Restituer l’art africain, les fantômes de la colonisation

In November 2017, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, pledged to return works of art stolen from African countries during the colonial era. Among the 90,000 sub-Saharan works in French collections, one of them, claimed by Benin, crystallises all the stakes of these restitutions: the Gou God, which is now enthroned in the Pavillon des Cessions of the Louvre.
Restituer l’art africain, les fantômes de la colonisation traces the odyssey of this sculpture whose major influence on the history of art over the past 150 years remains unknown and which, today, stands as a symbol of a still problematic colonial past.