Axe Bahia examines the unique cultural role played by Salvador, the coastal capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. An internationally renowned center of Afro-Brazilian culture, Salvador has been a vibrant and important hub of African-inspired artistic practices in Latin America since the 1940s. This volume represents the most comprehensive investigation in the United States of Bahian arts to date and features essays by eighteen international scholars. While adding to popular understandings of core expressions of African heritage, such as the religion Candomble, the essays explore in depth the complexities of race and cultural affiliation in Brazil and the provocative ways in which artists have experienced and responded creatively to prevailing realities of Afro-Brazilian identity in Bahia. Lavishly illustrated, the book features works by artists ranging from modernists, among them Mario Cravo Neto, Rubem Valentim, and Pierre Verger, to contemporary artists Rommulo Vieira Conceicao, Caetano Dias, Helen Salomao, Ayrson Heraclito, and others-including a stunning array of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and installation art. The exhibition was part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.

The margins of the Americas borders that are at once physical and societal engender sacred figures who walk the fine line between sinfulness and sanctity. In worship and artistic representation alike, these entities reflect and impact the experiences of those who regularly struggle with harsh and frequently dangerous economic, political, legal, geographic, gender, and racial realities. In this volume, Patrick A. Polk and his fellow authors examine a series of crucial, and often controversial, divine beings from Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, and the United States. They also find fascinating parallels between the lives and acts of these holy ones and those who have been formally sanctioned by the Catholic Church, revealing the peculiar interrelationship of sin to sanctity. Featured are numerous illustrations of the works of artists who interpret official and unofficial saints, folk heroes turned supernatural intercessors. The broad range of objects considered, from pop culture to fine art, attests to a widespread international infatuation with these complex and often counter-cultural spirits.