Frost Art Museum explores ‘Things That Cannot Be Seen Any Other Way’

Cuban artist Manuel Mendive Hoyo creates paintings, sculptures and objects that capture the rhythm of the orishas, ancestral spirits of Africa. For today’s world, Mendive continues to uses, transforms and adapts the visual language of Africa as a means of conveying its rich mythology to a new audience, informed less about its ritual than about its aesthetics.

His exhibition, Things That Cannot Be Seen Any Other Way: The Art of Manuel Mendive – on view at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum through Jan. 26 – is a project originally conceived by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in association with the California African American Museum, the Frost Art Museum, and Fundación Amistad.

This newly-produced show covers Mendive’s career full of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and video performances from the early 1960s to the present, and emphasizes the artist’s mature work. Curated by Cuban-born art historian Dr. Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, the exhibit benefits from his extensive knowledge of African and Caribbean artistic, visual, and religious practices.

To kick-off the exhibition, Mendive put on a performance art piece for an audience at Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Click on the video below to see his work.