Asen, ancestors, and vodun

Edna G. Bay, Edna Bay

"Illustrated with field photographs, Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun tells the remarkable history of the rise and decline of the sculptural tradition of ancestral asen in southern Benin. Asen, canonical metal art objects that are created to honor the spirits of ancestors and vodun deities, are meeting points in which visible and spiritual worlds interact. Richly decorated with a variety of human, animal, and plant motifs that illustrate proverbs and other highly inventive oral arts, ancestral asen reflect the relationship between the living and the dead through visual and verbal references to the deceased." "Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the former Kingdom of Dahomey, Edna G. Bay traces more than 150 years of transformations in the manufacture and symbolic meanings of asen against the backdrop of a slave-raiding monarchy, domination by French colonialism, and postcolonial political and...

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