Tobacco Demon by Alison Saar is a depiction of the smoking, belligerent, party spirit known in the Haitian Voodoo religion as Baron Samedi.

This Loa (spirit in the Voodoo religion), is a chaotic spirit who loves smoking, drinking, and getting up in peoples’ business. He is a bit bipolar—flipping between acting as a happy spirit who wants to stay for the infamous “just one more drink,” to a morbid and demanding spirit. Legend has it that those possessed by Baron Samedi are known to spew profanities, spit, and attempt to stab people. If you’re looking for him, you don’t have to go far; my bet he is lurking around your neighborhood dive bar. 

Alison Saar’s Tobacco Demon is based on this voodoo spirit. Baron Samedi is known to be dressed to the nines in a top hat, black tuxedo, dark glasses (not depicted here), and cotton plugged in his nostrils. Saar has taken the legendary spirit and put him in the role of a cotton picker, symbolizing the destruction of soil by plantation farming and the horrors of slavery in America. Tobacco Demon can be found at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia where the description of the work reads that Saar’s depiction of the demon dressed in a tobacco leaf suit furthers the connection between the infamous spirit with the history of slavery, to modern-day drug lords.

Baron Samedi is like all Loas where he is neither purely good nor evil, toeing the line between acceptability and destruction. He floats between the living and the dead; as the master of the dead, he decides who is taken or spared from an eternal sleep. A pot-stirrer, he is always mucking up energy between the spirits as if he cannot remain still. As still as he appears in Saar’s Tobacco Demon, Baron Samedi’s mischievous vibe cannot be contained.