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When an African art collector, curator and dealer was gifted a pair of Yorùbá twin statuettes – ère ìbejì – in 2022 as a token for a fruitful business transaction, it signaled the beginning of a new obsession. While he had previously encountered a handful of ìbejì sculptures in his relative’s collection of traditional African artifacts, the gift struck a chord with him, a twin himself.

“I've always been aware of ìbejì but I must admit my passionate research was certainly a recent development.”

“I have been gathering them ever since,” states he, who studied as a legal professional in the UK. “I acquire from international sales and additionally every time I locate anybody in Nigeria who owns them and wants to give them away or get rid of them, I take from them.”

The Traditional Significance of Ère Ìbejì

The ère ìbejì are a material representation of a distinctive sacred, cultural and creative custom among Yoruba people, who have one of the world’s highest birth rates of twins and are significantly more likely to have them than Western populations.

The typical twin rate of the Yorùbá community of a Nigerian town in the nation's southwestern region, is an exceptionally high twin ratio, compared with a worldwide average of about 12 per 1,000.

“Among the Yoruba people, twins hold a status of deep spiritual and social importance,” says a scholar who has studied ère ìbejì.

“The Yorùbá are reputed to have one of the highest twinning rates in the globe, and this phenomenon is interpreted not only as a natural event but as a sign of heavenly favor.

“Twins are regarded as bearers of prosperity, wealth and protection for their families and communities,” he says.

A Tradition of Honoring Twin Spirits

“When a twin passes away, sculpted representations [ère ìbejì] are created to accommodate the soul of the deceased child, ensuring ongoing veneration and safeguarding the wellbeing of the surviving twin and the wider kin.”

The statuettes, which are additionally carved for alive twins, were treated like actual babies: bathed, oiled, breastfed, dressed (in the identical garments as the siblings, if living), decorated with ornaments, sung and prayed to, and transported on women’s backsides.

“I'm attracted to artists who interact with what twinship represents: duality, loss, partnership, permanence.”

They were sculpted with stylised features – with bulgy eyeballs, their cheeks often scarified, and endowed adult traits such as genitalia and breasts. Most importantly, their skulls are big and immensely styled to represent each sibling's spirit, creation and destiny, or orí.

The Resurgence Effort: The Ìbejì Project

This tradition, however, has been largely lost. The ìbejì sculptures are scattered in foreign institutions all over the world, with the newest originating in the mid-1950s.

So, in early 2023, the collector initiated the Ìbejì Project to reinvigorate the lived history of the custom.

“The Ìbejì Project is an informative and advocacy platform that introduces heritage artifacts to modern viewers,” he explains. “Twinship is global, but the Yoruba response – carving ère ìbejì as vessels for spirits – is distinctive and must be kept alive as a ongoing conversation rather than frozen in collections abroad.”

In late 2024, he organized an ìbejì-centred exhibition in collaboration with a London gallery.

The project involves collecting authentic ère ìbejì, displaying them and juxtaposing them with curated contemporary art that extends the tradition by examining the themes of twinness. “I am drawn to creators who seriously interact with the meaning of twinship embodies: duality, loss, fellowship, continuity,” the collector says.

He believes selecting contemporary art works – such as sculptures, artistic setups, paintings or photos – that possess artistic and thematic similarities with ère ìbejì repositions the ancient tradition in the current era. “[The Ìbejì Project] is a platform where modern artists create their personal responses, carrying the dialogue into the present,” he adds.

“I am very pleased when individuals who once ignored heritage works start to acquire it due to the Ìbejì Project,” notes the founder.

Upcoming Goals and Global Influence

In the future, he aspires to release a book “to make the ìbejì tradition accessible to academics and the broader public”.

He states: “Although rooted in Yoruba culture, the initiative is for the world. Just as we examine other cultures, others should research ours with equal seriousness.

“My hope is that they will not be viewed as institutional oddities, but as part of a living, dynamic traditional legacy.”