Iyagbon's Mirror

Abstract

A mirror game of cultures, between art market and animist ritual, between possessing and being possessed.

Iyagbon’s Mirror is a multidisciplinary show (theatre, dance, music and installations) that questions the different regimes of meaning incorporated by ritual objects that have become art objects. Among these objects, which are now kept in the ethnographic museums of Europe, we find most of the African sculptural heritage, displaced by colonial exploitation.

Many of the artefacts, masks and tools that we can admire in museums were originally created for ritual use, then bought, found or stolen to be exhibited.

What if we try to reverse this pattern?

Onyrikon in collaboration with the Nigerian sculptor Samson Ogiamien, is proposing an immersive show that will take place in several ethnographic museums and performing arts festivals. In each of these places, Ogiamien's sculpture, Iyagbon, will first be exhibited as an art object, then stolen to become a ritual object. The public will be invited to participate in the migration of the sculpture to an outdoor site where an artistic ritual will take place, a poetic attempt to generate an ephemeral community around an artistic/magical object.

Artistic direction : Samson Ogiamien (sculpture and performance) www.ogiamien.at, Beatriz Navarro (Choreography), Juri Cainero (direction) www.onyrikon.org

Biographies

Samson Ogiamien belongs both to the descendants of the first dynasty of the Benin Kingdom and to the Igun bronze casters guild, is an artist that came from a ritualistic tradition and has move towards contemporary art.

Juri Cainero is a Swiss artist questioning the place of ritual in today globalized art and society.

Beatriz Navarro is a Mexican artist exploring the body as a living memory where culture and biology are woven.

Together we are working on a trans-disciplinary creation that want to be a poetic intervention about the current debate on provenance and restitution. An artistic exploration of the multiple levels of meaning of ritual objects that have become museum pieces. A contemporary and transcultural artistic ritual. In Benin collaborating with the royal bronze casters, Samson created a sculpture named Iyagbon, we are proposing ethnographic museums to expose it and then to invite their audience to a performance during which we are going to steal the sculpture. The audience will follow the thieves to the street where they will perform an artistic ritual. It’s a reverse mirror game: a museum piece will be transformed into a ritual object.