A Fon/Voodoo sculpture, Togo, bound with a rope dyed with white and blue pigments and several cowrie shells embedded. Signs of ritual use and age. Fon fetish sculptures are carved or assembled ritual objects central to the religious and political life of Fon communities in southern Benin. Commonly called bocio, these figures serve as material mediators between human actors and the forces that shape social stability, health and justice. Their forms vary widely, ranging from anthropomorphic carvings to densely accreted assemblages incorporating iron, cloth, cord, shells or organic substances. The aesthetic of bocio is intentionally non-naturalistic; their power derives not from resemblance but from the controlled combination of materials imbued with spiritual charge. Within Fon ritual systems bocio are instruments of agency rather than passive images. A sculptor or ritual specialist prepares the wooden core, but the figure becomes spiritually active only through consecration, which may include the insertion of medicines, sacrificial substances and bindings. These operations fix the figure into a network of obligations between devotee, lineage, divinities and protective forces. The bocio can be deployed for personal protection, the resolution of conflict, the reinforcement of oaths or the containment of harmful intentions. Its efficacy lies in its relational positioning: it anchors invisible forces into a visible, manipulable form that can be addressed, fed and ritually maintained. The visual language of Fon fetish sculptures intentionally communicates potency. Elements such as binding, nailing, smearing or encrustation signal the activation of forces that exceed ordinary human control. These treatments are not decorative; they are records of ritual history, marking the figure’s participation in repeated acts of protection, petition or judgment. In this way a bocio becomes a cumulative archive of engagements between humans and the spiritual world, acquiring a layered material patina that indexes its biography as a working ritual object. In museum contexts these sculptures often appear isolated from their ritual environments, leading to interpretations that emphasise formal strangeness or primitivist aesthetics. Fon scholars and practitioners highlight that such decontextualisation obscures the ethical and cosmological frameworks that animate the figures. As in many West African traditions, the meaning of a fetish sculpture is inseparable from its operational life: its consecration, its social role, its handling by specialists and its embeddedness in communal systems of protection and accountability. References
S. Hersak Bocio: Power Figures of the Fon
H. J. Drewal African Materiality and Ritual Agency
P. Mercier Fon Religion and Custom
E. Blier Art and Power in West Africa. CAB27264