When the Portugese sailors first travelled to the coast of West Africa, they were met by a strange assortement

of ritualistic objects used in ooccult practices.

Sticks, bones, hair and stones.

Every seemingly mundane object was bestowed with other worldy properties and treated as deities.

The christian colonialists knew only but to refer to these tools with a term already established in their native tongue.

“Fetisso”

loosely meaning magical object, referring to the unnatural connection the tribes of West Africa had with these god-like entities.

The now more commonly used term “Fetish” is a decendent of this concept.

An intimate connection made with a thing.

Unexplainable and, more often than not, unrelatable.

To bond with something is to understand it on a level, only able to be reached by one who has seen what others have not.

Why can my longing not be of earth, be built by my own hands, be a rock, or a stick, or something completely different?

I connect, I interpret, I build, I disect, I create, I understand.

This is my “fetish”.

It is real, it can be seen, felt and understood.

Nothing out there can compare to what I have created from nature.