the humanized part [the mitochondrial DNA]. She’s the God part. 

She’s the one who says, “I’ve experienced this suffering, now it’s time for you to heal,” just like any mother would for their child. To not pass on generational trauma is to then heal and be stronger.

Hobson: Do you see art and storytelling as part of this maternal aspect of creation?

Rosales: I started with art because my mother was an author, illustrator, children’s book author. I got my artistic nurturing from her. I never went to daycare, so I was always up under her, up under her art table, mimicking her. That was my first introduction. Other things came into play that detracted me from thinking about art as a career. However, I was creating that anyway because it was a way for me to express myself. I just found it fascinating that I can create a whole world on paper. 

But when I took my daughter to the museum, it was a moment when I wanted to fall back in love with art. I was recently divorced. I was coming into my own as an independent woman. I went to the museum to find happiness because I always found it around art. But my daughter who was five at the time—she’s 16 now—noticed that there was no one who looks like her or me. I couldn’t take her anywhere in the museum to find her beauty. As a mother, I wanted to rectify that. That’s when I determined that not only was I going to paint something, but this is who I am going to be as an artist. 

… my mother was an author, illustrator, children’s book author. I got my artistic nurturing from her. I never went to daycare, so I was always up under her, up under her art table, mimicking her.

Hobson: It’s interesting that you speak of both your mother and daughter as inspirations for your art.

Rosales: When I began painting, I decided I’m going to paint the tales that my grandmother told me. Even with my first show, I had to defend what I was doing since people thought I was simply “Blackfacing” Renaissance works. But I’m taking well-known works and switching out the gods. It creates this bridge of familiarity. You may know about Venus, but now you’re going to know about Oshun. It’s similar gods, just different cultures. When I incorporated “The Creation of God,” it was because you’ve got to question everything, because right now the male aspect is powerful. God is a man. That concept still needs to be challenged.