All works presented are for sale. The profits are shared with the artists and reinvested into the charitable actions.
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Artists from past exhibitions
JEAN BETTINGEN
SÉBASTIEN GRÉBILLE
PHILIPPE LAMESCH
FRANK JONS
ORIANE BRUYAT
SARAH MANDRES
ALAIN WELTER
SÉBASTIEN WIERTZ
MIKE ZENARI
DIEUDONNÉ FOKOU
WILLIAM TAGNE
AURELIE DJIENA
BABTWO
HAKO HANKSON
ROSTAND KOUAM POKAM
Barthélémy Toguo (B.1967, Cameroonian)
Exhibition: December 2021, June 2023
Biography
Barthélémy Toguo, working across painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation, addresses enduring and immediately relevant issues of borders, exile, and displacement. At the core of his practice is the notion of belonging, which stems from his dual French/Cameroonian nationality. Through poetic, hopeful, and often figural gestures connecting nature with the human body, Toguo foregrounds concerns with both ecological and societal implications. Recently, his works have been informed by movements and humanitarian tragedy including #BlackLivesMatter and the refugee crisis.
In 2008, he founded Bandjoun Station in his native Cameroon to foster contemporary art and culture within the local community. The community center includes an exhibition space, a library, an artist residency, and an organic farm. Toguo has participated in numerous international biennials, including the Sydney Biennale (2011, 2022); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2018); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2018); 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Havana Biennial (2012); 11th Biennale de Lyon (2011); and Dakar Biennale (2000, 2010, 2016, 2018, 2022).
In 2022, Toguo was commissioned for a monumental site-specific installation The Pillar of Missing Migrants (2022) under the Louvre Museum’s pyramid in Paris, France. In 2021, Toguo was appointed UNESCO Artist for Peace and in 2016, he was shortlisted for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. The artist presented the installation Vaincre le virus! at the Centre Pompidou, Paris the same year. Solo museum exhibitions have been held at the Museu Picasso de Barcelona, Spain; Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Georgia; Centre d’art La Malmaison, Cannes, France; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. His works are included in public collections worldwide, including the Tate Modern, England; Centre Pompidou, France; Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France; Studio Museum Harlem, New York; and MoMA, New York. In 2011, Toguo was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature in France.
Toguo was born in M’Balmayo, Cameroon, in 1967. He currently lives and works between Paris, France and Bandjoun, Cameroon.
Moustapha Baïdi Oumarou (B.1997, Cameroonian)
Exhibition: December 2021, June 2023
Biography
Born in Maroua, a city in northern Cameroon, Moustapha Baidi Oumarou worked in a silkscreen workshop before devoting himself to painting.
The characters in his paintings are often anonymous, though their clothes and gestures are carefully rendered, and they float in and out of foreground and background which often feature flora and fauna. Oumarou says that the anonymity of his subjects allows them to become a springboard for exploring the human condition; he also focuses on the power of love, which he describes as “the light and source of life.” While his wild motifs recall Matisse and Gauguin, Oumarou takes an approach to portraiture that recalls Amy Sherald, Barkley L. Hendricks and others.
In 2022, he participated in the 1-54 in New York and Paris, in Art Genève, and presented several solo exhibitions, including one in Paris, one in Geneva and one at the French Institute of Cameroon.
Jean David Nkot (B.1989, Cameroonian)
Exhibition: June 2023
Biography
Jean David Nkot, Cameroonian visual artist, was born in Douala where he currently resides and works. He first received his BAC diploma in plastic arts in 2010 at the Institute of Artistic Training of Mbalmayo (IFA) and then joined the Institute of Fine Arts in Foumban where he obtained a degree in Applied Arts. Throughout his training, he attended the workshops of Hervé Youmbi, Salifou Lindou, Jean Jacques Kanté, Pascal Kenfack and Ruth Belinga. The artist cites the figurative emotive painters Zhang Dali, Francis Bacon and Jenny Saville as sources of inspiration. He uses a variety of mediums including paint, silk screen and India ink, to create profound portraits.
In this new work he questions the impact, the stakes and the origin of capitalism through the history of cotton but also that of humanity and the working conditions of blacks in the fields (cotton, coffee, cocoa). As Bernard-Marie Koltes stated in the case of the cotton fields “in the cotton fields what is often interesting are the cries of the blacks who do not necessarily express pain but the joy of being first of all oneself in human situations even dehumanised”. In this work he tells the story of violence, pain and frustrations of the conditions of blacks in the past through slavery and presently through the economic relations between the south and the north.
In 2022, he participated in the 1-54 in New York and Paris, ART X in Lagos, and presented several solo exhibitions, including one in Paris and one in Johannesburg. In 2023, he is preparing two new solo exhibitions including one in Brussels and one in Paris.
Kristine Tsala (B.1979, Cameroonian)
Exhibition: December 2021, June 2023
Biography
Kristine Tsala is a visual artist born in Yaoundé Cameroon. The meeting with the great Congolese painter Botembe influenced the direction she chose for her higher studies. It is at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa that she explored and refined her acrylic technique, oil painting, collages of fabric, reliefs and especially embraced watercolor and the freedom of artistic creation as a guiding principle.
Every day in the streets of Kinshasa, she was inspired. They are called Samurai or street models. Their theatrical steps, their elegance and their constant beautiful energy will inspire her to create an artistic identity, that of the ”Lady Giraffe”, long and elegant who embodies wonderfully “the appearance to be”. A mixture of surrealism and comic book which carries in it the heritage of the African mask. This character with the long neck is a curiosity. Leading socio-political fights, as a lantern, a sentinel; fragile but strong, and above all indispensable because of the capacity to see things coming from afar. This character will mark the beginning of the artistic adventure of Kristine which will lead her to Switzerland, Spain, France, Turkey, and elsewhere.
In 2022, Kristine moved to Abidjan for a year of artistic research.
Ajarb Bernard Ategwa (B.1988, Cameroonian)
Exhibition: December 2021, June 2023
Biography
Ajarb Bernard Ategwa is originally from the South West region of Cameroon and grew up in the economic capital of Douala, a city in full expansion, with galloping urbanism.
A witness to the realities of the people, he depicts his society in a synchronous manner, creating scenes centred around the marketplace, the central meeting point of the population. He paints the
people he meets at this crossroad, sometimes women selling fruits and vegetables harvested in the field, sometimes diplomats who come to buy eggs for breakfast, all sharing the bond of living in this moment that the artist marks with a thick continuous line dissecting his works horizontally. The heroes of his scenes are the young people of his generation, the young “hustlers” who,
sometimes become market vendors despite their university degrees.
The underlying dark socio-economic context Ajarb evokes is brightened by the flashy colors of acrylic and posca pens he uses. He paints pop, and pays homage to the resilient men and women he observes daily at the Ndogbassi market, on the way to his painting studio.
In 2022, he exhibited at 1-54 in London, Art Basel and Taipei Dangdai. He also presented a solo show
in Lagos, Nigeria.
Arnold Fokam (B.1996, Cameroonian)
Exhibition: December 2021, June 2023
Biography
Arnold Fokam is a young visual artist from the city of Douala.
His work revolves around water in relation to the body and opens up to a multidisciplinary practice
that explores painting, assembly, sound creation and installation.
An artist of dreams and utopia, his work has spiritual, cultural and ecological dimensions.
He is interested in the notion of symbiosis, and proposes an intimate dialogue between humanity and the aquatic universe. He mixes the real with the fantastic and reminds us that the critical state of the anthropocene reflects the necessity that Men have to take care of water, source of any form of life
on earth.
He is the winner of the Goethe Discovery Award 2020 / Visual Arts and his work is included in several private and public collections such as those of the Goethe Institute and the art center Doual’art.
In 2022, he exhibited in Paris for the Dicokam exhibition and participated in the collective exhibition “PEACE” in Bolo, Douala.
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