How Miami’s Spiritual Art Confronts the Taboos Around the ‘Occult’

Shaped by the diverse religions of its Afro-Caribbean diaspora, Miami sits at the crossroads of faith. Yet the acceptance of these non-Western religions have long been clouded by prejudice and exoticisation. Traditions such as Santería, Palo Monte and Vodou have been pushed to the margins dismissed as “occult” or “black magic.”

In Miami, you'll find are hundreds of small, independent shops selling a variety of curiosities - plants, materials, figurines, animals. Called botánicas, they are a core source of artistic inspiration for Miami-based painter José Bedia Valdés.

“A botánica is a store that sells religious-type objects, used in Afro-Cuban religions,” he says. Born in Cuba, Bedia moved to Miami in the 1993, where he encountered the botánicas for the first time. “When I got here, I realised there was a whole sector of stores that supplied liturgical objects, plants, and all kinds of items to believers.”

“There are people who either ignore botánicas or they are fearful of them, as they think it has to do with witchcraft”

Bedia was raised with the Palo Monte faith in Cuba, and, like many diaspora in Miami who follow similar Afro-Caribbean beliefs, the botánicas supply him with spiritual materials. He explains there are diverse Afro-Cuban religions active in Cuba and among the country’s diaspora, which originate from the faiths of west and central Africa. “There’s Santería [Regla de Ocha/Lucumí], from the Yoruba people of Nigeria. There’s Palo Monte, which comes from the Bantu area, the region of Cabinda in Angola and from the Congo, from the Mayombe forest. Then there’s the Arará cult, from people who originally came from Benin”.

Bedia’s work is deeply intertwined with his beliefs - featuring dark, towering figures made from and around rough materials and raw textures. Within them, he incorporates glass beads from sacred Orisha necklaces that channel divine spirits, or metal tools that symbolise Ogun, the Orisha of iron, labor, machinery, and war. He also works with burlap canvases, a humble fabric worn by practitioners which signals groundedness and humility. Each element finds its way into his work, on a canvas, as an object, or in a carefully chosen detail, selected with deliberate care.

“I don’t do anything gratuitous. Everything has a real liturgical significance,” he stresses. “I don’t invent or add things to be eccentric. Different sticks have different meanings, some are for fighting, others for breaking spells, others are to unite people.”

Much like the Orisha - sacrosanct deities not only present in Palo Monte beliefs but also in Haitian Vodou and Santería - Bedia’s work manifests in different forms, across mediums. His spiritual vision translates into looming sculptures, or large-scale canvases so forcefully presented his figures are unable to be contained, at times spilling from frames onto the bare walls. His work is across Miami, in museums, streets, plazas, on walkways, embedded into buildings. There is an omnipotence about his work in the city that fittingly reflects the faith he practices.

Despite Bedia’s prolific reputation in and outside of Miami - and the ubiquity of botánicas across the city - prejudices towards those that practice Afro-diasporic tradition remain. “There are people who either ignore botánicas or they are fearful of them, as they think it has to do with witchcraft,” he says.

Maritza Lacayo, Associate Curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), which houses a number of Bedia’s works, explains that Miami’s non-Western faiths can still be “a taboo conversation”.

She explains that Miami’s social fabric, densely populated with Latin Americans who lean towards Catholicism, has engendered a societal rejection of faiths such as Palo Monte and Lucumí.  “There’s also a lack of understanding. Whenever there are pockets of information missing, people fill them with their own fear,” she says.

Dispelling misconstructions around such stigmatised faith is a core consideration behind the exhibition Elliot & Erick Jiménez: El Monte, currently showing at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, curated by Lacayo. The exhibition combines photography with sculptural works by the Cuban-American twins, who were raised in the Lucumí (Santería) faith. It explores the spiritual significance of twins and the orisha Ibeji—the divine twins of the Yoruba religion.

The exhibition is anchored on the seminal 1954 text El Monte by Cuban writer Lydia Cabrera, an ethnographer who documented the different veins, practices and beliefs of Afro-Cuban spirituality. “We wanted to make sure that it was done right, and that it was done with academic backing, with El Monte as the kind of spine behind the exhibition,” says Lacayo.

"Whenever there are pockets of information missing, people fill them with their own fear"

The shadowy figures of the Jimenez exhibition draws from the work of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón, who similarly unpicked the faiths documented in El Monte by exploring the all-male Abakuá society in Cuba using a print-making technique called collography.

While Ayón’s work explores the figure of the female princess, Sikán, within Abakuá mythology, the Jimenez brothers delve into Ibeji origins. In the narrative they explore, the Ibeji’s mother feared persecution because of superstitions that twins only came from animals. In terror, she abandons the Ibeji and kills herself. Their aunt, Yemayá – the Orisha of the ocean – then adopts them, protecting them as sacred beings.

“Every single artwork in the show has a label that explains to you the Orisha that's being represented, what it means within the story of the overall kind of Lucumí mythology,” explains Lacayo.

Such religions have persisted and resisted despite colonial attempts to vilify and eradicate them, yet they have survived as oral traditions, passed down through generations. This lack of written material has also contributed to the enigma that shrouds it – El Monte remains one of the most important texts on Cuba’s spectrum of faiths, yet was only translated into English as recently as 2003.

“There is a lot of negative criticism around Lucumí, simply because people don't understand it,” says Maritza Lacayo, Assistant Curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). “It has this reputation of being a ‘scary’ religion – something negative when it isn't.”

In Miami, there are traces of spirituality visible and alive across the city. Lacayo remembers her school was next to a sacred place of worship, where floral and animal sacrifices - chickens - were made in honour of the Orisha. Such practices were sneered upon by outsiders, rather than understood as a deeply sacred and ancient form of faith. “It’s layered and complicated, but it comes down to a lack of understanding and access to information,” says Lacayo.

“It opens the doors for more people to understand it. That’s the power of art.”

She explains Bedia’s work has been “pivotal” in demystifying these faiths, serving as an important precursor that has enabled the Jiménez twins’ exhibition. “Can an artist have conversations around a taboo or not-so-accepted subject? Yes, José Bedia has done that successfully,” she says. “It opens the doors for more people to understand it. That’s the power of art, to eliminate that border.”

Elliot & Erick Jiménez: El Monte is showing at PAMM until March 22, 2026