Sanctuary Awaits is informed by the African Kongo tradition of bottle trees, which are garlanded with bottles, vessels, and other objects to protect a household. Black people in the Caribbean took up this tradition as early as the 1790s; it continues today in the southern United States, where many still believe that bottle trees ward off evil. Saar made this sculpture as one of a three-part piece exhibited in conjunction with the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Betye Saar
Sanctuary Awaits, 1996
Wood, glass bottles, metal wire, palm fronds, compass, sheet tin, screws, and nails
Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. © Betye Saar.
photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
Rachel Federman: This is Betye Saar speaking in 2002 about the African tradition of the spirit bottle.
Betye Saar: It's like most or many metaphysical things. There's like the trickster, it's positive and negative. The glass attracts the negative image and it's captured in there. Also, it attracts the spirit that's positive to go and visit that house. And that custom came over to the United States, and still in parts of the south. They have trees where bottles are out there to either Robert Farris Thomas wrote about the flash of the spirit. That's what it is, the sun or the light reflecting on the glass for the spirit to attract a benevolent spirit to repel or capture a negative spirit.
Audio: www.netropolitan.org ©2002