From slave trade to fuel tanks: On Benin’s colonial displacements

Abstract

In this article, I propose the possibility of alternative ways of narrating African histories through art objects as allusive openings inciting a change in Western ways of perceiving the African continent. Based on my experience of visiting the Benin pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024, I will explore the role of artistic ways of alluding to Benin’s past and present by way of seemingly cancelling its colonial past through its topographical displacement to the historic Kingdom of Dahomey, a West African kingdom which existed between 1600 and 1904 within the territory of the present-day Republic of Benin. The artists’ conflation of Benin with Dahomey will be read as a historical and topographical displacement, which the artworks displayed in the Benin pavilion used as a background for artistic projections of the future, envisioning the necessity of empowering women by way of alluding to the Yoruba tradition of Gèlèdè as a dialogical space of rematriation. In this article, I treat the artistic allusive history as a necessary supplement to official histories, which, along with traditional museal practices, constitute what Arjun Appadurai calls “testaments of fixity” – a category which may be held responsible for demoting Africa to the provinces of anthropological and development studies. The return of cultural artefacts looted by colonisers to Benin, alluded to in the exhibition, will be read in the light of Graham Harman’s notion of “allure” as an illusion of the possibility of a return to the once lost state of completeness. This impossibility will be brought in through the exhibition’s allusion to the ecological threat brought to Benin by traffickers of petrol from Nigeria. The article also brings in a brief analysis of two recent films which I find significant for broadening its perspective: Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King (2022) and Mati Diop’s Dahomey (2024).