Faces and Fauna: Representing the Continents at the 1931 International Colonial Exposition in Paris

At the 1931 International Colonial Exposition (ECI) in Paris, the continents were symbolized in both modest and more grandiose formats. On a set of four souvenir medals, busts of “native” women represented Asia and Oceania, while indigenous men denoted Africa and America. The continents were thus embodied by ethnographic types, as was also the case on a poster advertising the ECI as a tour of the world in a day. As opposed to the monochromatic medals, the poster used color to exaggerate the skin tones of the men depicted: a yellow Asian, a red Native American, a brown North African, and a black Sub-Saharan African. The four men were further marked by their necklaces and headgear, as was also the case with the busts on the souvenir medals. Meanwhile, the reverse of the Asia medal featured an elephant, recalling the conventional personification of this continent as a woman riding an elephant. Pachyderms were also used to designate both Africa and Asia in scenes of life in the colonies sculpted by Alfred Janniot on the façade of the ECI’s Museum of the Colonies, while figures on elephants personified Asia and Africa in more traditional fashion in Pierre Ducos de la Haille’s fresco France and the Five Continents in this building’s interior. Artists at the ECI visualized the continents in both old and new ways, but the emphasis on ethnography and typical fauna was in keeping with the role that actual indigènes and animals played in the exposition’s colonial pavilions and zoo.