Within the African continent and its diaspora, it is common practice to acknowledge and honour ancestors when people gather. These gestures—which could take the form of an offering, such as breaking and sharing a kola nut, or pouring some liquor on the ground as a libation—emphasize an enduring kinship and heritage that transcends geographical boundaries and nationstate identities. In the framework of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Leo Asemota, a native of Benin Kingdom in Edo State, offers a work that draws from this practice of libation. The untitled work, derived from a Kissi penny, consists of pieces cast in a copper-tin alloy, each deliberately conditioned to be unique. The Kissi penny was once a widely circulated legal tender in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for the Kissi, Loma, and Bandi peoples living in the border regions of today’s Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The penny, which is believed to have a soul, was made of a long, twisted iron rod with an ear (nling) at one end and a foot (kodo) at the other. After the French and the British devalued it in the late twentieth century in their respective African colonies, the penny still retained ceremonial and spiritual value in many Indigenous societies.   

WORK IN THE EXHIBITION:

Untitled (2025), bronze, 26 × 3 × 0.3 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Fundação Bienal de São Paulo for the 36th Bienal