Susan Gagliardi’s Seeing the Unseen is a major and transformative contribution to the study of the arts of Africa, and any object that questions the limits of the visible and the knowable. The volume studies the arts of power associations across what Anita Glaze (quoted on p. 24) calls ‘the three-corner region’, that is, the area across today’s Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali. Six chapters focus on assemblages, performances, patrons, audiences and film considered through a single oxymoronic proposition: the possibility of seeing what is not available to our eyes. If Western art and its modernism are ostensibly anchored in the optical and ‘the frenzy of the visible’, these practices, and Gagliardi’s book, challenge the premise, privilege and power of the seeing subject (Comolli, quoted in Crary, 2002: 7).

Grounded in research conducted since the early 2000s in the town of Sokouraba in western Burkina Faso, Gagliardi writes with clarity and positional awareness, making surprising arguments that are meticulously researched and persuasively written. Extending conclusions from her earlier book Senufo Unbound, she dismantles the long-held assumption that African art corresponds neatly to fixed ethnic styles (Gagliardi, 2014). While working in the Senufo-Mande cultural ‘border zone’, she poses broad epistemological questions: How do we know what we know? How do we interpret and engage with objects designed to escape sight? And, in an age of the material turn, where the absolute distinction between humans and things is rejected, what does agency look like? (Roberts, 2017: 65).

A central example is the bovine-shaped power object called boli in the Mande language. Gagliardi introduces this sculptural form through the words of artist Nayland Blake, for whom the object’s meaning does not lie in its outer appearance but in what it contains, which, however, remains inaccessible. Against the long colonial history of dissembling such objects in order to see, in her introduction and across the book, Gagliardi chooses to think with and through the unseen, as she embraces these objects’ resistance as an opportunity to rethink the limits of visual interpretation.

In her introduction, Gagliardi critically assesses the language that has defined and continues to shape the field of African art. She notes the limits of terms such as ‘traditional’, ‘African village’, and the fallacy of paradigms such as ‘one-tribe-one style’, all of which have been disputed at least since the 1990s. And yet, as Achille Mbembe (quoted on p. 20) writes, the ‘corpse obstinately persists in getting up again every time it is buried’. For Mbembe, as for Gagliardi, it is in everyday language and scholarly writing that the corpse’s spectral presence raises yet again, trapping African art objects, their makers, and consumers in bounded locales, timeless pasts, and obsolete taxonomies. Gagliardi’s reflection on these terms’ tenacious history offers a welcome theoretical intervention, especially as she proposes alternative geographic and conceptual frames (such as ‘border zone’) that sidestep colonial assumptions. The transparency that Gagliardi cultivates in her choice of terms, is paralleled by her willingness to address her positionality and the partiality of her account. As a result, in her analysis she privileges lived experience, the singularity of the art object, and multiple viewpoints as a means to counter sweeping generalizations on the arts of the region.

Chapter One is devoted to ‘power associations’, one of the major patrons for the arts in Western Africa. Although the term is an imperfect translation of the Mande word jo, the use of the word ‘power’ signals these groups’ purpose to effect change, positive or negative (p. 57). ‘Association’ implies their cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious heterogeneity, despite sharing specialized knowledge (p. 62). Rather than seeking these groups’ Bamana-ness, Mande-ness, or Senufo-ness, Gagliardi takes up McNaughton’s proposition to focus on the cultural borderlands, where forms and ideas are reorganized (p. 71). While impossible to inventory all such groups, historically or today, Gagliardi strives to historicize what we know, and pinpoints for instance accounts of the earliest description of a Komo performance in 1885 (p. 60). At the height of their colonial expansion, the French described these associations as threats (p. 62). By examining particular chapters and specific figures, such as Kono leader Drissa Traoré, she reconstructs the complexity of these networks and the ‘spiritual marketplace’ in which they operated (Mann quoted in Gagliardi, 2023: 60, 72, 86).

Chapter Two focuses on power objects as assemblages created to harness worldly and otherworldly forces to effect change (p. 58). These objects, while potent, are tools and do not have agency in themselves (pp. 60, 96). Their power lies in their visual indeterminacy and inaccessible interior provoking an oscillation between revelation and concealment, what anthropologist Michael Taussig (quoted on p. 95) might call the ‘striptease of hidden presence’. Here, Gagliardi addresses a fundamental limit in Western scholarship, where these objects have been categorized based on their formal features despite their ‘aesthetics of ambiguity’ (Ferme, quoted on p. 103). Power objects gain meaning not in a final and defined form, but in the processual, layered assemblage of fragments and materials. The unfixed appearance and performance maintain their secrecy. As sculptor–blacksmith Sedu Traore explains, ‘the Komo mask is made to look like an animal. But it is not an animal, it is a secret’ (p. 107). As they refuse full disclosure, these objects remind audiences of what is truly essential, which is inaccessible to the eye.

Chapters Three and Four examine ‘how the seen and unseen operate’ in performances and argue for the importance of audiences, who are the focus of the performers and power association leaders. Combining first-hand and historical accounts, Gagliardi maintains that ‘skillful power association performers observe their surrounding and sustain audiences’ attention . . . to bolster their claims to knowledge, power and authority’ (pp. 146, 155). Gagliardi pays attention to the ‘bodily co-presences’ of actors and spectators to render the ‘specific concerns and discourses that give rise to the events’, which have mostly escaped foreign accounts (p. 156). In her analysis, Gagliardi prioritizes specific circumstances over general accounts, singular experiences over group dynamics, allowing a focus on unique responses and unpredictable outcomes.

Chapter Four is especially groundbreaking as it centres on women audiences, who do not see. Some—that is, not all—power associations such as Komo and Kono prohibit ‘most women and children from viewing the objects, installations, and performances’ (p. 171). Gagliardi, who identifies as a woman, chose to respect these restrictions, and turned such constraint into an opportunity to deeply listen to how people talked about these events (p. 172). Echoing Henry Drewal’s assertion that ‘talk about ritual is as important as ritual itself’, she demonstrates that women, though barred from direct visual access, play significant roles (Drewel, quoted on p. 168). Her willingness to listen allowed her to notice women’s presence, rather than their absence. For instance, she found that some women did attend some performances; others, are considered foundational owners of Kono and Komo (p. 190). Most importantly, she theorizes women as ‘unseeing audiences’—participants who interact with performers but are prohibited from seeing the event (p. 176). This reframing rejects established gender binaries, whereby women are excluded from performances and knowledge. Instead, their witnessing becomes an indispensable mode of participation. In this argument lies one of Gagliardi’s most powerful contributions: a critique of the primacy of vision in art and performance studies. She proposes witnessing—not merely seeing—as a key mode of engagement. In so doing, Gagliardi offers a recalibration to some of the distortions inherent in the study of masquerade in Africa whilst making visible those who were until now invisible.

Chapter 5 turns to Souleymane Cissé’s (1987) film Yeelen, interpreting it as an extension of power association visual practices. Many praise Yeelen for its faithful transcription of rituals, but Gagliardi approaches the argument from an entirely different direction (pp. 196–197). She treats the film like a power object—an assemblage layered with meanings, sensitive to context, and structured around the tension between revelation and concealment. As she crosses genres, media, and fields, Gagliardi moves beyond the literal. Yeelen becomes a meditation on light itself, foregrounding how film, like performance, navigates what is shown and what remains disguised. In this reading, Cissé’s film does not reveal secrets so much as amplify their potency.

In her Coda, Gagliardi returns to the questions shaping her research and this book: how do we know what we know, and what are the limits of what we can (or should) access? In today’s Western culture, accustomed to instant and absolute visibility, Gagliardi’s work insists on the value of limits, opacity, and partiality. Her decades-long engagement with objects, custodians, and performers models a respectful, relational approach that resists the extractive impulse to see everything. Ultimately, Seeing the Unseen stands as an essential work not only for scholars of African arts, but for anyone who is starved for methodologies beyond Western assumptions about vision, knowledge, and agency. It offers a way of approaching art—African or otherwise—with attentiveness to ambiguity and the generative power of the unseen.