Lurking behind an office door at London’s October Gallery is a thin, rough, pale wooden figure, nearly two metres high, topped with a cheap doll’s head that has been charred black, its hair scorched into an Afro fright-wig. A smaller figure, equally stark, upright and uncompromising, is attached, and from both of them hangs an array of metallic pots and pans. Proud, intimidating, raw, stoic, vulnerable yet refusing pathos, the pair of cattle-herders in Gérard Quénum’s “Femmes Peul” bring to mind street life, shattered childhoods, broken bodies, man and beast, junk art, consumer culture, voodoo, masks, Picasso, Warhol, Giacometti...

It is politically incorrect, a daring colonial anachronism, to mention western art history when discussing African work such as the superb piece that this young Benin artist created in his studio in Porto Novo surrounded by smashed dolls and other urban debris. “I chose the dolls because they give me a very strong image,” says Quénum. “When children play with them, they leave them in a state which is interesting. I also collect objects, bones, everything which I find and which talks to me within. I am a little united with everything that is suffering, refugees, people in hospital.”