Vodun art

tradition precolonial origins - present Benin Togo

Vodun art is the ritual art of the West African Vodun religion of Benin, Togo, Nigeria and Ghana, extended loosely to related cults of West and Central Africa and of the African diaspora in Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States. Its best-known forms are bocio - carved wooden figures of "empowered bodies", built up with attachments and activated through ritual, deliberately shaped as a "counter aesthetic" of power rather than beauty - and asen, iron objects that give spirits of the dead a temporary resting place. Vodun is assimilative: chromolithographs of Indian deities, for instance, have been read as Vodun gods and used as models for temple murals. Long dismissed by outsiders as mere "fetishes", these objects are now collected as art; the Ouidah '92 festival in Benin in 1993 opened a revival of Vodun art as national heritage.

Musée Vodou collection Arbogast Strasbourg mai 2014. Statuette Wutuji bocio. Population Ewé, Togo, seconde moitié du 20e siècle. Bois, herbe
Musée Vodou collection Arbogast Strasbourg mai 2014. Statuette Wutuji bocio. Population Ewé, Togo, seconde moitié du 20e siècle. Bois, herbeCC BY-SA 3.0 (credit: Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Assemblage of carved wood with accumulated attachments - nails, cloth, horns, herbs
  • Deliberate "counter aesthetic": the look of power, not prettiness
  • Dense, layered temple murals and polychrome shrines
  • Absorbed foreign imagery - Indian chromolithographs, trade goods - re-read as Vodun deities
  • Objects made to work - activate, attract, protect - rather than to display

Key figures

  • Cyprien Tokoudagba (1939-2012) — Beninese sculptor and painter from Abomey whose deity paintings and temple murals brought Vodun imagery into contemporary art

Example works

  • Wutuji bocio (empowered figure) — Unrecorded Ewé sculptor (second half of the 20th century)

Sources

← Back to the catalog