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Tignon for Ayda Weddo (or that which a center can not hold)
Tignon for Ayda Weddo (or that which a center can not hold)
© Firelei Báez. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.

Tignon for Ayda Weddo (or that which a center can not hold)

Artist (Born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, 1981)
Date2019
MediumAcrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
Dimensions91 1/2 × 114 1/4 × 1 1/2 inches (232.41 × 290.2 × 3.81 cm)
ClassificationsMixed Media
Credit LineMuseum purchase with additional funds provided by the Office of the Provost, Duke University
Object number2019.24.1
Collections
  • MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
Label TextIn Tignon for Ayda Weddo, Firelei Báez overlays symbolic imagery, calligraphic patterning, and gestural painting as a means of personal engagement with the cultural memory and history of the African Diaspora. The image features an architectural plan of the American Sugar Refinery’s New Orleans filter house. As the largest US-based sugar refining business in the early 1900s, it had significant economic interests in Puerto Rico and other Caribbean locations and took an enormous physical toll on the many Black bodies linked to its history. Báez’s entwined serpent form references Ayda-Weddo, a spirit (loa) derived from Vodou traditions in Benin, West Africa and brought by enslaved peoples to Haiti and New Orleans. Ayda-Weddo forms a tignon, a head covering once worn by creole women of African descent in Louisiana. Tignons resulted from a 1786 law, which required creole women of African descent to wear head coverings in public. Resisting such imposed limitations, Black women transformed their tignons into elaborately adorned fashion statements and vibrant markers of cultural pride.