Long before his artwork were well-known, around 1983, Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal (Havana, 1955), has been insistently working on Afrocuban religion topics, Santeria or Regla Ocha or as he rather to name them, themes related to Orishas cult and adoration.

Today, twenty years after, he keeps on tackling the same topic becuase, as he confess, he didn't frazzle what he's got in mind, every new day is a new idea.
His relation with Afrocuban cults is his main reason, the practice have leaded him to discover an spiritual world with no limits, giving not only sene to his life, but also becoming the essential source of his artistic creation.

The solo exhibition of this artist presented at the Small Format Gallery from National Council of Plastic Arts in Havana City, was scarcely a glance of his work, after various years with no solo exhibitions in Cuba. Santiago approached here, taking as starting point the Afrocuban cult, new edges such as life-death-reencarnation topic and on drawings he also featured not well-known divinities, even for practicer priests, divinities under Orunmila service, God from Ifá cult.

For Santiago, the relation image-word is not so easy such as the supremacy or subordination from one to another. The fact of being a painter could imply an implicit vocation towards the visual fact, however, on 1988, during his La Oración exhibition, the artist was explaining with words what his images were evoking and the huge struggle between them. He said then ''the image is subordinated to word, symbol but also, symbol as sign image carries the mystics of the word and it is a link to reinforce such concept, because tha image or sign, come after a concious process of speech or pray, probably the concept is stronger than image, prevailing the word over its significance''.

Words, oration and prays are very important in his religion, they allow the transmission of thoughts and energy. Pray is a vehicle to transmit, a means of communication with the deity. Word is used to invoke, to make enchantments, it contributes to elevate preach, to talk to mystic forces that are closer. For Santiago, word eases the access to divinities. Word is the image suggested by the idea. The poet`s tool is not only word but also the images he can suggest through it.

''When I conceive an idea, I see it complete, perceiving the idea and form together, is like a film or book, in which there`s a main theme, various secondary topics and many characters, but knowing all this confusion doesn`t spoil the main idea, on the contrary, it reinforces it , helping to define the concept''.

Drawings conforming the above mentioned exhibition and many others from the artist not only show its undoubted technical domain but also the existence of a soul which hardly needs an accurate stroke to appear.

''I believe in the resources economy, drawing is a kind of calligraphic exercise. I learned with Picasso and Cezane the less resources you use, you feel more. I'm not afraid of emptiness, I like spaces, don't like to crowd a picture, is more important the horizon that the horizon line, a spot, a precise line I called that to use a minimal resource, spontaneously, that's how it appears. There`re some things we can't see and they`re not less important for this''.

Santiago`s artwork, well-known not only in Cuba but also in Holland, Italy, Spain, evokes a mystical world in which it isn't necessary be a religious to to feel its vibrations and emotions jumping on the strokes, drawings coming to fload our personal hearts, running away from the places in which Santiago created them, scaping in image form to be transformed in word or the other way around, giving icons to those words many of us would wanted to paint.

Taken from La Jiribilla. 2003.

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