A stake-like Fon/Voodoo sculpture, Boccio, wrapped in a raffia dress, South-East Togo. The Fon people of the border region between Togo and Benin, often associated with the historical kingdom of Dahomey, produced sculptures primarily in the service of religious and ritual practices connected to Vodun (Voodoo). These works are typically small to medium-sized wooden or metal figures, frequently intended as intermediaries for spiritual communication, protective talismans, or ritual focus points within shrines and sacred spaces. Common motifs include anthropomorphic figures, occasionally featuring stylized or exaggerated facial features and proportions, which can emphasize spiritual potency or signify particular deities (vodun). Some figures are articulated or have movable parts, suggesting use in ceremonies or divination practices, while others are carved in a more static, abstract manner, intended for long-term placement in domestic or communal shrines. Animal motifs, especially those associated with strength, cunning, or fertility, are also prevalent, reflecting the Fon understanding of spirits and their manifestations in the natural and social world. Materially, Fon sculptures range from carved and painted wood to bronze or brass figures produced using the lost-wax technique, particularly in regions influenced by the artistic traditions of nearby Benin. Iconographically, these works often display a close connection between human and spiritual realms, with symbolic gestures, scarification patterns, and ritual implements integrated into the figures to communicate identity, function, or ritual purpose. Literature on Fon art emphasizes its performative and ritual context, noting that objects are rarely purely aesthetic but function as active participants in religious life. Key sources include Perani’s study on Vodun art in Dahomey, Hersak and Beier’s survey of West African ritual objects, and recent ethnographic documentation on Fon shrines and Vodun practices in Togo and southern Benin. These sculptures also illustrate the permeability of cultural boundaries in the border region, where Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba influences often intertwine in both form and ritual significance. A selection of publications and museum collections documenting Fon and Vodun sculptures in the border region of Togo and Benin includes several key references. Suzanne Preston Blier’s African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995) provides a comprehensive study of Vodun artworks, analyzing their aesthetic, psychological, religious, and social functions. The exhibition catalogue Vodun: African Voodoo. The Anne and Jacques Kerchache Collection (Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2011) assembles nearly one hundred bocio or fetish figurines from Benin and Togo, accompanied by essays from specialists including Suzanne Preston Blier, Gabin Djimassé, Marc Augé, and Patrick Vilaire. Asen: Mémoires de fer forgé – Art vodun du Danhomè (Musée Barbier-Müller, Geneva, 2018–2019) documents metal altars or asen used for ancestor veneration among the Fon, produced between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, exploring their historical significance, craftsmanship, and ritual use. Ethnographic sources include Auguste Le Hérissé on Dahomey history and Paul Mercier’s 1952 monograph on asen in the museum of Abomey. Important museum collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which holds Fon asen from Ouidah, Benin, exemplifying metal altars used for ancestral commemoration. The Musée Barbier-Müller in Geneva has a significant corpus of asen, many dating from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Château Vodou in Strasbourg holds over 1,200 Vodun objects from West Africa, including items from Togo and Benin, offering a major resource for the material culture of Vodun. These sources cover a variety of object types including wooden bocio figures, metal altars, and assemblages incorporating bone, shell, cloth, and pigment. They reflect the diversity of Vodun material culture in the Gbe region and address both ritual and courtly contexts, such as shrine use, ancestor worship, protective fetishes, divination, and royal asen of the former kingdom of Dahomey.