Moussa Kone 

Susanne Wenger’s textile works, in which artistic practice and spiritual experience are inextricably linked, are central to her current exhibition Àdùnní Olórìṣà. In a lecture and exhibition, Moussa Kone, board member of the Susanne Wenger Foundation, will focus on Wenger’s monumental yet fragile batik works.

Over several decades, Wenger developed a unique style in Nigeria that combines traditional Yorùbá dyeing techniques with influences from European modernism. From his early àdìrẹ works made with indigo to his later, color-intensive wax batiks, he created a multi-layered body of work that combines abstract forms, rhythmic image structures, and mythologically charged motifs. These textile works can be understood as independent pictorial spaces in which cosmological ideas, spiritual energies, and narrative references to the traditional deities of the òrìṣà become visible.

Wenger’s artistic self-image went far beyond an aesthetic interest: for her, art was part of a lived religious practice. Her batiks arose from ritual-influenced contexts of experience and were understood as condensations of real spiritual processes. Through collaborative production methods, close integration into Yorùbá culture, and her role within the religious system, she developed a visual language that is neither ethnographic nor historicizing. Despite the vulnerability of the material, the works unfold a strong presence and convey a worldview in which humans, nature, and divine forces are intertwined as equal actors.