Artists / Dandara Maia
Dandara Maia
Experiments with Eshu
Collage, oil pastel and colored pencil on paper · 2025
Dandara Maia, Exu, Collage, 2025.
About the Work
“In Yorùbá cosmology, Èṣù is a trickster. A deity who acts as a messenger between humans and the divine, ensuring that offerings and prayers are passed on to the other Orishas, the deities of the Yorùbá. He is the guardian of Àşe, the life force that gives life to all beings. His tricks are revealing; his provocations shake assumptions, unveil hidden truths, and test the integrity of things. The Orisha can be depicted as male, female, or both, in the form of mounds of earth, sculpted faces, and figures adorned with cowrie shells. The curatorial research liberates Èṣù from colonial misinterpretations and understands the hybrid as a plastic, poetic, and mythical force of community and (re)creation.”
In conversations with artists who have a deep connection to Èṣù – Mulambo, Joyce Candeia, André Vargas, Gustavo Nazareno and Hugo Canuto – I have explored the different facets of the trickster figure as starting points for a decolonial reading of art and design that have emerged in Africa and the Black diasporas.”
Dandara Maia. Photo: © Michel Klehm, 2025
About the artist
Dandara Maia
Dandara Maia is a transdisciplinary researcher and curator working at the intersection of material culture, visual anthropology, and fashion studies. A trained fashion designer, she holds a PhD in anthropology and a Master's degree in fine arts. Her artistic practice and research explore identity, decoloniality, and the tensions between the paradigm of 'modernity' and the postcolonial contexts of West Africa and Brazil.
Through her curatorial work, she aims to question and reshape the discourse surrounding African material culture, thereby contributing to dialogues on decolonization and critical fashion theory. She has curated exhibitions at the Iwalewahaus in Bayreuth, collaborated with the Linden Museum Stuttgart, and is currently working at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design.
