Part prose poem and part scholarly reflection, Where There Is No Door considers historical agency, concealment, and sanctity through a single Yorùbá door in a Berlin museum. 

A Yorùbá door, carved from iroko wood in the twentieth century, lies unreachable in the depot of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Nigerian author Logan February confronts a conundrum of agency: who grants, and who gains access? Where there is no door, what becomes of privacy, consent, and the sacred? Combining prose poems with reflections on the research process, this psychedelic essay turns absence into adventure. Through the mysteries of a lost serpent cult, the legacy of master carvers anonymous and renowned, and a spiritual sensing of objects made invisible to the searching eye, we go far beyond the door. February’s writing enacts a parallel act of carving, creating a glorious portal through words. Across history’s gaps, poet and door commune to overwrite the museum’s omnipresent law: please keep your distance from the objects.