Prince Gede Nibo 22''X28" Painting

$600.00

22”X28” Mixed Media painting on Bristol Paper done by Haitian Artist Richard Vedly Paul.
This Piece Features Gede Nibo, prince of the cemetary.
He is also the general of Bawon’s government law enforcement. Life and death are the same. However, everything below is above; below is a reflection of above. As you see him as a minister among the dead, in Agwe’s domain he is a sailor. Paradoxical, isn’t it? Some sons of Baron Samedi would like to replace him, and in collusion with that powerful and wicked Gede Loray, they are plotting against him. So, to harmonize events, he is obliged to render service to Agwe. In the sea, the sanitary agents are the fishes; he supervises this operation.

Gede Nibo is the prince of the cemetery, the phallic lord of the dead. Gede Nibo straddles the borders between death and life, sex and death, and between genders as well.

The good regulator, agent of harmony and physical equilibrium.

Nibo may wear mixed feminine and masculine attire. A witty trickster with an eye for a joke, he is simultaneously macho and feminine. Gede Nibo is variously described as pansexual, transgender, and homoerotic.

Nibo is the special patron of those who die young. He is the guardian of the graves of those who died prematurely, particularly those whose final resting place is unknown. He is a psychopomp, an intermediary between the living and the dead. He gives voice to the dead spirits that have not been reclaimed from the Lower World. His chwals (possessed devotees) can give voice to the dead whose bodies have not been found.

Gede’s spirit is especially invoked in Haiti to bluntly denounce social biases, while dancing to the sensual and royal Banda rhythm.