La paloma y yo [The Dove and I]

A Santeria priest, painter, sculptor, and performance artist, Manuel Mendive has developed a distinctive iconographic language by fusing imagery drawn from Afro-Cuban religious belief systems with Western painterly styles and techniques. La paloma y yo, a hybrid between painting and sculpture, is incised and painted upon a hollowed palm tree trunk. Here, Mendive depicts himself as a pared-down outline, covered with the trademark polka-dots that he paints upon his body for his performance art. His mouth is open, as if he is in conversation with the dove perched upon his shoulder.

Look closer, and you will find a human head sprouting from one of the dove’s wings—a shape that echoes the face of the stone sculpture Rostro. This stone is a found object, a readymade. The artist painted certain parts of its surface and added cowrie shells on top of the head, which in Cuba are considered the mouths of the Orishás, or Yorùbá deities. In all of his paintings, Mendive depicts the heads of his figures exactly the same way: as a half-moon shape in profile, precisely the same form as this sculpture, created with minimal intervention. This hand-painted, readymade sculpture is therefore iconic because it alludes symbolically to the origin of all of Mendive’s painted faces in naturally occurring shapes.