Dahomey

“The Migrancy of African Art”

Subha Xavier (Emory University)

“This film is a way for me to reconcile art and activism”

—Mati Diop, Emory University (April 15^th, 2025)

An inventive crossing of generic boundaries, neither quite a documentary nor a feature film, Dahomey (2024) confirms Mati Diop’s commitment to reimagining migration as lived experience and spiritual quest. Here, though, she focuses on migrants that Europe very much wants to keep: its African art. The film opens with a nighttime shot of Eiffel Tower-shaped trinkets twinkling in the dark, displayed on the ground atop a cloth sheet, on one of the many bridges that crosses the Seine River in Paris. To anyone familiar with present-day Paris, this is a marker of migrant life in the French capital: souvenirs for sale, likely by an immigrant of African descent, to the millions of tourists who grace the city. Next, we see an overhead shot of a Seine River dinner cruise boat, abuzz with tourists, passing under what we might surmise is the very same bridge. Once the boat has passed, a close-up of the water at night, city lights dancing on the waves, reveals a signature of the director of Atlantiques (2009) and Atlantique (2019): shots of water shimmering in light, accompanied by an eerie musical score, this time by Dean Blunt and Wally Badarou. Like these other films, this is a film told from the migrant underworld with a demand for justice.

In an article entitled “Africa Post-Global: A Reaffirmation,” the late Teju Olaniyan asks why we are satisfied knowing so much of modern European history and so little of African modern history, when one was so dependent on the other. This is where the subject of Dahomey comes into play: 26 royal treasures returned from France to Benin, formerly home to the Kingdom of Dahomey (1600-1904). The treasures were stolen by the French colonial troops of Colonel Alfred-Amédée Dodds, who plundered the palace of King Béhanzin in Abomey after the Battle of Dogba in 1892. The subsequent invasion resulted in the mass scale looting of thousands of valuable cultural and spiritual art objects, even as Abomey was ablaze under the orders of Béhanzin. Among the works repatriated to the Marina Palace in Cotonou in 2021 were some of the most sacred objects of power and prestige in the Dahomey kingdom: three royal boccios (spiritual force repository statues in Fon) belonging to King Ghézo (1787-1858), King Glèlè (1814-89) and King Béhanzin (1804-1906); the royal thrones of Kings Ghézo and Glèlè and two other royal seats; six individual and family sinukas (portable alters for the dead in Fon); four makpo (ceremonial scepters known as “staffs of fury” in Fon); and four carved doors dismantled from the palace. Two articles of clothing, a loom, a spindle, a bag, and a pair of calabash bowls make up the rest of the returned loot. Each article tells the history of one of the most influential West African kingdoms of the modern era.

Dahomey likens the seizure of African art to the enslavement of its peoples, which occurred at the very same time and to the benefit and aggrandizement of French and European empires. Yet unlike African migrants today, who are increasingly deported to their home countries despite their requests for asylum (as seen most recently in Mayotte), France continues to refuse requests by African countries to retrieve their stolen art. The return of the 26 treasures may thus be an exception rather than a rule in years to come. Diop’s filmmaking style lyrically amplifies this political irony. The documenting of the transfer is interspersed by black screens over which three voices merged into one recite the poetic verse of Haitian writer Mackenzy Orcel, translated into Fon and spoken from the point of view of art object number 26. Aboard the aircraft, over the hum of the engine, the art moans: “Leave the kingdom of night, to enter another. My head is still assailed with the rattle of chains. I have in my mouth an aftertaste of the ocean.” The art tells of a journey through time, where past oppression and present affliction meet in the futurity of another forced crossing. How might the “forced” restitution of African art help us rethink the forced deportation of African people today?

Diop’s cinematography suggests the tactile experience of seizure and emancipation. Close-up shots capture the artwork in movement and transit as they are meticulously packed into wooden boxes at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, transferred onto wheel carts, pulled by cargo tow tractors, hauled up a belt loader, and finally shipped by air to the Republic of Benin. They are sealed and transported away in the dark to an electronic score of ghostly sopranos; curators, handlers, and preparators oversee the return with cold surgical precision. By contrast, the treasures are welcomed in Benin by day, to people dancing, singing in Fon, applauding on the streets of Cotonou; traditional festivities and ceremonies greet the truck that is accompanied by a royal cortege on horseback. Low angle shots show the boxes carefully unloaded onto a red carpet, protectively handled by a large group of young movers who carry, lift and ease them indoors. At night, the Fon voices return, taking in their new surroundings as the camera takes us outdoors to tight shots of coleus leaves and oil palms swaying in the wind. The art, once released from its containers, experiences the “tropical caress” of its homeland.

At one point, a shot of the Marina Palace at night shows an almost 100-foot bronze Mino statue overlooking the building from behind. The Mino warriors of Dahomey (N’Nonmiton in Fon means “Our Mothers,” but they are commonly known as “Amazons” because that is what British explorer Richard Burton called them) were the only documented female army in modern history. They fought the French colonial forces and won many battles, before succumbing to the final invasion. Here, Diop and her director of photography Joséphine Drouin-Viallard initiate a spiritual meeting of the past and the present, because the statue was erected at the same time as the restitution of the royal treasures, among which are the boccio and thrones of the Dahomey kings in whose service the Mino once fought. The statues encounter each other again as repositories of history, power, and freedom.

Dahomey, like Mati Diop’s earlier work, is a film about forced migrations of peoples and their cultural heritage across oceans, as well as their otherworldly return. The underbelly of European modernity is revealed, as migrant African art speaks out in defiance. About halfway through the film, assistant director Gildas Addanou initiates a discussion among students at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi who, in eloquent French and sometimes Fon, debate the future of art in Benin and the African continent. Their youthful voices speak out in condemnation of the political performativity of art restitution; they demand justice and cultural rehabilitation, not return alone; they ask when the thousands of other royal treasures will be restored. Their words echo those of the art that protests in Fon: “26 doesn’t exist. Within us resonates infinity. […] There are thousands of us in this night.” Diop’s activist camera stands witness to the sounds and faces of a living archive of African restitution, royalty, and return. What she documents is the soulful journey of thousands of Afro-diasporic migrants across air, land and sea, in defense of their right to be free.