
Holy Supper of the Orixás - 4.40 x 1.60m
30 April 2019
This report tells about two Brazilian artists connected by art in Paris! While Nil makes songs that speak of life, God and enchanted spirits; Ed paints the Orixás without paint and makes moving sculptures! They became brothers by choice.
From Casa da Música to
Atelier Museum of Ed Ribeiro,
everything is art and memory
I found Ed Ribeiro and Nil Lus at the Casa da Música, on the edge of the Abaeté Lagoon in the Itapuã neighborhood of Salvador, state of Bahia. It was April 1st! Day of "Sarau de Itapuã". A scheduled event that happens every Monday.
From this meeting happened this report that passes through the Casa da Música to hear the sound of Nil and takes you to Ed's atelier in the rural area of the municipality of Catu. A place where the force of present nature is transmuted into works of art.

Foto by Kithi
Nil Lus playing in the Casa da Música accompanied by Fabricio Rios, Amadeus Alves, Chico Maia and Ronis.
Part of the show at Casa da Música
Part of the show at Casa da Música
Ed Ribeiro tells us that during the awards he received at the Artes-Ciências-Lettres of Paris, France in 2010, Nil Lus was invited to make a song in honor of the Orixás, African Deities, and him who cried with emotion.
Unique moment where the sound and the image celebrate the Orixás and the brotherhood is born of the casual meetings.
Nil sings "Olorum", for his friend Ed at Casa da Música. Look!
This song, composed by Nil, is a form of prayer to the Orixás. Nil asks the orixás for the health of the friendsEd Ribeiro and Arlindo Cruz!
Nil Lus came to Bahia to receive the Beribau de Ouro award, at the invitation of Amadeu Alves, sings at Casa da Música to honor D. Francisquinha, a woman who was at the head of the popular traditions of Itapuã until the last day of life on planet Earth . The Sarau of the first day had this goal!
Nil invites his brother friend to accompany him on the show. The place where I met the story of courage and faith of the two artists!
Nil, a mineiro from Belo Horizonte, went to the United States of America for the first time as one of the players of the Brazilian handball team, which received, as part of the payment, a visa that authorizes the stay for four years in the country.
After returning to Brazil decided to return to the United States and pursue a career as a musician.
In the hands the instrument, in the mind the certainty of the quality of its music, in the pocket no money and in the heart the unshakeable faith that overcomes borders and wins the world!
As the mystery is part of the lives of those who have faith, before the trip a friend's father asked Nil to help him with his son. He was very sick and desperation was already taking care of the family. Nil indicated and accompanied a spiritual treatment that led to the healing of the friend and the peace of all.
This made Nil a new child for this family. Before traveling, the father of the healed friend offered a gift: you will be received abroad by a person who has me in consideration.
And so it was. When he arrived at New York airport there was a person waiting for him!
Nil was taken to a show house to try to play and sing, but had no vacancy for the show! Because of his strong and strong physical bearing, he was invited to work as a doorman for a festival that would happen just in those days.
He did his job with mastery, which earned him a little more dollars and a place as a musician at the first opportunity.
Since then, it's been 32 years.
Today Nil is a citizen of the world, an award-winning musician having sung at the world's biggest music festivals, tells us about Casa da Música, check out the video below that he talks about!
Ed Ribeiro, the Orixás
artist
Born in the same house where the Ateliê Museum operates in Catu, Ed Ribeiro already had a plumber services company and launched the Point of Acarajé, a success in Salvador and in two other Brazilian states.
Tired of the life of merchant Ed begins to paint and to expose in the same space where he sold the acarajé. While he was painting, he asked the Orixás for his art to generate economic sustenance.
Ed Ribeiro began painting at the age of 52.
For about a year Ed painted with brushes and spatulas and the canvases were figurative, depicting spaces of the city, fruits, flowers ...

Acarajé is a traditional food from Bahia. The mass of acarajé is made with a kind of beans called "feijão fradinho".
Foto by Kithi

Foto by Kithi
Work of the time that Ed painted with brushes and spatulas
The first screens were not sold, but Ed continued to be excited and in faith!

Foto by Kithi
Work of the time that Ed painted with brushes and spatulas
THE NEW TECHNOLOGY ARRIVES AMAZINGLY
His love for his friend Bizeco, resident in Itapuã, was the way to the new technique that revolutionized his life and guaranteed him notoriety as a plastic artist.
Bizeco was an old black, of those who look like a father, whose wisdom of years of accumulated life enchants and approaches us! He was a resident of Itapuã, he died.
Bizeco was very close to the artist. He was that kind of friend of all hours and every day.
On a day of 2005 Ed, as he always did, will visit Bizeco and on the way decide that he wanted to give a gift to his friend. And the gift was to make a painting on the wall of his house.
It was Sunday, day of closed shops, a huge difficulty to find the inks! But Ed persisted. He really wanted to do the painting and it had to be in that moment. He ended up getting what he
needed to make the wish: several gallons of colored paints!
Bizeco thanks the intensity of the present and says that for him to paint the wall it was necessary to prepare it properly to receive a work, because it was very dirty.
The wall of Bizeco's house was never painted by Ed!
He returns to his home, then in cinnamon, with all the paints.
With the impulse caused by the desire to paint, Ed begins to spill the paint forming an animal on a set of banana leaves painted with a brush and spatula resulting in the work below.

Foto: arquivo Ed Ribeiro
Of possession of this canvas took to the Point of the Acarajé and exposed in the middle of the existing ones.
The work caught the attention of many people and Ed begins to paint with the technique he created called "ink shedding", without brushes and without a spatula.
With this new way of expressing his creativity he won an exhibition at the Hotel da Bahia where almost all the exposed works were sold.
Ed Ribeirou found his way: he became the painter of the Orixás, I would say more of Ed Ribeiro, he is the painter of the continuous flow of the Orixás: the movement!
Foto archive Ed Ribeiro
Ed Ribeiro, the artist of movement
Everything in Ed Ribeiro takes us to the movement, even the work "The dinosaur", placed at the entrance of the Ateliê Museum, made from the root of a jaqueira and embedded in a hill of earth, suggests a state of impulsion for the next step of the animal!
With due historical considerations and processes of creation, the work "The dinosaur", in contemporaneity, preserves the same suggestion of movement thought and developed in the Hellenistic period.

Foto by Kithi
Dinosaur, a rarity made with jackfruit root, is 10 meters long.
With the Greeks sculpture, even static, they present gestures that synthesize the idea of movement.
As Catarina Salvado says, "The mastery over the movement in the sculpture came to liberate it by adding a new spatial sense"
In the Master's thesis entitled "Movement and Mechanism in Sculpture", Catarina Salvado brings the evolutionary process of thinking and the construction of knowledge around the "movement" in physics to the understanding of the movement in art. With tasty text to read, the author, talks about the subject in a clear and objective way. Click the next button and access the PDF to explore the theme. Worth seeing! it's in Portuguese
The sculptures and objects of the antiquarian in the Ateliê Ed Ribeiro Museum are mostly held by nylon threads, allowing the force of nature, the wind, symbolized by the artist as Iansã, Goddess of the winds, lightning and storm in the worldview of Brazilian Afro-descendants, provoke the movement without human intervention.
In a simple way, the artist reaches the goal indicated by Catarina Salvado, who finds in the movement an apparatus "relevant to the connection between work and spectator, playing a more active role and with the possibility of being able to respond and to relate to the stimuli of the work "
His technique, his painting, his sculptures, the objects of the antiquary, and his own living space suggest an understanding of the mutability of life. Self of those who bring in the soul the consciousness of the Orixás, representatives of the elements of nature, its vitality and its constant flow following the course of existence.
The nature, memory and traditions of its people permeates the whole creation of the artist by impressing strength and uniqueness of works.


Foto by Kithi
The work moves with the wind. O Bufálo symbolizes Iansã, whose legend explains the reason the horns are on the altar of Orixá.
Detail of the work seen from behind where the rattle and props also takes us to the past everyday, the memory of the time in which the ox was used in the daily deal.
Meet the legend of Iansã who inspired Ed Ribeiro to do this work at the bottom of the page
THE ATELIE MUSEUM ED RIBEIRO
The Ateliê Museum has five distinct and inseparable movements where everything can be seen: the dwelling, the antiquarian, the studio, the works and nature.
Careful attention to everything that makes up the environment makes space a special place to visit!
Rich with creative possibilities, it is a stimulus to creation
From the gateway to the wardrobe, almost everything is in motion, like life itself.

Laura, 5, talks to Ed Ribeiro about his wardrobe.
The villa is integrated into the museum. In the kitchen works made of brushes and spatula. At the entrance of the room the protection: Our Lady of Aparecida, Exu, Iansã ... Inside the bed, the first pictures of the innovative technique of spilling ink and the wardrobe in motion!
The special of this space is the place of bath. Completely integrated into nature are the shower, the bathtub and the swing! To know this place just going to visit!

Foto by Kithi
Detail of the work Ëncantado" located at the entrance of the room of ed Ribeiro
The antiquarian is the work of Ed Ribeiro with his brother, who began collecting the pieces. In this space you have a bit of everything that comes in handy. The goal is to create the memory of past times from objects.
It has radios, Lps, irons, cameras, scales, vases, chests, cutlery, benches, sewing machines, a myriad of objects, among them some parts that make up an old flour house that Ed intends to build in the future.



