Cuba – ArtsEverywhere

Rising From the Barracoon

By Laeïla Adjovi

Beninese writer and photographer Laeila Adjovi visits the ruined slave barracks of old Cuban sugar plantations for her Fay Chiang Fellowship research, where she discovers vestiges of ancient African rites.

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The Roads of Yemoja (1/6)

The Roads of Yemoja

By Laeïla Adjovi

Africans sold into slavery were forced to disguise their deities as Catholic saints when they arrived in the New World. Laeïla Adjovi, ArtsEverywhere’s first recipient of the Fay Chiang Fellowship in Artistic Journalism, is retracing the journey of the African deity Yemoja across the Middle Passage to Cuba, where the old rituals still exist in syncretic form.