The exhibition "Africa, a thousand lives of objects", at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, is first and foremost the story of a beautiful encounter. That of a couple, Ewa and Yves Develon who, for 50 years, built up a collection of some 300 objects of African art and of the director of the Musée des Confluences, Hélène Lafont-Couturier. Collectors were looking for a place and a team that could bring their collection to life after their disappearance. This meeting was nourished by regular appointments. After an initial donation of 40 objects and an exhibition in 2019 "Désir d'art", they decided to bequeath their entire collection, which will enter the museum fund upon their death.
Most of the exhibits come from Nigeria and Cameroon, others come from, among others, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin and Togo.
If the exhibition was designed for a public with little knowledge of African art, with many explanatory videos to understand these cultures, the expert can also be charmed by the diversity of pieces and styles, and their originality. Along the way, the visitor will discover the origins of these objects and their uses. Statuettes, masks, bracelets, altars…, they are above all objects that respond to an order and have a social or religious meaning. Kings, village chiefs, leaders of initiatory societies, or even households, all turn to craftsmen to make the pieces that correspond to their needs.
The exhibition, by giving context to what are today considered to be works of art, goes back to the sources of creation on the African continent. It allows you to discover the gestures of the sculptors, their techniques such as that of a pair of bracelets representing elephants, in metal alloy, made "with lost wax". The sculptor first makes a wax model which he covers with clay. When fired, the wax melts, leaving an earthen mold into which the liquid metal will be poured. The object will be unique, the model being broken to release the sculpture.
The diversity of materials used is also highlighted. Of course, there is wood, considered a living material, it is used to make masks and statues, ivory appreciated for its resistance, its whiteness and its rarity, metal, but also simpler materials such as raffia or terracotta, whose very long and precise work can transform an everyday object into a prestigious object like a dida loincloth with leopard motifs, from the Ivory Coast.
To shape these pieces, the sculptors are inspired by animals, or rather the character they represent, strength for the elephant, courage and fighting spirit for the ram. Human and animal forms are frequently associated, evoking the supernatural, the complexity of the world. By creating hybrid beings, like this mangam mask, an antelope with an elongated snout, a human nose and horns strangely aligned with the snout, the sculptor gives free rein to his imagination.
In the Grassland region of Cameroon, the sculptors isolated themselves completely in the forest, long enough to produce a large piece. This seclusion was to promote communion with the ancestors and breathed into the sculpture all the cosmic charges necessary for its function.
Once the object is completed, it is given to its sponsor. The visitor then discovers the uses of these objects, individual and family cults, community cults, initiation. An adornment can also, upon the death of its owner, be transformed into an altar object. Thus over the course of their journey, the original use of these objects is often forgotten.
The history of these objects also continues outside their community. Purchased in Africa, by merchants and art lovers, they change status, thus crossing eras and geographies, through a journey, represented in the exhibition by transport crates. They are chosen for their aesthetic quality or their ethnographic scope. Become objects of art, collectibles, they are exchanged on the international art market, find their place in museums.
“The collection is not an accumulation of objects, it is a journey. […] Their spirit [speaking of the sculptures] still breathes in whoever wants to take the trouble to look, to study and to let themselves be carried away to an elsewhere of emotions and deepening of oneself”, replied Yves Develon in a interview published in the catalog of the collection.
* Exhibition "Africa, a thousand lives of objects" - Musée des Confluences, 86 quai Perrache, 69002 Lyon. Until February 18, 2024.
