260202 - Large African Fon Fetisch Bocio Statue from Benin - Nigeria.

Nigeria: Large Old Tribal used Fetisch Fon Statue from Benin.

Height: 77 cm high.

A pole-like Fon/Voodoo sculpture – Bocio – covered in a raffia dress, collected in the border region between Togo and Benin.

The Fon people of the border region between Togo and Benin, often associated with the historical kingdom of Dahomey, produced sculptures primarily for religious and ritual practices related to Vodun (Voodoo). These works are typically small to medium-sized wooden or metal figures, often intended as intermediaries for spiritual communication, protective talismans, or ritual focal points within shrines and sacred spaces.

Common motifs include anthropomorphic figures, sometimes with stylized or exaggerated facial features and proportions, which can emphasize spiritual power or represent specific deities (vodun). Some figures are movable or have movable parts, suggesting their use in ceremonies or divination practices, while others are carved in a more static, abstract manner, intended for long-term placement in domestic or communal shrines. Animal motifs, especially those associated with strength, cunning, or fertility, are also common and reflect the Fon concept of spirits and their manifestations in the natural and social world.

Materialally, Fon sculptures range from carved and painted wood to bronze or copper figures made using the wax casting technique, particularly in regions influenced by the artistic traditions of nearby Benin. Iconographically, these works often demonstrate a close connection between the human and spiritual worlds, with symbolic gestures, scars, and ritual implements integrated into the figures to convey identity, function, or ritual purposes.

Literature on Fon art emphasizes the performative and ritual context, noting that objects are rarely purely aesthetic but function as active participants in religious life. Key sources include Perani's study of Vodun art in Dahomey, Hersak and Beier's survey of ritual objects from West Africa, and recent ethnographic documentation of Fon shrines and Vodun practices in Togo and southern Benin. These sculptures also illustrate the permeability of cultural boundaries in the border region, where Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba influences are often interwoven in both form and ritual meaning.

A selection of publications and museum collections documenting Fon and Vodun sculpture in the Togo-Benin border region includes several important references. Suzanne Preston Blier's African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995) offers a comprehensive study of Vodun artworks, analyzing their aesthetic, psychological, religious, and social functions. The exhibition catalog Vodun: African Voodoo. The Anne and Jacques Kerchache Collection (Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2011) brings together nearly one hundred bocio, or fetish figures, from Benin and Togo, accompanied by essays by specialists such as Suzanne Preston Blier, Gabin Djimassé, Marc Augé, and Patrick Vilaire. Asen: Mémoires de fer forgé – Art vodun du Danhomè (Musée Barbier-Müller, Geneva, 2018–2019) documents metal altars, or asen, used for ancestor worship among the Fon, produced between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, and examines their historical significance, craftsmanship, and ritual use. Ethnographic sources include Auguste Le Hérissé on the history of Dahomey and Paul Mercier's 1952 monograph on asen in the Abomey Museum. Major museum collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which holds Fon asen from Ouidah, Benin, examples of metal altars used for ancestor worship. The Musée Barbier-Müller in Geneva has a substantial collection of asen, many dating from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Château Vodou in Strasbourg houses over 1,200 Vodun objects from West Africa, including items from Togo and Benin, and constitutes an important source for Vodun material culture.

These sources cover a variety of object types, including wooden bocio figures, metal altars, and assemblages made of bone, shell, fabric, and pigment. They reflect the diversity of Vodun material culture in the Gbe region and address both ritual and courtly contexts, such as shrine use, ancestor worship, protective fetishes, divination, and royal asen from the former kingdom of Dahomey.