Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2009

Interview by Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter

Introduction
Although they lack the hieratic dignity of a Fang reliquary figure or the extreme stylization of a Dan or Senufo mask, a group of some 100 encrusted, sweating, dripping, and often disturbing fetishes and charms together form an unusual exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Often barely discernible beneath their coatings of saliva, excrement, and blood, these works are on view thanks to the discerning eye of Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, curator of the exhibition in which the public is invited to “look differently” at these objects that have long been considered artistically modest and are all too often relegated to the obscurity of museums’ storage facilities. Recettes des Dieux, Esthétique du Fétiche (Recipes of the Gods, the Esthetic of the Fetish) suggests that our contemporary eyes, having become accustomed to installations by artists such as Joseph Beuys or Annette Messager, can now finally appreciate the sculptural and poetic energies of such artworks. The following is an exchange of ideas about these “negligible objects,” these “forgotten ones” of tribal art.

TRIBAL ART: This is the first major exhibition devoted to this type of object, which is generally not displayed in a museum context. How did it come about?
NANETTE JACOMIJN SNOEP: When I was working on my thesis, which was originally on the nkisi of the Congo, I became interested in how objects such as these had come to us. I visited a number of American and European museums, and particularly their storage areas, and I found many of these non-figurative charms, which had been collected mainly by missionaries and medical and military personnel between 1880 and 1920. Confronted with such a large body of organic and often indefinable material, I decided to expand the scope of my research so I could better understand the significance that these fetishes had. Although often of very modest appearance, each was heavily invested with an important sacred charge.