Abelha Rainha Exhibition (Queen Bee Exhibition) - Portugal
Maria Bethânia: Oyá and the art of creation
Maria Bethânia’s artistic legacy cannot be measured by her music alone. It draws on the cultural memory of Santo Amaro and the Recôncavo region of Bahia, on ancestral traditions, and on a religious upbringing shaped by both Catholicism and Candomblé. These traditions retain their distinct identities within her experience, yet find ways to coexist. For Bethânia, spirituality is not a subject she occasionally brings into her art. It is woven into her creative vision, informing the way she makes sense of the world, reflects on human existence, and develops her unmistakable artistic voice.
To mark her 80th birthday and 60 years in the music industry, ABELHA RAINHA – PORTUGAL brings together Brazilian, Portuguese, and African artists in a collective tribute to Maria Bethânia. The exhibition opened in Porto, inviting artists to engage with the many dimensions of her world. No biography, musical repertoire, or critical definition can fully account for an artist of her stature. Her work draws its strength, in part, from the way seemingly distant traditions, cultural references, and forms of expression meet and find new possibilities in her hands.
My contribution to the project has a dedicated space on this website. It brings together only photographs I made as part of the visual research developed for the tribute. One of the seven images was chosen for display in the exhibition in Portugal. The remaining six are presented here in the COLLECTION section. Including them online fulfills a personal wish: to give the entire photographic series a place within the project, allowing different interpretations of Iansã to offer distinct ways of approaching Maria Bethânia.
Oyá cannot be reduced to an interpretive framework for understanding Bethânia. She possesses a significance and presence of her own. The connection between the two takes on a particular meaning through religious experience and artistic creation. Each photograph explores a different aspect of that relationship, while acknowledging that no single image, nor the series as a whole, could exhaust its meaning. The work grew out of an encounter between two powerful presences whose identities remain distinct, even as each brings new dimensions of the other into view.
Seven photographs. Seven distinct approaches. One enduring question: what might we discover by looking towards Oyá as we seek to understand Maria Bethânia?
