The Lost Twin
Frame 1:
A young woman, straddling a baby, gazes directly at the camera with a knowing smile on her face. The baby peeps from behind, trying to reach out for what the woman is carrying on her hands. On both hands, she firmly holds two miniature sculptures with exaggerated human features. In the larger frame, two hands reach out in a gesture to bring two figurines together, but they do not meet, they remain frozen in this perpetual white space.
Frame 2:
The woman and her sculptures, along with two similar-looking forms are again visible, this time in an opaque museum storage space. She stands in the foreground and the other two figures stand adjacent to her on the museum shelf, separated by a wooden plank.
This group, titled “The Lost Twin” features two ere ibejis (twin figures) from the Carlos Museum. The figures are carried by hands reaching out to each other but not quite reaching, symbolizing a sort of separation. The figures are individual and distinct, despite their similar designs, and are typically in pairs. At the center of these figures is an image of a Yoruba woman with a complete pair of ere ibeji, smiling at the camera.
This Youtube video has been added to provide more contextual information about the objects:
The Lost Twin by ‘Bukunmi Bifarin is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and is a derivative of Ere Ibejis (Link A, Link B) at the Michael C. Carlos Museum Collection, used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and an image of a Yoruba Woman with a pair of Ibeji Figures by Tribalartantiques.com (Link).