Formerly exhibited at the Quai Branly museum, these royal treasures have found their place in Cotonou, the Beninese capital.
A “taboo” has been broken. Patrice Talon, the president of Benin, presented this weekend with “pride” a historic and highly symbolic exhibition in Cotonou, where the 26 royal treasures returned in November by France will be presented for the first time on Sunday to the people of Benin, 129 years old following their flight.
These treasures had been looted in 1892 by French colonial troops in the palace of Abomey, capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in the center-south of present-day Benin, then composed of several kingdoms.
This exhibition is “a pride and a faith in what we were, in what we are, and in what we will be”, declared Patrice Talon. “Here, Benin revealed”.
The president specified that the country was going to ask France for other works still held by the former colonial power. The 26 items returned by the Elysée, following more than two years of negotiations between Paris and Cotonou, are the first major return of objects from public collections to an African country.
Traveling to Cotonou, the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot was able to visit the 2000 m2 space dedicated to the exhibition “Art of Benin yesterday and today, from restitution to revelation”, which opens this Sunday to the public, until May 22.
“It’s an absolutely magnificent exhibition and it perhaps renders even better the majesty, the creativity, the incredible historical, political and aesthetic heritage that these 26 works represent”, declared the French minister following her visit.
Political consensus
The exhibition also has a strong political echo, with the presence at the opening of former Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, who had not returned to Benin since his conviction by the courts to a sentence of ineligibility. “When there is an event that is beyond you, like this, it is above any political controversy. The love of the art of the fatherland, it is above all the quarrels”, has said the former prime minister.
This consensus is voluntarily sought by the government, which sees in it a way of making amends:
These works “have left a kingdom, but they are returning to a republic, and we want it to be the ferment of national unity”, Benin’s Minister of Culture, Jean-Michel Abimbola, had declared the day before.
Since his election in 2016, President Talon has set the country on the path to development to the detriment, according to his critics, of democracy. In this old model of democracy in Africa, most opposition figures are either in exile or condemned by the courts.
contemporary artists
From the half-man half-lion statue of King Glèlè to the half-man half-bird statue of King Ghézo, passing through the gates of the royal palace, the guests, very moved, crowded to admire the treasures.
“It’s very moving to find myself facing the throne of King Ghézo, I had not imagined him so big, so powerful”, confides Laeila Adjovi, Franco-Beninese artist whose several works are also presented during this exhibition.
Because alongside the treasures, 34 contemporary Beninese artists have been selected to present more than a hundred works. A desire of the government to link “history to the present”, and show that the “Beninese artistic genius has endured”, despite the dispossession of part of its heritage.
France, but also other European countries, still have a large number of works looted during colonization in Africa. The “restitution work continues”, assured Ms. Bachelot. “We are working on a framework law to facilitate these restitutions”, she added, specifying that the legislative work might take at least two years.