Woodoo africa fetish “Love Bond” Fon Benin Ethnicity Africa

Beautiful and important fetish couple “Bocio” used in the voodoo cult . The two figures, male and female, are tightly joined, tied back to back, surrounded by ropes and magical objects such as cowries.

 The characters are carefully sculpted, the faces are strong and expressive, everything has a lot of presence.

 Beautiful patina, white kaolin for women and blue pigment for men, sometimes obtained from ultramarine blue Azole, a whitener for washing clothes and also used to color the walls of huts or houses in Africa.

 In the African art of various groups of Benin and Togo, particularly the Fon and the Ewe, there are various types of receptacle objects that transport ingredients with occult powers.

 They are not, for the most part, the objects of aggressive witchcraft.

These African fetishes help those who use them, usually to fight illness or bad luck.

 Voodoo is the cultural foundation of the peoples who descend through successive migrations from Tado to Togo, the Adja (including the Fons, the Goun, the Ewe... and to a certain extent the Yoruba...) who constitute an element   important populations in the southern Bight States (Benin, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria…).

 Voodoo was born from the meeting of the traditional cults of the Yoruba gods and the Fon and Ewe deities, during the, and then the expansion of the Fon kingdom of Abomey in the 17th and 18th centuries.

 They are usually specially designed with the trunk of the "IROKO" tree, which is a very powerful fetish tree recognized by the marabout masters of the universe and tightly tied together with indigenous fabrics.

Height 22 cm Weight 620 gr. Era 60s/70s

Private collection Turin

 Acquired by the “Galleria Arkana” Turin in the 1980s

 Acquired by the Multiethnic and Antique Gallery "Arkadia Gallery"  Turin

 Current Owner Adriano Putignano - Turin