ART + LAW
ACT II: THE SALE
One might have thought that this gesture would
have been enough to calm the opposition and that
the sale of the 300 other objects could now proceed
in the same kind of excited atmosphere that public
auctions often engender. That, however, would be
forgetting that to the militant, strife is an end unto
itself, especially in a case such as this, in which the
protagonist is an obscure association that is pleased
to fi nd itself suddenly in the spotlight.
At 2 p.m., the doors to the sale room opened
and eight to ten militants with a hypocritical Tartuffe
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type leading the charge, immediately piled in.
Visibly shaken, the auctioneer had no choice but to
let this individual speak, and he seized the opportunity
to deliver, with fl y whisk in hand, a reproachful
and holier-than-thou speech punctuated with incantations
addressed to a fetish—which he curiously
referred to as a “totem”—and by what appeared to
be ritual chants. This was all fi lmed and immediately
appeared on social media. The rest of the sale,
which was successful despite these efforts, was interrupted
repeatedly by attempts to obstruct it until the
police fi nally put an end to it.
Nowadays every good comedy has a musical accompaniment
and the theatrics that unfolded in
Nantes on March 23 were no exception. It’s hard to
know why, except, of course, that it may have underscored
the tragicomic nature of the discourse, but
the militants concluded by launching into song. The
spectators present likely imagined that they were
hearing the voices of the ancestors and words pronounced
eons ago by these peoples whose art was
being sold off here, but the song these stern militants
were singing was the Kikongo language version of
the Christian religious hymn “Nzila Zulu” (The Path
to the militant,
strife is an end
unto itself
FIG. 4 (above): Antique
prestige recade in wood
and metal. Fon; Dahomey,
Republic of Benin.
Lot 23 of the Art Tribal sale at Salorges
Enchères of 23 March 2019.
FIG. 5 (top right): Antique
prestige sword in wood and
metal with blade decorated
with animal motifs. Fon;
Dahomey, Republic of Benin.
Lot 31 of the Art Tribal sale at Salorges
Enchères of 23 March 2019.
FIG. 6 (below): Antique
prestige recade in wood
and metal decorated with
imagery of a lion attacking
a man. Fon; Dahomey,
Republic of Benin.
Lot 25 of the Art Tribal sale at Salorges
Enchères of 23 March 2019.
to Heaven), in other words, a song the origins of
which lay in the very religion imposed by colonization—
the very religion that had so emphatically rejected
the fetishes that our “Tartuffe” was intending
to “awaken” with his pseudo-ritual couplets.
Angolan singer André Paim’s “funk” version of
“Nzila Zulu” may be found on YouTube (https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUItDxwqmE).
ACT III: THE AFTER-SALE
On Monday, March 25, 2019, the few objects
that had not found new owners during the main
auction were sold at an after-sale. The only thing
remaining to do was to get in contact, through the
Ministry of Culture, with the Benin embassy that
had solicited the withdrawal of the Dahomey objects
in order to acquire them, and this was done
the next day.
And what happened next? Well ... nothing. No
further word was had from the Benin embassy
or from the Ministry of Culture. When the price
“ “
/watch?v=-pUItDxwqmE)