"...mi elogio a los hombres, mujeres y niños que llegaron desde diferentes tierras de ÁFRICA a nuestra Isla, en la terrible condición de esclavos, trayendo consigo su cultura, la adoración a sus dioses, el pensamiento, la filosofía, el cuerpo poético de la geomancia de sus oráculos, la fuerza metafísica primordial que reside en sus ritos ceremoniales, el modo de concebir el mundo y la vida presentes en su cosmología, sus costumbres, danzas y música, que junto a su descendencia criolla, “negra, blanca mestiza, todos mezclados”, son sólo una parte de nuestra breve pero profunda nacionalidad."

YO NUNCA MORIRÉ

Santiago Rodriguez Olazabal's "Y.N.M" (Yo Nunca Morire) interrogates the Afro-Cuban spiritual dialectic of mortality and eternal renewal, rendering a supine male figure in ritual repose—adorned with ethereal halos encircling head and feet as markers of sanctity or ancestral ascension—while a vulture-like avian specter, its beak poised at a crimson droplet on the lips, embodies the scavenger's role in Palo Monte and Santería cosmologies as a mediator between corporeal decay and metaphysical transcendence, its elongated shadow clawing toward the body like a ritual staff bridging realms of the living and the orishas. Through mixed media's layered textures of ink, charcoal, and subtle pigmentation on canvas, the composition disrupts linear narratives of death, invoking the bird not merely as harbinger of endings but as alchemical agent that devours to regenerate, symbolizing the indomitable essence of the soul amid colonial legacies and cultural hybridity. This conceptual expanse probes the tension between corporeal vulnerability and immortal defiance, positing the vulture's predatory intimacy as a sacrament of continuity, where the staff-like extension of shadow evokes ritual implements that channel nkisi forces, challenging viewers to reconceive extinction as perpetual metamorphosis in the face of historical erasure.