Magazines - Tribal Art Summer 2011

By Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter, editor in chief for Europe of Tribal Art magazine.

Introduction
Going to some exhibitions is like keep- ing a romantic rendezvous. There is a sweet mixture of excitement and anxiety. What if the long-awaited event proves to be a disappointment? The remarkable exhibition that took place at the Musée Dapper in Paris in 1994 remains powerfully imprinted in the memories of African art collectors and aficionados. Conceived by Hélène Leloup, it included forests of stern and implacable Tellem figures, troops of dignified hieratic equestrian figures, and cohorts of togu na posts whose vigorous power contradicted the long-held and clichéd view of the statuary of the Dogon region. So what could the Musée du Quai Branly be able to add to this presentation, fewer than twenty years later? Upon entering the large exhibition space on the museum’s ground floor, the first impression is striking. In an ochre light reminiscent of the first rays of sunlight touching the Bandiagara Escarpment, a series of display cases outlines a simultaneously chronological, geographic, and aesthetic approach. Also curated by Leloup, the installation may at first glance seem resolutely sculptural, defining, with the keen eye we know her to have, the myriad styles that blossomed on the Dogon plateau from the tenth century onward. But the exhibition’s historical ambitions are equally important. It outlines the story of long migratory movements that were superposed upon one another over the course of centuries on this once lushly vegetated area, which at the time served as an ideal refuge for populations fleeing wars of territorial expansion, the rise of Islam, and, in some cases, famine.