Emerging from the "Gates of No Return"

Highet, Juliet, New African

Timed to coincide with Britain's Black History Month in October, Benin's Julien Sinzogan brings his first solo art exhibition to the UK--Spirit Worlds--which explores an unexpected aspect of the Atlantic Slave Trade--its spiritual dimension. Sinzogan believes that the real crime of slavery was the loss to the communities that remained in Africa, including the protective spirits of ancestors who did not return. But as Juliet Highet reports, while Sinzogan's visionary work also reveals journeys between the "real" or tangible world and the invisible spirit world of the slave trade, this is not a tale of doom and gloom. His message has redemptive and healing qualities.

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JULIEN SINZOGAN'S POWERFUL art is showing at the appropriately named October Gallery, in a month that celebrates black history throughout the United Kingdom. In a previous exhibition at the same venue, called Voyages, Sinzogan depicted the "Gates of No Return"--forts, prisons and ports built by slave-trading nations that poisoned the West African coastline for so many …

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Publication information: Article title: Emerging from the "Gates of No Return". Contributors: Highet, Juliet - Author. Magazine title: New African. Issue: 499 Publication date: October 2010. Page number: 34+. © 2005 IC Publications Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2010 Gale Group.

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