WILFREDO LAM

(Sagua la Grande, Cuba, 1902 – Paris, France, 1982)

Bird of the possible, 1975

1988 Edition

Lithograph

MAB’s permanent collection

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The bird is one of the totemic symbols used to represent the origin of a culture. In Afro-Caribbean imagery and Yoruba religion, it’s a symbol of granted virtue, power, luck, energy, and all that is good; it can be associated with the orisha Osun, vigilant deity of the Yoruba people (Natalia Bolívar Aróstegui, 1996)​​. It’s also linked to wisdom, intelligence, and quick thinking (Sam Atkinson and Paula Regan, 2021).

In  Wifredo Lam’s work, the image of the bird or the bird transformed into a bat is recurrent.

According to the artist, it’s a representation of:

himself pursuing something that needs to be found. Lam states that: what do we find at the end of the road?[…] I have found friends, people who have the same ideas as me, and when I find these people who have the same ideas as me, these people give me a great joy; it seems that one confirms that one exists on Earth, and spends time on something that has a concrete reality […]

– Rafael de la Osa, 2012

The shapes seen in Bird of the Possible are associated with African masks and the adinkra symbol Hye Won Hye – from Ghana – which represents immortality and resistance.