Mouvement Sacré des Âmes
“Here, the sacred is not a setting: it is a vibration.”
Mouvement Sacré des Âmes · 2022 – 2024- SeriesI. Mouvement Sacré des Âmes
- Years2022 – 2024
- PlaceSacred forest of Ouidah, Benin
- Body of work20 works
- EditionEdition of 5 + 2 artist's proofs
- TechniqueFine Art pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, signed, numbered, with certificate of authenticity
- AvailabilityOn request
Mouvement Sacré des Âmes was born from a simple, almost physical need: to approach what remains when everything has already been told. I photograph around the Egoun-goun not to explain them, but to touch a threshold. The point where presence is felt before it is understood.
In the Vodun tradition, Egoun-goun means “one who returns”. The divinity comes out to honour and celebrate departed relatives. The project was born after the loss of my parents, with one question: how can the invisible be expressed? Photographing the Egoun-goun was at times a way of conversing with that absence, of celebrating those who are no longer here without trying to depict them directly.
I work with matter: ornaments, flashes, densities. Movement becomes a language, abstraction a way of not reducing. In places the figure appears; elsewhere it dissolves. I am not looking for sharpness as proof. I am looking for intensity.
My gaze is that of a man from the Fon culture, initiated without being a follower. The series was made in the sacred forest of Ouidah, with the consent of His Majesty Daagbo Hounon Hounan II and the guardians of the tradition, respecting the codes and prohibitions linked to the presence of the Egoun-goun.
Who are the Egoun-goun?
In Vodun, the Egoun-goun is the manifestation of the ancestors: those who watch over, protect and connect the living to the invisible world. When it comes out, the divinity manifests itself through its adornments, its embroidered cloths, its cowries and its beads. What appears is the ancestor. The Egoun-goun have been photographed and described many times. I felt that the images had come to look alike. I wanted to return to what gives them their deep power.
Two languages, abstract and figurative
The series moves between two approaches. Abstraction plays with movement, form and colour: long exposures, overlays, trails of light, to render what cannot be seen. Figuration captures the tangible dimension of the sacred: textures, embroidery, ornaments, the codified gestures of the dance. Red, the central colour of the project, carries vitality, spiritual power and the link between worlds.
A journey in four parts
The book Mouvement Sacré des Âmes (2024) unfolds the series in four chapters. Sacred Shadows: an immersion in the invisible. The Appearance of Form: forms slowly emerge from the blur. The Glory of Ornament: the majesty of the sacred adornments, the legacy of ancestral craft. Revelations and Recognition: the presentation of the project at the Ellipse Prize, at Maison Rouge in Cotonou.
“MSA does not illustrate a tradition. It converses with it, at human height, and at the height of absence too.”
Nauld Adjahuime
20 works shown
Click on a work to see it full size and read its description. Every work is available on request.
Exhibitions and publications
- 2025ECOFEST, Galerie nationale, Dakar, Senegal
- 2024Finalist, Ellipse Art Projects Prize. Finalists' exhibition, Maison Rouge, Cotonou
- 2024Artist's book Mouvement Sacré des Âmes, limited edition
- 2026Chapter I of the book Présences
Zangbéto
Acquire a work from the series
Each work is a signed and numbered limited-edition Fine Art print. Sizes, availability and prices on request.