The main source for Sentinela No 2 [Sentinel n. 2] comes from a photograph taken in 1900 by William Bullard. The Bullard Portraits show how Black working-class marginalized families used the camera to represent themselves, defying degrading stereotypes that were pervasive at the time.
This photo in particular has a matriarchal appeal: the woman rises behind two men as if she were the trunk of a hypothetical tree. The figures in the original photograph by Bullard are Rose, Edward and Abraham Perkins, sitting in their backyard in Worcester, Massachusetts. Born as slaves in South Carolina, the three siblings and other family members settled in an old plantation that Edward managed to buy a few years after being freed from slavery. The Perkins family-tree is part of the largest Afro-American community in Worcester (like fruits so abundant that they fall from the mother tree and spread across the ground).
Another reference that ties into this narrative is the series of tapestries The Hunt of the Unicorn, an example of the art of European tapestry as it transitioned from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Renaissance. The Hunt of the Unicorn is an allegory of the Passion of Christ. Just as Jesus surrenders to martyrdom, the unicorn surrenders to captivity through mystical intervention, enduring the pain and scorn of its executioners. The tapestry shows the unicorn in a serene pose, trapped inside a low enclosure and wearing a collar. It rests under a pomegranate tree, a fruit commonly associated with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The tapestry is also covered by several floral motifs, commonly known as “millefleurs” (“thousand flowers”) and, therefore, there are also associations with fertility.
The overlapping of these references permeates the composition of Antonio Obá’s painting. There is also a connection to the cultivation of a ritualistic space in the form of the male figure who removes his shoes, enters the area and reverently sits inside a circle (understood both by the circumference of the fence and by the demarcation on the floor). “I especially like the idea of a fence with an open gate. It does not trap the figure; on the contrary, it appears to be a protective environment in which one can enter and leave when necessary,” Obá says.
The man shows a kind of serene resignation towards the female figure. She places her hands on him in a parental and welcoming way, while the look on her well-lit, magnetic face is almost supernatural. What we see in the painting is a familiar, well-trodden, ancestral place of refuge and comfort. It would appear that the man has sat in this seat before and the ancestral familiarity of the scene is amplified by the plants from the Cerrado region (a tropical savanna biome in Brazil), where the artist lives.