Audio Stop 962

RENEE STOUT:  
Marie Laveau was a very famous Voodoo priestess that lived in New Orleans around the late 18th century.  When I first saw Marie Laveau’s tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, it was marked with Xs. And as, the story goes, when you want to ask Marie Laveau a favor, you go there with an offering.  You ask her the favor, and then you mark her tomb with an X.  

NARRATOR:

Washington, DC, artist Renée Stout.

RENEE STOUT:
 The interesting thing about this piece, it really looks nothing like Marie Laveau’s actual tomb.  

As a tombstone, it does, commemorate her death.  But at the same time that's why I have the tentacles coming out, because even in death, her spirit has power.  

Down at the bottom where you see all those little bags on the side, I've always been very interested in African art.  And one of the main forms in African art that I'm very interested in are pieces that are called ‘minkisi,’ and they're carved wooden figures, humanlike figures.  But sometimes when you see these figures in the museum, they'll be covered with bags, and the bags will have things that have been gathered, by the maker of the minkisi, usually herbs, maybe stones, rocks; things from nature that they believe bring power to the figure… and these are called ‘power figures.’  

What I'm doing, in the work, is definitely combining various, African belief systems from, across the continent.  Not just Central Africa, but West Africa, along with the practices of Hoodoo in the southern United States, and Vodou in the Caribbean.  I was bringing all of these things together in this one piece.

And I feel like I have had to sort of create a hybrid spirituality that empowers me to face whatever circumstances that I have to face, and I do it through my art.