African states are increasing their pressure on European museums for the restitution of works of art

This is a subject that agitates African opinions. In many countries, colonized by European countries in the past, the demand from citizens, museums and governments is becoming more pressing for the restitution of thousands of works of art looted during colonization.

The French university Benedict Savoy and the Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr published a landmark report at the end of 2018 on the restitution of African cultural heritage. Since then, the subject has been in the public space and is no longer a matter for specialists.

“Museums are obliged to do a job of transparency and reflection on the so-called ethnographic collections are unprecedented; these museums have entered in an age of unrest”highlighted Felwine Sarr. In 2021, Paris returned to Benin 26 works from the royal treasures of Abomey, looted in 1892 by French troops. They were kept in the Parisian museum of Quai Branly.

France returned a saber to Senegal in 2019 and a crown to Madagascar
in 2020. Recently, the exhibition of royal treasures in Cotonou attracted nearly 200,000 visitors in 40 days, according to the authorities. “Benin wants to ‘republicanize’ these objects, it’s a wonderful adventure!. “These objects will allow the community to reinvent itself around this heritage”rejoices Dorcy Rugamba, a Rwandan director who presented a play on this subject at the Biennial of African Contemporary Art which is held until June 21, 2022 in Dakar.

At the Dakar Biennale, Dorcy Rugamba’s piece left its mark. In his piece, the spectator is invited to look from the blind spots of the official narrative of colonial history which opposed “civilized” and “primitive” worlds. Part of the work, he moves throughout the performance and follows an African mask “looted” by Europeans inside and outside large rooms riddled with openings that recreate the sets of four eras. .

Shocked, upset or laughing in the face of the nonsense of colonial propaganda, the public strolls through the places of residence of the mask in Europe after its uprooting from Africa: in a “scientist” of the end of the 19th century, who wants to prove an alleged superiority Europeans on Africans by measuring skulls, then on a Belgian general who did indeed exist who kept in his house the skulls of three African dignitaries brought back from his expeditions.

“I was overwhelmed by this performance”said the French academic Bénédicte Savoy during a debate after a performance. “She seemed to me to translate in an hour things that you normally read on hundreds of pages”.

“If we don’t reclaim what belongs to us, we can’t really move forward”

Dialika Haile Sané, Senegalese artist

During the Biennale’s scientific symposium, historians and philosophers debated ways to reinvest signification of returning objects and reconnecting them to present-day Africa. “An object is not necessarily intended to end up in an African museum”said Felwine Sarr: “he can go back to a community if he has a ritual function and it demands it, or be entrusted to a university for research“, he underlines.

Dialika Haile Sané, 30-year-old screenwriter, says he received “full force” the emotion of Supreme Leftovers, Rugamba’s play. According to her, there is “no reason” that these works “do not return to where they were born”. “If we don’t reclaim what belongs to us, we can’t really move forward”.