Afro-Brazilian sculptor, writer Mestre Didi at El Museo del Barrio NYC

El Museo del Barrio ( 1230 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10029) presents “Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form,” a landmark monographic exhibition exploring the work of the late Afro-Brazilian sculptor, writer, cultural advocate and Candomblé priest Mestre Didi (Salvador, Bahia, 1917- 2013). On view March 13 through July 13, 2025, “Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form” is co-curated by chief curator Rodrigo Moura and guest curator Ayrson Heráclito with Chloë Courtney, curatorial fellow. As the first major U.S. museum exhibition of Didi’s work in 25 years, the survey unites over 30 of his sculptures and offers a rare view of his far-reaching spiritual and artistic legacy.

Over the course of his career as a sculptor, from the 1960s until the 2010s, Mestre Didi was a visionary emissary for Candomblé, an Afro-diasporic religion which developed in Brazil as formerly enslaved Africans handed down their Yoruba spiritual practices. He was perhaps the first artist to reimagine Candomblé ritual objects as artworks in their own right.

“El Museo del Barrio is deeply honored to present ‘Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form,’ an exhibition that not only highlights the exceptional artistry of Mestre Didi, but also celebrates the profound cultural and spiritual contributions of the Afro-Brazilian community,” Patrick Charpenel, Executive Director of El Museo del Barrio, said. “It embodies El Museo’s mission to elevate artists and narratives from Latin America and the diaspora, enriching global conversations about art and celebrating the impact these artists continue to have in the art world.”

Deoscóredes Maximiliano dos Santos, better known as Mestre Didi, was born into a highly esteemed Candomblé family in 1917. Didi spent decades making ritual objects in his elevated role at the religious society Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá. Around 1962, he began to create nonconsecrated sculptures, which were exhibited in Brazil and internationally during his lifetime.

As guest curator Ayrson Heráclito states, “Through his religious knowledge, Mestre Didi established a unique body of work, in which the act of creation is a sacred one, and the resulting art object carries protective qualities, like an amulet.”

These works incorporate and combine traditional symbols, shapes, and materials related to the Candomblé deities, the orishas. While scholars and critics have written about Didi’s role as a spiritual leader and his symbolic use of materials, they rarely delineate how his formal strategies changed over time to create a unique artistic idiom.

El Museo’s exhibition will foreground Mestre Didi’s spiritually evocative and formally imaginative sculptures and present new interpretations of his symbolic repertoire. His distinctive artworks combine the traditional materials, shapes, and symbols of the orishas, the Candomblé deities, to create a modern sculptural language.

Rodrigo Moura explained the timeliness of these new perspectives on Didi’s work, stating that, “As decentered approaches to the histories of modernism expand the reach and relevance of the Global South, the far-reaching influence of African art has finally gained full recognition at the global stage.”

Moura elaborated further on the importance of Didi’s abstract language, saying “What is at stake in hist striking forms is a start disavowal of the discourse that mythologizes abstraction as an invention of European ‘high modernism.’ ”

The exhibition also contextualizes Didi’s practice by featuring key works by his artistic peers and by contemporary practitioners. In addition to Mestre Didi’s sculptures, the exhibition includes works by Emanoel Araújo, Jorge dos Anjos, Agnaldo Manoel dos Santos, Aurelino dos Santos, Ayrson Heráclito, Antonio Oloxedê, Abdias Nascimento, Arlete Soares, Nádia Taquary, and Rubem Valentim. It also includes a site-specific textile installation by acclaimed artist and designer Goya Lopes, especially created for the entrance of the exhibition space. The influence of these artists’ shared interest in African visual languages ranges from 20th century modernisms to the continued innovation of Black diasporic aesthetics today.

In Heráclito’s words, the exhibition “is rare experience of immersion in a universe of the artistic and the sacred.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mestre Didi, born as Deoscóredes Maximiliano dos Santos, was closely involved in the Candomblé religious society Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá from a young age, where he spent decades making traditional ritual objects. Around 1962, he began to create sculptures and pursue exhibition opportunities, with early shows at Galeria Ralf (Salvador), Galeria Bonino (Rio de Janeiro), and the Museu de Arte Moderna, Salvador.

After receiving a fellowship from UNESCO to conduct fieldwork in West Africa in 1967, Didi and the anthropologist Juana Elbein dos Santos, his wife, organized the exhibition Afro-Brazilian Art, which was presented in Lagos, Accra, Dakar, Paris, London, and Buenos Aires between 1968 and 1974 and included Didi’s work.

ABOUT EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO

El Museo del Barrio is the nation’s leading Latinx and Latin American cultural institution. The Museum welcomes visitors of all backgrounds to discover the artistic landscape of these communities through its extensive Permanent Collection, varied exhibitions and publications, bilingual public programs, educational activities, festivals, and special events.

The Museum is located at 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street in New York City. The Museum is open Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 11:00am – 5:00pm. Pay what you wish.