Tapp’s Art Center is thrilled to announce its next exhibition, BA AKHU: A New Vision featuring the spiritual mindscapes of Baba Seitu Amenwahsu. BA AKHU: A New Vision will be on view at the Tapp’s Art Center from May 3, 2018 through June 1, 2018, with an opening reception May 3 from 6pm to 9pm featuring live performances by Spiritual Gumbo African Drumming Group and a ritual installment performed by Baba Seitu.
Baba Seitu Amenwahsu is a BA AKHU Mystic (Baba), visual artist, spiritual/holistic healer and International Representative of BA AKHU MYSTICAL HEALING MOVEMENT, an Autonomous and Independent Spiritual Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. He is a versatile artist and educator who utilizes a range of spiritual healing methods, i.e., Reiki, sound, color, dowsing/radiesthesia, reflexology/color zone therapy, meditation, dream work, chakra work, and visual art.
Baba Seitu Amenwahsu’s artwork represents a visual interpretation of the spiritual path he calls, BA AKHU, (Soul of Light). By translating meditative, transformative and evolutionary modalities through visual aesthetics, he creates paintings and installations that promote spiritual healing.
The prophetic message intended in his work speaks to his belief in the liberation and restoration of African people to their rightful place as the parents of world civilization and that the Afrikan human being is a divinity by nature. His paintings reflect humanity’s journey to realize and awaken to a state of awareness and being-ness that is ongoing and evolutionary.
Baba Seitu's work is polyrhythmic, multi-colored, multi-patterned with multi-dimensional layers of human figures, African symbols and geometric shapes. The spiritual writing symbols in his work, called, ‘Blue Sperit Mumblins’, are the written expression of chants and mantras that where channeled through him by the spirit of God and his African Ancestors. As founder of the tradition of BA AKHU and its visual art aesthetic, ‘Ba Akhu Hemut’, he uses these visual icons along with a patterned aesthetic to create a multi-sensory experience. Stimulating vibrational and rhythmic sensations in the eye of the viewer the paintings translate as moving objects- visual symphonies. This process was developed through his need to feed his own spiritual and emotional awareness in music and share his own synesthetic experiences. Baba Seitu Amenwahsu sees, hears and feels color, rhythm, pattern, texture, lines, symbols and shapes in his subconscious mind and spirit.
It is the goal of his work to introduce ‘Ba Akhu; A New Vision’ to the world and help develop and bring the image of the subconscious into the conscious, unveiling the true nature of the divinity within and to share that vision with humanity. He creates these works to reflect the creative aspects and cosmic processes through which God created the universe. The spiritual figures and beings of light in his work portray the process, through which God created the universe, was, and is, creatively spontaneous, evolutionary, changeable, transformative, transfigured, transmuted, forever-planned, improvisational, rhythmically innovative and forever happening.
Human figures are almost always an important feature in his work. The figures in his art are overlaid with the rhythmic patterns, lines, shapes, and colors to express the energetic principles reflecting the life-giving spiritual force or Holy Spirit. The works resonate values that will ultimately help to move Afrikan people and humanity itself to the next logical stage of evolution which is to become Soul Beings of Light, BA AKHU!
His formal education includes Columbia area schools, Howard University; Master Of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Art Studio Painting, 1994 – 1996., Benedict College; Art Education Teacher Certification K-12, 1986 – 1987,
University Of South Carolina; Art Studio Painting, 1981 – 1984, and Spartanburg Methodist College; Liberal Arts, 1979-1981. He is a self-taught musician, singer, composer, Afrikan drummer, jazz vocalist, and flutist, and instrument maker.
He has 40+ years as a visual artist and participated in many visual art exhibitions mainly in the southeastern region of the United States, 30 years in public school education, K-5 in South Carolina public schools and has taught college level courses at Allen University and at Howard University.
He is a retiring art teacher from Richland School District One at the end of the 2018 school year.
Baba Seitu Amenwahsu is married to Sufia Giza Amenwahsu, an Ancestrally inspired artist, Reggae Dub-Poetess, Ethno-Botanical Historian, Documentarian and Film-Maker and they live and work in Columbia, South Carolina.
