44. FON FIGURE, REPUBLIC OF BENIN bocio wood, rope, skull, jawbone, lock, feathers, clay, sacrificial patina Height 28 cm Provenance Anne & Jacques Kerchache, Paris Literature Picasso, Afrique état d'esprit, Paris, 1995, pp.46-47 Kerchache, J. et al., Vaudou, Paris, 2011, p.42, fig.7, pp.76-77, and p.206, fig.9 Exhibited Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Picasso: Afrique état d'esprit, 8 November 1995 - 8 January 1996 Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Vaudou, Paris, 5 April - 25 September 2011 Gabin Djimassé describes the function and use of this figure (lot 44) as follows: 'This work is a two-faced (man and woman) wooden sculpture displaying the following elements: three pegs, and animal jaw with teeth, a cord, an animal skull, a closed lock without a key, poultry feathers, and a sacrificial patina. This composition represents a form of kpodohonme that is used to prevent reactions or actions that the user considers to be premature or undesirable. The purpose of the two upper pegs inserted into the ears of the sculpted face is to ensure that the person or people targeted by the request remain absolutely silent. The wooden peg inserted into the genital area is used to keep the person against whom this object was designed from using that part of the body.' Gabin describes the use of the pegs: 'To use the statuette the peg must be taken out of the groove and the cord partially unwound; then, as the mission is intoned, the cord must be wound back around the object and the peg put back into the groove. To finish, one spits finely-chewed atakun (Guinea pepper) seeds onto it and then sprays the whole thing with an alcoholic drink or water, depending on the mission to be accomplished'. (Kerchache, J. et al., Vaudou, Paris, 2011, p.206)