Original Vodou Painting Healing Ceremony

The present work depicts a voodoo healing ceremony unfolding. By mixing nature-based religion originating in West Africa with Christian beliefs, the ceremony serves as a surrogate for modern Western medicine. Artist Wilson Bigaud captures it with oil on masonite. In a sense, this painting is a kind of painting journalism. We are not sure whether Bigaud did it from memory or was there during the event. In either way, he creates a very powerful image, unlike any before.

Lying on the floor is an obviously gravely ill or dying, unclothed man. His nude and semi-lifeless body graphically dominates the foreground. One eye is wide open in an arresting, trance-like gaze. Above him, he is being watched, even studied, by two empathetic family members.
A tray of lit ceremonial candles rests beside him to his immediate left, while a silhouetted spirit man, wielding a whiskey bottle and a machete, jumps out of a fire in the background.
The people looking after him are extremely poor Haitians. Only a small radio is visible in their impoverished house, which has no other signs of modern technology.
All other forms of modern medicine are absent. The standing man, perhaps his brother, holds up an oversized egg adorned with decoration. The egg represents the genesis of life and creation; it holds deep spiritual significance. As a matter of choice and necessity, they are using Vodou healing practices, including candles, botanical remedies, fire dancers, and the engagement of spirits. The onlookers' hearts and souls are shown pouring out with the expectation of a good recovery.
Bigaud is a naive painter, but his paintings, with their first-hand storytelling, are completely genuine and free of outside influences, which is what gives them their charm, beauty, and importance. Here, we see raw Haitian life from a Haitian perspective.


Signed lower right
Wilson Bigaud (Haitian, 1931-2010) Healing Ceremony, oil on masonite board. Framed. Size: 24'' x 25.5'', = (board); 25.5'' x 27'', (frame). Provenance: Galerie Macondo.

Bigaud in Select Museum Collections: MoMA, NY (1947, 1951 Accessions, Inter-American Fund); National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2023 Accession, Kay and Roderick Heller