The audacity
To display sacred objects ritual masks, ancestral symbols, vessels of meaning as mere “art.” To take what was once living, breathing culture and lock it behind glass, stripped of its voice, its people, its purpose.
These masks were never meant to be static. They danced, they healed, they connected worlds. And yet, here they are coldly lit, catalogued, consumed. The legacy of the Dakar-Djibouti mission and so many others like it, theft disguised as discovery, violence wrapped in curiosity.
It’s infuriating to see pieces of our spiritual lives treated as trophies of empire, while their true homes still ache with absence. These objects don’t belong in museum basements, they belong in ceremonies, in communities, in continuity.
The audacity, indeed. And the least we deserve is restitution not as charity, but as justice.
