Harmonia Rosales Remixes the African Diasporic Pantheon

How do you start creating a world? It’s a question Los Angeles-based artist Harmonia Rosales had to ask herself while crafting  Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic (2025), a superbly fantastical book. The collection gathers 41 intertwined tales of African gods and goddesses, nature and power, and the evolution of human beings alongside the primordial development of the Earth. In Rosales’ telling, this epic tale combines the mythical with historical, putting known past events in the context of the Orishas’ world. Peppered throughout are Rosales’s 30 full-page, full-color illustrations that further enliven the legends and figures. 

An ambitious vessel for Afro pantheology and diasporic spirituality, Chronicles of Ori is a potent extension of Rosales’s signature style portraying regal, mythological tales. Her paintings repurpose Baroque and Renaissance techniques to exalt brown-skinned bodies as their focus, with rich colors leaping from her canvases. The foundation of Rosales’s artistry lies in the heart of these tales, which instilled in her a mission to draw connections across the African diaspora through her work, as in “Unbound” (2025), the recently unveiled public sculpture at King’s Chapel in Boston, and Master Narrative, her 2023 exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Harmonia Rosales, “Unbound” (2025) at King’s Chapel in Boston (image courtesy MASS Design Group)

The book takes its name from the Yoruba concept of “ori,” a destiny determined by the gods, and evolved from stories told to young Rosales by her father and grandmother, the tethers to her Afro-Cuban roots. As a first-generation American on her father’s side and second-generation on her mother’s, Rosales takes up the mantle to tell stories of ancestral sacrifice in order to seed future prosperity; Chronicles of Ori is the latest project in her oeuvre to tend to the task. 

She spoke with Hyperallergic over the phone to discuss the process of writing and illustrating Chronicles of Ori, compiling stories for the project, and why it’s important to her. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Hyperallergic: How long was the process of creating Chronicles of Ori, from inception to release?

Harmonia Rosales: The idea started a few years back. I would say the thought process probably began about five years ago. But the entirety of it — the meaning behind it, all the stories and how I gathered them — pretty much started at the beginning of my art career. So that’s 10 years ago.

H: In your introduction, you mention that it was shaped by stories from your father and paternal grandmother. Did a specific story resonate with you as a child?

HR: The ones that lingered for me were the stories about Oya and Shango. Oya is the goddess of wind, and Shango is thunder and lightning. Together, they create thunderstorms. When we moved to Champaign from Chicago, we lived in this big, old McMansion that was always in disrepair. There was a hatch at the top of the roof, and we would climb up there when we saw a storm coming and sit there watching the clouds gather. In those moments, I felt like Oya and Shango were alive right above us, fighting it out in the sky. It made these deities tangible to me. It connected me to nature, to something bigger. It shaped my understanding of what it means to be a part of this living mythology, or this living tradition.

Harmonia Rosales, “Eve and the Orishas” (2023), oil and 24K gold leaf on wood panel (image courtesy Harmonia Rosales)

H: So much of the African diaspora is centered in oral tradition. The West doesn’t really honor that which is not written down. If it’s untraceable, it’s inauthentic. What do you think of your role or your impact, however large or small, on the recognition of African pasts?

HR: I see it as historical repair. You’re right, Western narratives often dismiss oral traditions because they’re “unreliable.” They think it’s like the telephone game, yet this is how we preserved our truth for centuries. In Yoruba cosmology, history lives in art itself, in the body and the drum. Something Western culture loves to say isn’t that important. In reality, it’s very powerful. So it’s beneficial to erase that power. I’m trying to reclaim what was stripped from the master narrative. I’m trying to show that, through our ancestors, these are recorded histories. That’s why I did a lot of research and tied it within these tales, which wasn’t that hard, actually. They were like little puzzle pieces I was putting together. 

H: Tell me more about that sourcing process and why you decided to make this a linear story, as opposed to a collection of standalone tales, as they were told to you. 

HR: I looked at all the other writers who have written versions of these tales, and wondered why theirs hadn’t been mainstreamed. I read Ovid’s Metamorphoses and then the Yoruba mythologies. Here’s the difference: There’s no linear connection in the Yoruba mythologies. So, just like Ovid compiled all the Greek tales and wove them into the history of Caesar, I created a linear overarching narrative with meaning and gave it a historical anchor. 

I had to reimagine some of the mythologies to connect them because the Orishas have distinct personalities, sometimes meld over time, and have to be aligned with what we know about Earth’s history. 

Harmonia Rosales, “Olokun” (2023), oil, 24k gold leaf, and iron oxide on wood panel (image courtesy Harmonia Rosales)

H: And your sourcing process? How did you combine the found Orishas with historical fact?

HR: I was looking at Indigenous mythology from around the globe. I decided to write how the Greeks wrote, as if Yorubaland were the whole world. For instance, there is a tale of Oduduwa, the founder of the Ifa kingdom [in present-day Nigeria]. No matter what version you read, it says he came from the east. I followed that to East Africa, but then some tales said he came from even further east. So I looked for criticized or Black figures that are sometimes referenced for just a sentence or paragraph in Western religious texts — and looked to the kingdom of Mesopotamia. There is a character named Nimrod who is an evil figure in the Bible because he believes in multiple gods. So I renamed him Lamuradu and made him Oduduwa’s father. Lamuradu was executed, so Oduduwa was an exiled prince who migrated to Africa, to Yorubaland with its mix of cultures and migratory people. Because why not? Let’s use artistic license to show connections between people, but also presence before it was documented. 

H: The word “reverence” comes up for me a lot when I look at your work, but what does it mean to you? 

HR: It means remembering. It’s about taking a moment to remember all the things that have gotten you to this point. That is your ancestors, that is your history, that is the land, that is the trees, everything. When I think about painting, even though I’m painting by myself, I’m really not. I’m drawing from everything that has raised me, that I have experienced, that I have seen: my family, legacy, history, roots. It’s all-encompassing, and reverence is appreciating and acknowledging that. It’s reflection, remembrance, appreciation. 

Harmonia Rosales with her work “Ori” in the permanent American collection at the Brooklyn Museum in 2024 (photo Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)

H: How did your role as an artist shift while putting together and presenting a book as opposed to an exhibition?   

HR: I think a lot about that quote from Toni Morrison: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” That’s how I think about everything. There isn’t a painting? Okay, I’m going to paint it because that’s what I want my kids to see. The writing process was so interesting to me. I had to describe everything, but then I also had to incorporate the layers of meaning, symbolism, and metaphors. How do I write in layers, like I paint in layers? It’s two different things, but all I had to do was write what I had been painting all along. When I realized that, it was easier. 

When it comes to presenting this work, I see these stories as something I can give to people who may not be able to afford my work. I can give them access to my world. Then they can also be a part of it by telling their kids their stories and become a part of this bigger mission of connecting the diaspora.

H: You dedicated this book to your grandmother. Are there any stories or characters in the book that remind you of her the most? 

HR: Nothing specific. I’m doing this for her. She passed away just after my first exhibition in 2017, so she wasn’t able to experience all this. I’m basically passing down her legacy, what she gave me as inheritance. My grandmother, even though she was seen outwardly as this housewife who didn’t speak much English and only had a fifth-grade education, knew what was important. She held on to her traditional practices and the power they held. These were the most valuable things she had to pass down. So this is me honoring her. My whole mission is for her, for my children, for myself. It’s for others who feel the same way, who feel this displacement and feel like they’re not being seen or heard or respected. For all the immigrants. And I’m feeling fulfilled as I’m moving forward.