Land Ho!

A set of three giclée prints of the triptych Land Ho! These prints were taken from a large, original triptych made in coloured inks and acrylic on paper and forms part of a series of works by the Beninese artist, Julien Sinzogan, which reimagines the return of African souls after being trafficked to the Americas during the transatlantic trade in enslaved African peoples, featuring the ships used in that trade. Land Ho! Is considered one of his most significant works of the series, which includes other works such as Armada.

In Land Ho! Sinzogan portrays a set of interpenetrating realms of reality as conceived by the Yoruba and Fon peoples of Nigeria and Benin. The three tableaux unite to describe the return to the African shores of phantom galleons loaded with the spirits of the enslaved who were forcibly taken from that continent during the transatlantic trade in enslaved African peoples. In this vision of return and reconciliation each tableau reveals a different facet of the Egungun, Yoruba for "masquerade" or "the powers concealed", that refers to a masked dance performed by the Yoruba people of West Africa to honour their ancestors.

In the left-hand panel, local spirits above the African coast fly towards the spirit-laden phantom ships on their return. These spirits are coloured with the symbolic patterns belonging to particular family lineages and the coloured orisha figureheads of the ships represent Yoruba deities guiding the ships and the spirits of the enslaved in their return to Africa. The white gulls, possibly representing the returning spirits or the passage between the living and the dead, flock from the left-hand frame through to the triptych’s centre-piece. The galleons of the central print are coloured with African glyphs. The final print depicts the fleet at anchor off the African shoreline and living descendants of the Egungun spirit-ancestors row them back towards the coast from which they were taken. Each longboat contains two youths, one who rows and the other carries a baton that functions to keep the spirits from touching any one of the living souls – since these two worlds exist in the same space but are in separate realities and can never meet. As the boats get closer to the shore, the excited spirits begin to move and dance and the whirling dance of the Egungun masquerade begins.

The image operates on three different tonal levels; the pure white silhouettes of the flock of gulls flying across the pictorial space; the sepia-ink cross-hatching revealing the incredibly detailed ‘reality’ of this phantom world; and the coloured inks that enliven the brilliant liveries of the spirits inhabiting these supernatural spaces. The draughtsmanship recalls the intricacies of Willem van de Velde the Elder's (1611-1693) pen paintings. The line of crosshatching across the top of each part of the triptych links the works together as a whole, against the dynamic composition featuring a diagonal line of colour, going from top left to bottom right across the three sections.

Julien Sinzogan is an African artist, born in 1957 in Porto-Novo in the Republic of Benin, he lived and worked in Paris, France for nearly thirty years, and has since returned to Benin. Strongly influenced by the Yoruba divinatory and religious system (Ifá), Sinzogan’s works explore the journeys between physical existence (aye) and the spiritual realm (orun) through which spirits are reborn. Sinzogan’s work reclaims the migration of the African soul and the homecoming of the spirits of the enslaved back to West Africa.

Sinzogan’s work has been exhibited throughout Europe and Africa, including a specially commissioned large-scale painting, entitled Gates of Return, for the atrium of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK, during the exhibition, Uncomfortable Truths, in 2007.