Garden of Humanity

The sculpture pavilion presents two large-scale sculptures acquired by the Ten North Group in a lushly designed garden:

1. Yemaya

Ten North Group is pleased to unveil the newest work by contemporary artist Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy “Diago” (Cuba), a six-foot bronze sculpture titled Yemaya, after the goddess of the living ocean, the mother of all. Yemaya will be exhibited in a setting conceived by Curator James Brazil as a dialogue with the spirits that accompanied African peoples during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Middle Passage.

2. The Cedar Men

Sculptor and performer Jems Robert Koko Bi (Côte d’Ivoire), whose work mixes avant-gardist influences and the artist’s African history, has created five six-foot-tall works which are sculpted from a single cedar trunk weighing half a ton each. The Cedar Men tells the history of humanity through the earth's first inhabitants in Africa as the works initiate a conversation with the forces of nature, the ancestors, the native land, and the exile.

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