Root Chart #1, Renée Stout

Renée Stout exposes the deep connections between nature, spirituality, and folk medicine in Africa and its diaspora. She often references Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo (or hoodoo), and rootwork, a form of spiritualism that evolved from West African beliefs in the American South among enslaved people. In Root Chart #1, she depicts a series of plants believed to have mystical properties. The inscription at the bottom references one of Stout’s artistic alter-egos: Fatima Mayfield, a fictional Voodoo healer, herbalist, and fortune teller. The uses of these plants extend beyond medicinal applications, offering the power to protect and purify, shape a person’s luck, and influence matters of the heart—a possibility more fully explored in Seduction Coat.

Stout’s art often engages with traditional African, Caribbean, and African American beliefs about the medicinal and spiritual qualities of plants as seen through Haitian and Creole hoodoo, vodue (or voodoo), and other religious practices of the African diaspora. Stout’s primary artistic alter egos, Fatima Mayfield and Madam Ching, are both root-workers and herbalists with extensive knowledge of the magical properties of these roots, such as those detailed in this informative chart.

The concept of plants as healing agents informs a great deal of Stout’s artwork, as creation, healing, and plants are all united in her mind. Stout collects herbs for use in daily healthcare as a means to ward off evil, or negative energy. These beliefs also become part of her artistic practice as she often hides these plants in her works. Regardless of the viewer’s awareness of their presence, for Stout the medicinal values of these herbs imbue her art and artistic processes with some of the properties associated with these specific plant species.