As ‘Back to Benin: New Art, Ancient Legacy’ brings together ten contemporary Edo artists in the wake of the restitution of a Benin Bronze, curator Aude Christel Mgba reflects on repair, living heritage, and why the future of Benin’s cultural legacy belongs as much to contemporary artists as to the objects that inspired them.
28 july 2026
The return of a Benin Bronze is often framed as the conclusion of a long campaign for restitution. ‘Back to Benin: New Art, Ancient Legacy’ proposes something different. Beginning with the restitution of the Ama O Ghe Ehen mudfish plaque, the exhibition transforms a single historic artefact into a point of departure for new artistic production, bringing together ten contemporary artists of Edo heritage whose works explore memory, spirituality, ecology, and cultural continuity. Curator Aude Christel Mgba discusses moving beyond object-centred narratives, challenging colonial ideas of history, and why restitution must also restore the languages, relationships, and ways of knowing that have endured despite centuries of displacement.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: ‘Back to Benin’ grew out of the restitution of a Benin Bronze plaque. How did you create an exhibition that acknowledges this return without making restitution the only story told?
Aude Christel Mgba: For us, as a museum, the decision by Director Beatrice von Bormann to restitute the Ama O Ghe Ehen was the beginning of the whole trajectory and an important aspect of the project, but it did not define it by itself.
‘Back to Benin’ challenges the idea of restitution as being mainly the repatriation of material heritage. Instead, it understands restitution as the restoration of memory, language, gesture, and dignity. It is about the reparation of historical fractures and an attempt to heal their remaining wounds.
‘Back to Benin: New Art, Ancient Legacy’ was grounded in a curatorial approach around three principles: restitution as reparation, the right to a multiple and complex singularity and the contemporary as a space for continuity. In brief, what this exhibition ultimately proposes is a shift in perception in which the Ama O Ghe Ehen is no longer an isolated museum artefact but becomes a site of encounter, of repair, and of possibility for history, memory, and culture to continue.
The exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists of Edo heritage. What common ideas or questions emerged as they reflected on Benin’s history and relevance today?
The exhibition brought together nine contemporary artists and one bronze caster of Edo background: Leo Asemota, Minne Atairu, Victor Ehikhamenor, Favour Jonathan, Taiye Idahor, Osaru Obaseki, Enotie Ogbebor, Abraham Oghobase, Osaze Amadasun, and bronze caster Phil Omodamwen.
Their presence was not symbolic but structural. They were invited not to respond to an abstract past since they are descendants of the ecosystem from which the Ama and many other looted artworks emerged. At the end of the process, their works in the exhibition did not illustrate the Ama either, but rather extended its significance, both historically and in the present. It’s incredible to see how one single piece generated a beautiful and colourful kaleidoscope of stories which artists chose to tell from their personal and artistic perspectives.
Through drawings, paintings and illustrations, sculptures, textile art, photography, digital media, and video and sound installations, the artists’work in the exhibition reflect on themes including: the 1897 sacking and its aftermath; the symbolism of the mudfish and other Edo motifs and figures; the dual spiritual and physical nature of the Obas as mirrored in the mudfish’s ability to move between aquatic and terrestrial realms; Edo cosmogony and cosmologies; and other examples of tangible and intangible heritage from courtly rituals to the Great Walls of Benin; questions around ecology and the safeguarding of nature.
In Edo cosmology, the Ama, depicting a mudfish, embodies the oba, the divine king of Benin, as someone living between land and bodies of water—a testament to liminality. This idea of transition, of in-betweenness, of transformation, could also be spotted in each of the works that are part of the exhibition.
Ancestors, deities, and historical figures appear throughout the exhibition. How do the artists use these figures to connect the past with present-day realities?
Historically, Benin bronzes have served as a way to document history and capture time. The present day has always been an important aspect of art making for Edo people, and in fact, for many other groups in West Africa. Art has always served the now, and so for us it was important to bring together temporalities that do not necessarily belong to each other, but where the now is central, though history, the legacy, the traces of the past are still very much present. But not to be dismissed is also the use of materials and techniques that are ancestral for the making of contemporary works, which each of the artists has been doing in one way or another in their respective artistic practices, as well as the use of very contemporary technologies like the work by Minne Atairu, which uses AI in a very interesting way. In a 15-minute AI-generated documentary, she considers who the crew members or passengers of the spaceship might be, going back to an important part of Benin Kingdom history that many don’t know. During the Ogiso dynasty, which they used to call the Sky Kings or rulers of the Sky, two women occupied the throne and were known to be the only women in Benin history to have ever accessed that position. The decision of not allowing women to be kings apparently comes from the fact that their leadership was full of bloodshed.
The Oba, for instance, is an important personality for Edo people, and the Ama of the mudfish is so linked to him that it was just a given that he appears on many of the works, like the one by Enotie Ogbebor, who dives into Olokun, Benin’s most venerated deity, the god of water bodies whose Oba (King) reincarnates. The sculpture in recycled bronze and metal centres the Oba’s liminal body, part aquatic, part human and part godly. Its shape also recalls Oba Ohen (334 AD – c. 1370 AD), the eighth Benin King whose leg paralysis was represented by a mudfish-legged figure. Surrounding the sculpture are plaques on which is inscribed a selected series of Edo proverbs. Ogbebor invites the audience to receive the messages that ancient messengers carry for our contemporary collapsing ecosystems.
Favour Jonathan reinterprets the Ukhure, a sacred object made of a carved wooden staff used within Benin Culture to summon and commune with spirits. Jonathan’s Ukhure is a large-scale metal sculpture made too big to fit in human hands, which celebrates Ovia, a goddess of peace and providence in Edo culture. Unfolding vertically, the work reveals Ovia’s symbols and stories: the mystical pot which was gifted to her by her father, the river formed from her ceaseless tears. With her work, Jonathan opens new ways for audiences to connect with other sacred stories and the spiritual heritage of the Benin Kingdom.
The restituted mudfish plaque, Ama O Ghe Ehen, inspired all of the newly commissioned works. Why was this object the starting point, and how did the artists respond differently to it?
This aspect is connected to the second principle of the curatorial approach, which is the right to a multiple and complex singularity. This principle came as a critique of my constant feeling of being overwhelmed when I entered ethnographic museums created by the accumulation of artworks and artefacts. As a counterpoint, this exhibition follows an approach that centres on one object: in this case, the Ama O Ghe Ehen. One object, multiple trajectories. One point of departure, but multiple stories.
The Ama, like many artworks, is never singular in meaning. They are not only defined by their materiality or their aesthetic artistry. As the late artist, historian, theologian, and anthropologist Engelbert Mveng suggested, art in the Sub-Saharan part of the continent is mostly a form of epigraphy; they carry inscriptions, codes, signs, and symbols as encoded archival history. And here, it is not merely symbolism but philosophy, language, and history taking shape. This is where the Edo word sa-e-ya-ma takes its full sense as a practice of art-making and also of history writing.
Several works deal with absence, loss, and the impact of colonial looting. How does the exhibition balance these histories with renewal and cultural continuity?
I don’t think there was any aim in looking at balancing these histories. It was important to leave it open to the artists to connect and respond to the invitation as they felt, when it came specifically to the subjects they felt were urgent for them to bring forward, always in continuity with their own personal and artistic questioning. Though they touched on loss and absence, they do so by countering the only narrative that what was taken necessarily leads to the end of a culture. Instead, the exhibition shows that loss, absence, and continuity can coexist. Most, if not all, of the works were rooted in living traditions, memory, spirituality, and cultural knowledge; the artists demonstrate that Edo culture has continued to evolve and renew itself despite historical violence.
Conversations about the Benin Bronzes often focus on the objects themselves. How does ‘Back to Benin’ shift attention to contemporary Nigerian artists and their role in shaping Benin’s cultural future?
I believe that the presence and selection of ten contemporary artists in the exhibition is already a shift in itself, drawing attention. There is definitely a fascination and even an almost fetishistic fantasy projected onto the Benin Bronzes, specifically to the point that it has even become more of a cultural capital for many European and American institutions. It is also thanks to contemporary artists from Edo that the culture has been able to breathe beyond the traditional spaces of bronze casts to extend in their studios outside of the gaze of the ethnographic museum and its projection of what the history, the culture and the art of the place is. While the history of colonial looting formed an important context for the exhibition, we could witness that the artists’ practices are not defined by it .
The exhibition shows that Edo culture is constantly evolving rather than frozen in history. Why is this message important for museum audiences today?
There is a common tendency to also use the bronze as a strategy to speak about the African continent, as if it belongs only to a past temporality, and this has been sustained for a long time by many ethnographic museums. By situating Classical African Art as “traditional,” it is often made to appear obsolete. Yet in many African worldviews, the past and the present coexist. While European art history tends to follow strict and linear timelines, this framework does not fit Benin and many other places on the continent. ‘Back to Benin’ considers the exhibition as a space where these dominant chronological categories can be dismantled. In this case, a classical artwork is brought together with contemporary art, as they actually did in the past when the Ama was made. In doing so, the exhibition shifts the perception of classical art from static relics of the past to living expressions of creativity and knowledge.
What do you hope visitors take away from ‘Back to Benin’? Is it about returning objects, or about creating new relationships with history and heritage?
We hope visitors leave with the understanding that restitution is not only about the physical return of artefacts, but also about the restoration of erased histories, languages, and memories. While the return of subjects (in place of objects) is important, it is also important to acknowledge what their absence or loss does to generations who may never have had the chance to appreciate them, to look at them, to touch them, to invoke them, to learn from their symbolic and spiritual value, or to communicate with them. At the same time, ‘Back to Benin’ invites visitors to understand that heritage is not something frozen in the past.
The audience is also invited to encounter the works with their own sensitivity, at the same time, to open their curiosity and engage in an exercise of deep listening. This was actually why the exhibition was not organised per theme, since the works all intersect.
This exhibition was on view at the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, Netherlands, from 21 February until 7 June 2026.
