In Africanah:
Sinzogan’s mixed-media and fine pen-and-ink works conjure the world of the spirits and their gods (vodun and orisha), the gods to whom millions of enslaved Africans would have prayed, departing through the ‘Gates of No Return’ in the slave ports of the West African coast. Yet Sinzogan does not portray these ports as sites of loss, but as triumphant arrival points for the homeward return of lost spirits about to be reborn. The galleons in his works are not the dark evil-smelling slave ships of the Europeans, but are in the process of being transformed by their African cargoes into colourful and triumphant symbols of resistance. Above the sepia-tinted decks of the phantom caravelles racing under full canvas towards the African coast, the sails come to life with the richly coloured motifs of the Egungun masquerades, which celebrate the ancestor’s return to their native villages. These powerful symbolic images work as a salve to ease the lingering sore of that long compact of blood sealed between the African and European powers. Thus does art, by holding up a mirror reflecting our shared past, render more clearly visible the path of our common future. (text October Gallery London)
Desenchainement 2, 2013.
