I ask for Oluyenyetuye bronze of Ife
The moon says it is in Bonn
I ask for Ogidigbonyingboyin mask of Benin
The moon says it is in London
I ask for Dinkowawa stool of Ashanti
The moon says it is in Paris
I ask for Togongorewa bust of Zimbabwe
The moon says it is in New York
I ask
I ask
I ask for the memory of Africa
The seasons say it is blowing in the wind
The hunchback cannot hide his burden
—Niyi Osundare, “African Memory,” 1998
I ask for Uhunmwun Elao, bronze head of Benin
The moon says it is in Vienna.1
—Samson Ogiamien
I am no longer merely asking: I am now deeply committed to the ongoing debate over the repatriation of the Benin cultural artifacts—bronzes, works of art, and sacred objects—taken during British colonization in 1897, when the palace of the Oba (king) was plundered. This debate is not only about artistic mastery, it’s also about the profound connection between these objects and the heritage of the Benin people. Though these artifacts have been preserved and studied in Western museums, their removal was an act of colonial aggression that severed the people’s direct link to their cultural legacy. The debate about their restitution centers on ethical considerations of ownership and the impact of these artifacts on their communities of origin. For the Benin people, repatriation represents justice and a step toward healing and reconciliation. In Edo, my mother tongue, the single word Ozeba means: “Return my belongings unharmed or you will be in trouble.” This is exactly what we, the Edo people, are asking European museums to do, because this is what restitution means to us. These objects are spiritually significant, illustrating our history and documenting our collective memory. They are our archives, and were never meant to be exhibited in foreign museums.2
As a performance artist, sculptor, and descendant of the Ogiamien royal family of the great Benin Kingdom, I tackle the issue of restitution through an artistic approach of recontextualization. In my artwork, exhibitions, workshops, and seminars in Europe, I provide new contexts and meanings to objects to help audiences understand their historical and cultural significance, bridging the distance between past and present. It is essential to know and understand our past in order to deal with and redefine the present, thereby creating a better and more stable future—one anchored in truth, empathy, and cultural balance. By reuniting fragments of history with their rightful homes, we nurture intergenerational healing; by understanding our roots, we cultivate resilience; and by bridging art with heritage, we contribute to a world that honors diversity, justice, and the shared humanity that binds us all.
I have sought to raise cultural awareness through my artistic practice by highlighting the stories behind many of the artifacts still displayed in museums across the Western world, fostering a deeper appreciation and respect for diverse cultural heritages. Many of my works are conceived as platforms for dialogue, encouraging discussions about the ethics of provenance and repatriation as well as plans for the return of these objects to their motherland. Furthermore, my works serve as educational tools to create engaging educational experiences for students in institutions across Europe and Nigeria.
The main materials I use in my artistic practice are clay and bronze, which serve as a profound medium of expression and communication, as they relate to the stolen artifacts made with the same materials. Clay, with its earthy nature, epitomizes a raw foundational connection to Mother Earth, the human experience, and the physical world. Bronze, on the other hand, symbolizes durability, transformation, and permanence. Clay captures the essence of the creative process while bronze preserves and elevates it, thereby combing immediate expression with lasting impact.
Since 2017, I have carried out the project Iyagbon’s Mirror in collaboration with the Onyrikon Company and the Repatriates project. It will conclude in Benin City, Nigeria, in 2026.3 Onyrikon, a multidisciplinary theater company based between Switzerland and France, has played a significant role in the project, leading the audience in two-hour performances through different stations, accompanied by actors and musicians, centering on the bronze mask of Iyagbon. These site–specific, interactive performances took place in Austria and Switzerland. They were conceived as a mirror game of cultures—between the market and ritual, between possession and being possessed—intended to sensitize the public to the problems related to African heritage being kept in European museums. The first performance in Graz was documented and turned into a short film by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll in 2021.4
In Edo, Iyagbon means Mother Earth—the protector of artifacts both at home in Benin and in the diaspora. Iyagbon is a goddess who shields all living beings, cultures, and artifacts. In the Edo pantheon of gods and spirits, each deity has a specific role and embodies attributes that reflect the values and needs of society; they are portrayed in art and sacred objects depicting scenes from Edo mythology. The mask of Iyagbon is both a traditional and a contemporary artwork. It represents a new generation of African art traveling to Europe to reconnect with ancestral works in the diaspora, thereby raising awareness of the provenance and restitution of artifacts. The mask is cast in bronze, a material traditionally used to immortalize a subject, to preserve it for posterity. It was created by me in collaboration with the Royal Bronze Casters Guild of Igun Street, whose members hold an esteemed place in the history and culture of the Benin Kingdom. The guild’s work preserves a rich artistic heritage and continues to inspire new generations of artists and historians. Its members live in a historic quarter of Benin City, my hometown.
In the thirteenth century, craft guilds were organized in Benin to bring together artisans who had been scattered across the empire. Gathering them in quarters ensured the protection of their trade and secured their service to the royal palace. Only members of the guild were permitted to produce works for the palace, guaranteeing the highest standards through a hierarchy that supervised production. The guild used—and still uses—the lost-wax method of bronze casting. Their products remained the property of the palace, created only by royal permission or commission. This tradition of bronze casting has been passed from one generation to the next, still to this day. I, Samson Ogiamien, was born into the family of Royal Bronze Casters. Ozeba!
The saga of Iyagbon addresses the highly topical issue of the provenance and restitution of thousands of looted objects still displayed in ethnographic museums across Europe. This artistic proposal serves as a powerful catalyst for reflection on the decolonization of museums and the restitution of artworks seized through colonial plunder, a debate that has intensified since the artwork was conceived in 2017.5 After half a century of demands, some objects have finally been returned. Yet the colonial trauma remains enormous and complex, affecting the whole of society. The consequences must be dealt with at all levels. I believe that each act of restitution represents a positive step forward in political, diplomatic, cultural, and symbolic terms.
Iyagbon’s Mirror has created space for the descendants of both the victims and the perpetrators to come together and reflect—one of my guiding principles is: “Come, let’s reason together.” Since the question of repatriation comes up again and again, I am setting the stage to resolve the issue. As a sequel to Iyagbon’s Mirror—which has been included in various exhibitions across Europe—I am currently developing a new project titled Iyagbon Bokhian, which in Edo means “Welcome Home, Iyagbon.”6 The time has come for the mask of Iyagbon to be returned to her homeland. The return of the mask, which has become a ritual object through theat(er and fiction, mirrors the journey of repatriation, as objects once taken through colonial plunder are slowly beginning to leave European museums for their countries of origin.
This project represents the logical and necessary continuation of the artistic adventure. A site-specific second episode will take place in Benin City in February 2026—the result of a collaboration between the Association of Yaruya, the Repatriates research project, the Association of Art Tension, Onyrikon, the Ogiamien Palace, the University of Benin, the Royal Bronze Casters Guild of Igun Street, the Benin National Museum, and Kada Cinema. The performance will take place in a location of extraordinary symbolic significance: the Ogiamien Palace. A protected historical and cultural building, the royal palace is an exceptional example of intact precolonial architecture and one of the sites looted during British colonization. It is also where my ancestor’s altars can still be found today. There, Iyagbon’s mask will find refuge, following the Edo people’s demand to return the stolen artifacts—Ozeba.
In preparation for Iyagbon Bokhian, I convened a seminar at the Benin National Museum on February 25, 2025, which brought together scholars, researchers, and enthusiasts for a series of thought-provoking presentations on the arts of Benin—one of Africa’s most celebrated and historically rich artistic heritages.7 The seminar served as both a prelude to the performance and a platform for examining Benin art from multiple angles, shedding light on its enduring significance and evolving meanings across time and space. Participants with diverse perspectives offered insights that deepened our understanding of the artifacts beyond their aesthetic value. Tracing the historical context of the artworks’ creation and role in performance and cultural identity, the presentations revealed the complexity and richness of Benin art. The discussions also extended to a global perspective on arts repatriation and the contested place of these artifacts in the world today—a testament to their timeless relevance and the conversations they continue to inspire. The key viewpoints presented during the seminar include the following:
Performance Perspectives
In this talk, Chris Ugolo, professor in the Department of Communication and Performance Arts at the University of Benin,discussed how the performance aspect of artistic production documents significant historical events. Beyond the visual art forms, such as the bronze works that record life experiences, performances in festivities and ceremonies also record important events, as they are replete with dramatic displays of singing, dancing, costumes, and make-up, which often hold ritual and religious significance. Ceremonies such as Ugie-oro, Ugie Ododuwa, Ugie Emobo, Igue, and Olokun—highly visual expressions—hold great significance for Benin art and music both within the country and across the diaspora. Professor Ugolo underscored that our performing arts are intact, unlike our visual arts: “They looted our visual art, but it could not be taken away from us.”
The Cultural Significance of Benin Arts
Kokunre Agbontaen-Eghafona, professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Benin, explained how African art is a means to express creative perceptions of nature through oral literature, plastic arts, graphic arts, and music. She emphasized that these prominent forms have played a significant role in the history of the Benin Kingdom. According to the professor, Benin is renowned for its remarkable art, which stands as a powerful marker of its cultural heritage. She examined the various cultural roles of these art forms across economic, political, historical, social, and therapeutic contexts. The economic activities of early Benin communities laid the foundation for the kingdom’s guild system, which developed between approximately 900 and 1130, and remained in place until the fall of Benin in the nineteenth century. The economic support provided by the guilds was one reasons the kingdom was able to thrive and survive. Each guild offered a distinct economic advantage to the Oba, the palace, and the kingdom as a whole.
Benin art also played an important historical role as a means to memorialize significant individuals and events. Around 970, the kingdom developed a clay art to create mnemonic devices that aided in the oral transmission of history. Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English travelers who visited the kingdom between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries mentioned various art forms in their accounts, including brass plaques, royal ancestor heads, ivory tusks, and carved pillars. Thus, the historical dimension of Benin art can also be regarded as educational.
Like Benin art, African art more broadly frequently reflects societal expectations. Social themes are prevalent in many artistic performances, and much of the cultural activity centers on the family and the community. Music and oral literature serve to reinforce established religious and social patterns. Art also fulfills a therapeutic function. Practices such as divination to identify problems and their possible resolutions played a particularly significant role in the production of artworks.
Professor Agbontaen-Eghafona concluded her talk by emphasizing that a people’s art represents a system of cultural symbols, much like language itself. Each culture engages with its objects in distinctive ways, and communities around the world produce artifacts that synchronize with their environments. By examining the roles that Benin art played in the past, we can identify its continued relevance in contemporary society.
The Art of the Benin Kingdom (Historical Perspective)
The historian Patrick Oronsaye underscored that the Benin Kingdom is renowned for its sophisticated and highly skilled artistic tradition. The Benin Bronzes and other artworks reflect the kingdom’s rich history, spiritual beliefs, and political structure. Art in Benin developed under the patronage of the Oba, with early works created from materials such as ivory, wood, and terracotta, while the arrival of the Portuguese in the fifteenth century introduced new motifs, including depictions of Portuguese traders on brass plaques and other freestanding objects.
A British military expedition captured Benin in February 1897, plundering the palace and town and seizing thousands of artworks from the royal complex. Monuments and the palaces of many high-ranking chiefs were looted and destroyed, and the looted palace of the Oba was set ablaze. Most of the plunder was kept by the expedition, with some 6,500 (“official” figures list about 2,500) religious artifacts, visual histories, mnemonics, and artworks sent to England. Several photographs show British marines in the courtyard of the Oba’s palace before it was set on fire. The looting of the palaces of the city’s nobles, the Queen Mother’s palace, and the royal harem at Ugbekun followed, which were then torched and reduced to rubble. In the process, many terracotta, wooden, and coconut-shell artifacts and mnemonics—which the invaders did not consider valuable—were lost forever.
Oronsaye explained that Benin art has been remarkably resilient in the face of the political, economic, social, and religious changes that have shaped Benin’s cultural landscape since 1897. One of the major changes in Western art in the early twentieth century was the shift from the classical ideals of Greek and Roman statuary to a wider view that accepted so-called primitive art as equally beautiful and human. Artists such as the Cubists began collecting African artifacts and soon exploited their unrestrained, expressionistic energy in their own work. Gradually, sculpture long considered suitable only for ethnological institutes began moving into galleries, museums, and homes as objects of artistic merit.
Oronsaye concluded by saying: “The art of the Benin Kingdom is a testament to royal power, historical documentation, and cultural identity. Despite the challenges posed by the looting of 1897, Benin art continues to inspire scholars, artists, and cultural institutions worldwide. The ongoing repatriation movement highlights the enduring significance of these works to Nigeria’s heritage and global art history.”
Repatriation to Benin
The historian Godfrey Osaesiomo emphasized that every person in Benin and throughout the diaspora shares a concern for the return of the artworks. He described how the looters manipulated the perception of these objects so that the Edo people in Benin saw them as evil, only to seize them, take them to Europe, and make money from their sale.
The first formal recognition of the need for restitution was in 1935, shortly after Oba Akenza II ascended the throne. He made an appeal to the British authorities for the return of some of the sacred royal treasures—not as a political demand, but as a call for cultural and spiritual restoration. The Oba emphasized that these artworks were not mere decorations but sacred items essential to the spiritual life of the Benin monarchy and its rituals of remembrance. However, the British authorities dismissed the request, claiming that the artifacts had become part of museum collections and served scientific and educational purposes. In 1937, with the assistance of the British teacher K. C. Murray, Oba Akenza II campaigned for the voluntary return of the Benin artworks and the construction of museums across Nigeria. This marked the beginning of a long and continuing effort by the Benin royal court and the Nigerian government to reclaim these culturally and historically significant artifacts from museums around the world.
Osaesiomo concluded his talk by stating how the issue of repatriation is not simply a matter of legal action—many scholars have urged past Obas to bring the matter before the International Court of Justice—but rather a matter of morality and conscience for those still holding the looted art.
Insights on Benin Bronze-Casting Techniques
The sculptor Scott Ogbemudia, a representative of the Bronze Casters Guild from the Igun community, explained that in the past, long before there were cameras or journalists, the Igun craftsmen were invited to the palace to observe every ceremony, festival, and ritual, and reproduce what they had seen. The finished works were kept in the custody of the Oba, as bronze casting was considered to belong to the throne. The Igun guild holds the monopoly over bronze casting in Benin.
Ogbemudia described the lost-wax casting process, beginning with the first raw material needed: red earth (red sand). This foundational element, unique to the craft, is mixed to achieve the right consistency, not too soft or too hard, and used to form the initial object. Though it does not hold easily, it is applied and allowed to dry as many times as possible until the desired outcome is achieved. Because red earth cannot capture fine details, after it has dried a layer of wax is applied, called a wax slab. The wax, softened by sunlight or the heat of a fire, is rolled on a flat surface with a bottle until thin. The dried core, called Akpa, is wrapped with the wax, which is used to craft the delicate features such as the eyes, ears, and nose. Once the embellishments are complete, an outer layer of red earth is applied to cover the wax, creating a separation between the core and the surface, which is allowed to dry naturally to prevent cracking. The piece is then usually turned upside down; a rod-like wax structure is attached, coated with red earth again; and a funnel-shaped opening is formed to allow the molten brass to flow into the mold and pass through the runners to the main object. A binding wire is used to secure the mold and prevent cracks during firing. While the mold is being heated, the artist prepares a crucible at the foundry—a refractory container loaded with scrap brass, which melts at approximately 800 to 900°C. Once the oven reaches about 600°C, the mold is lifted with the aid of thorns fixed into the ground. Simultaneously, the molten brass is removed from the foundry and poured into the mold. Some of the wax is lost during heating, giving the technique its name: the lost-wax process. After casting, the piece is allowed to cool, then the outer mold is broken away to reveal the artwork. The final steps involve cleaning and polishing to achieve the finished aesthetic piece.
Rounding out the session, Eddy Erhagbe, professor in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Benin, who was invited as a discussant, expressed his appreciation for the seminar. He said that such gatherings are reassuring, as they help rekindle awareness for the importance of art and history for our society. He remarked that an essential aspect of the reparations issue is that the Western world has historically undermined our creativity while continuing to hold on to our art objects, even though all art is fundamentally an expression of creativity.
Samson Ogiamien is an artist and educator based in Graz. Born in Nigeria, he comes from a family of Royal Bronze Casters linked to the Igun Eronmwon guild. His education in Nigeria focused on art and design as well as welding and construction; he also managed a sculptor’s workshop. In Austria, he completed the two-year master program in sculpture at Ortweinschule Graz, graduating with distinction in 2007. In 2010 and 2012 he received the Outstanding Artist Award for “Intercultural Dialogue” from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture for the projects Kunst als Brücke zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen and Agony of the Beloved. In 2014, he received the award from the city of Graz for the promotion of the arts. He has exhibited and performed at the Ethnography Museum of Geneva, La Strada International Festival for Street and Puppet Theater in Graz, the Colombo Art Biennale in Sri Lanka, and Kunsthaus Graz. Ogiamien is part of the European network IN SITU and is currently touring Europe with Iyagbon’s Mirror, a project developed in collaboration with the Onyrikon performance group and the artist and researcher Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. The work addresses the critical subject of provenance and the reclaimed restitution of thousands of artifacts that European museums obtained directly or indirectly through colonial exploitation and theft.