Judy Rodrigues

Letter to Boa Sr

A small painting that evolved sponaeously in 2010 after hearing an account of the death of Boa Sr, a the last surviving person fluent in speaking the ancient tribal language of Aka Bo in the Andaman Islands.I was researching the roots of my own family in Portugal through aspects of language and loss and an account of the Portuguese anthroplogist Leite Vasconcelos who visited London in the early C20 to document Portuguese archives in other European collections . In London he was looking at when the Portuguese marrano and Sephardic community had lost speaking their mother tongue, this fascinated me as I cannot speak Portuguese or Ladino the language of these ancestors. I was listening to Yasmin Levy singing the jewish hymn - 'Yigdal' - which was sung at the beginning and the closing of the day and somehow it resonated -- as I understand neither language this was fitting enough for me to transcribe the hebrew which of course I did not understand either and yet also somehow felt an affinity for.
The opportunity of taking the small work to the Azores in terms of its diasporic references suggested itself to me immediately.

Mixed Media on Canvas
32cm x 23cm

In the Garden of Epictetus

A small bricollaged drawing from Mertola, Alentejo, Portugal ... a photocopied print by Joseph Cornell overlaid with a drawing of the Menora nicoli drawn from/at the Paleochristian Basilica in Mertola and a referenced [title quotation] from Fernando Pessoa's 'The Education of the Stoic' ...' In the Garden of Epictetus '.

Photo copied print {untitled} by Joseph Cornell + mixed media drawing
18cm x 22cm

Periplus

2 hollowed out books:

' The Cross and the Pear Tree ' by Victor Perera [1996]

' Innocents Abroad ' by Mark Twain [1869]

2 books . gesso. silver leaf. insect pins
24cm x 18cm

Periplus [detail]

Detail: of hollowed book piece 'Innocents Abroad' by Mark Twain showing the 'Azorean Grayling' - ' Hipparchia azorina'.. a butterfly of the nymphalidae family, endemic to the Azores, inhabiting temperate forests and grasslands of the Azorean Islands, it fits inside 'The Cross and the Pear Tree' by Victor Perera .......... sensitive to habitat loss.

15cm x 11cm

At Paim Bookhouse, Santa Luiza, Pico Island ,Azores 2017

Photograph by Manuel Azevedo