When I first brought this old Kuba Lele blacksmith’s bellows into my Antwerp shop, it did not look like a sculpture waiting for a pedestal. It looked like something that had worked hard for a very long time. Dust still rested deep inside the chambers, the wood smelled faintly of smoke, and the black surface carried the soft sheen that… Read More »The Bellows That Fed the Fire
At the old border between Benin and Togo, the landscape changes little, but belief changes everything. The line we know today—704 kilometers of straight segments, river bends and coastal lagoons—was not drawn by the Fon priests who worked with spirits. It was the product of 19th-century European treaties between France and Germany, and a precise delimitation in 1912. The boundary… Read More »A Power Vodun Figure from the Dahomean Frontier
