Magic on earth

« Magic on earth», is a long-term work about traditional masks societies and voodoo in West Africa. Many African societies see masks as mediators between the world of the livings and the supernatural world of the deities and ancestors.
Masks are supposed to come from another world. In Burkina -Faso they represent protective spirits that can take animal forms or can appear as strange beings. These spirits watch over a family, clan or community, and, if the rules are followed correctly, they provide fertility, health, and prosperity.

In Benin, the Egungun association is a secret voodoo society which honors spirits of the ancestors and perpetuate their memories.The ancestral spirits may be invited to come on the earth physically, the Egunguns are the receptacles of these spririts. These charatcers wear luxuous complex outfits
expressing the wealth and status of a family as well as the power of the ancestors.

I use triptychs,diptychs, mixed pictures, in order to deconstruct the space and to build it again in a new more poetic or odd way. The motionless masks and the characters, stand in this space, opening up a crossing way from a world to another one. That’s a way to create a fourth dimension, to reveal the supernatural essence of the characters, to suggest the existence of this parrallel world.

At the same time I try to gather an ethnographic material who show the richness of the artistic expression carried by these traditions.


Photographed in Benin, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea.