Jose bedia tunkashila painting with a twist
Paint!
José Bedia Back Then (1999)
The cosmograms, also sliced with a knife into an initiate’s skin as signs of spiritual strength, appear on figures in countless paintings and drawings by Bedia.
At FIU, they score the shoulders of a lone, lean, silhouetted figure in the painting De Vuelta al Barrio (Return to the Neighborhood).
Jose bedia tunkashila painting with a twist
Carrying a suitcase in each hand, he seems nearly trapped in a chasm of bleak apartment buildings, their windows resembling ominous eyes — yet this figure’s restless, taut posture suggests a defiant and mobile vitality very much at odds with the barren cityscape.
More Kongo circles, spun into a concentric maze, appear in another painting at FIU, Isla Sola (Lone Island).
The circles revolve inside the silhouette of a large, disembodied head, which appears to be watching a swimmer fleeing a moonlit shipwreck. It’s a dream-like scene, with the man’s head seemingly laced together by a network of tree branches, so that he also res