The catalogue Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis was made in conjunction with the exhibition at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in 2017. The exhibition took part in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a multisited program showcasing Latin American and Latino Art in southern California. The catalogue and exhibition “are intended as an exploration of how selected artistic practices express and shape notions of Salvador in general and Afro-Brazilian identity and experience in particular” (p. 43), as Patrick Polk states in his introduction. While Brazil is said to have the largest population of African descent outside of Africa, the city of Salvador, Bahia, is most closely associated with this status. As the first extensive treatment of Bahia's visual culture, Axé Bahia establishes Salvador as central to black artistic creation and culture.
The catalogue includes eleven chapters and twelve interleafs. The chapters provide the social and historical context...