For the 15th anniversary of the PhotoSaintGermain festival, the Galerie Monbrison, which specializes in the arts of Africa and Oceania, presents an exhibition devoted to the Egúngún, major figures in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria and Benin.
The Egúngún embody the presence of ancestors among the living. Regarded as a manifestation of the deceased within the community, they play a central role in passing down memory and tradition.
Made in an improvised studio in southwestern Nigeria, these portraits pull the Egúngún out of the tumult of ceremony to isolate them before the lens. Stripped of their usual surroundings, these figures reveal the richness of their costumes - assemblages of fabric, beads, shells, and ritual objects.
Somewhere between human presence and spiritual apparition, the series explores the visual power of these ancestral incarnations while preserving their air of mystery. For while the Egúngún allow themselves to be seen, they never fully allow themselves to be explained.
This exhibition offers a chance to discover the work of Olympia de Maismont, a photojournalist and video artist based in West Africa. For more than fifteen years, she has documented the social, political, and cultural realities of Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, developing a sensitive and deeply human perspective.
With this series, she takes a more contemplative approach, in which documentary work engages in dialogue with a deliberate aesthetic sensibility. She offers a rare look at a ritual heritage that remains largely unfamiliar, poised at the border between the visible and the invisible.
Galerie Monbrison
Founded in 1981, the Galerie Monbrison specializes in the ancient arts of Africa and Oceania. It maintains close ties with major European and American museums, and counts leading European and American collectors, as well as important private and public institutions, among its clientele.