Contemporary Vodun arts of Ouidah, Benin

Vodun has spanned vast expanses of time and space--ever changing, ever changeable, yet informed by the resilience and stability of a strong faith. The artworks commissioned for the Ouidah festival have transcended that occasion to become a testament to the transformative effects of centuries of transatlantic interactions. Contemporary Vodun art is more than a simple echoing of changing historical, political, and religious climates; it is a consciousness which mediates and articulates experiences of the past, and which anticipates a future.

I was reminded of the ongoing international impact of Ouidah 92 while visiting the house of the Haitian band Boukman Eksperyans in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in July 1997. In a hallway, I noticed a wall collage of some of the band's posters for their international concerts. One from Ouidah 92 jumped out at me (Fig. 29). On the poster, the now famous Gelede mask is superimposed upon a world globe, its wings stretching across west Africa into the Atlantic Ocean.

[FIGURE 29 OMITTED]

This article was accepted for publication in March 2001.

The data presented here is based on predissertation research conducted in Benin in 1993, supported by the Social Science Research Council; and on dissertation research conducted in Benin from 1994-1996, supported by Fulbright IIE and various University of Iowa fellowships, with special support from PASALA (Project for the Advanced Study of Art and Life in Africa). Some follow-up work was carried out from December 1998 to March 1999, supported by a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship. Thanks to Prita Meier, Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts, and the African Arts reviewers for thoughtful comments. Special thanks to Eileen Moyer, Alissa Rossman, and Jay Sosa for ongoing support and encouragement.

(1.) This idea of an ever-changing aesthetic system was pursued in an ACASA-sponsored panel I chaired for the 89th Annual College Art Association: "The `Unfinished Aesthetic' in African and African Diaspora Arts," held in Chicago, March 2, 2001.

(2.) The festival was supposed to have been held at the end of 1992 but was postponed. Because all of the publicity and other materials had already been printed with "Ouidah 92," the name stuck.

(3.) In 1991 Soglo became president of the first freely elected democratic government in more than twenty years. He succeeded Mathieu Kerekou, who, during his presidency (1974-1991) of what was then called the People's Republic of Benin, had unsuccessfully attempted to restructure the government, economy, and society along Marxist-Leninist lines. Kerekou defeated Soglo in the 1996 election.

(4.) See Herskovits (1938) for the important role of the Abomey kings in precolonial artistic patronage.

(5.) I was denied permission to photograph this mask. The image is known to have been mass-produced on a calendar (ten to twenty years ago), but I have not yet located a copy.

(6.) The closest English translation of the Fon word aze is "witchcraft." An azeton, "the one with aze," or a "witch," is a person who can change into a bird (usually an owl) during his or her sleep and cause great harm to others. To say that "someone has a bird" is to call that person an azeton. Thus the human figure with angel's wings on the Gelede mask is regarded as a person in the process of transforming from a bird into a human, or vice-versa.