The Oxalá Temple consists of 30 pieces, including 20 sculptures and 10 reliefs,, all completely white, and has been part of the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia collection since 1998. There is a suggested analogy between the ensemble and a celebration for Oxalá, in which the sculptures are divine entities dressed in white, in praise of the Funfun orishas.
In an interview with researcher Claudia Fazzolari that took place in his final years, Rubem Valentim mentions that he first exhibited the pieces that came to form Oxalá Temple at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro in 1977. But the installation as we know it was only presented to the public at the 14th São Paulo Biennial, in the same year, in a room especially dedicated to Valentim.
In 2022, the centenary of the artist’s birth, the pieces were restored and began to circulate again with the aim of disseminating Valentim’s legacy. The installation was presented at the Museu Nacional de Brasília and the 35th São Paulo Biennial in 2023, and at Louvre-Lens in France in 2025. With the return of this work to MAM Rio in the context of the exhibition Rubem Valentim: The Order of the Sensitive, a cycle that started almost fifty years ago is completed.
In his work, Valentim invented an artistic language of his own, imbued with ‘a truly Brazilian culture’, populated by Afro-Brazilian codes. The artist defined himself as “a desperate man in search of Divinity, the Being of Beings”. May he have found what he was seeking!
Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia