Overlooking some of his work in a small storage room was a message on the wall that read, “Clay helps me find reason.” Twenty similar sculptures would follow, some commissioned for one of the museums under construction. Friends and acquaintances stopped by to sip a beer or a soda with him as he worked. Ahanhanzo Glèlè molded the clay sculpture of a farmer holding a hoe. On a recent afternoon in his workshop, a courtyard at the back of his home in a working-class district of Cotonou, Mr.
The government is also building three additional museums, one of them aimed at promoting the work of contemporary artists like Mr. When the exhibition finishes at the end of August, the objects will travel to Ouidah, once a slave port, where the authorities are building a new slavery museum. “We need to think of African visitors - those who don’t have access to French, and those coming from Togo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso,” said Didier Houénoudè, a professor of art history at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin’s main public university. Talon inaugurated a 98-foot-tall statue of an Amazon warrior that towers over the city). The Amazon fighters she depicted now tower above the contemporary artworks toward the exhibition’s end (and Mr. Talon has given over two gigantic walls of the exhibition space in the presidential palace where he works to a 32-year-old mural painter, Drusille Fagnibo. President Patrice Talon of Benin, a former businessman elected in 2016 - who critics say has turned a model of democracy into a repressive state that stifles political opposition and prosecutes journalists - has vowed to harness a sense of patriotism through artistic expression, as long as it depicts a glorious past or present.Īn art aficionado himself, according to his advisers, Mr. Upon completion next year, the wall is vying to be the world’s longest piece of street art at nearly a mile. Other artworks showed masks worn by Yoruba dancers and a fictional Beninese astronaut walking on the moon. On a recent evening, an artist was busy finishing a painting of voodoo priestesses, while teenagers nearby posed in front of a mural depicting the Amazons of Dahomey, the all-female army that famously fought for the eponymous kingdom. Along the port of Cotonou, Benin’s largest city, a government-funded wall of street art, which spreads across nearly half a mile, features flashy murals and graffiti celebrating Benin’s past and hopes for its future. Some of that history is now presented by contemporary artists not far from the presidential palace. “Even I, when I’m asked about my own ancestors, I often don’t know.” “Our children don’t know our history,” said the artist, describing the challenges that Benin now faces in educating its population about a past that was snatched away and kept in European museums for more than a century. In a room adjacent to the throne, his own terra-cotta sculptures open the contemporary part of the exhibition, the first time his work has been showcased in a Beninese institution. Ahanhanzo Glèlè, the king’s descendant, is also one of the contemporary artists on display. Abimbola said.Īt the presidential palace, Mr.
“We want the most emblematic artworks, those speaking to our soul,” Mr. Abimbola said that it made little sense for Benin to claim all the objects the Quai Branly museum holds from the country - more than 3,500 of them. “It’s not possible anymore to say, ‘At the time, we looted some war spoils too bad, now it’s ours,’” Benin’s culture minister, Jean-Michel Abimbola, said in an interview. Macron’s promise in 2017.īut the Beninese authorities have repeatedly said they want more. The return of the 26 artifacts last year was the largest of these acts between a former European colonial power and an African country since Mr. Yet from Germany to Nigeria Belgium to the Democratic Republic of Congo and France to Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, European and African countries are now working toward making restitutions more systematic. Almost all of Africa’s ancient artistic heritage remains in Europe and the United States, according to the French historian Bénédicte Savoy, co-author of a report on restitutions.
0 kommentar(er)
