Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the multiple feedbacks and technological exchanges informing recent work by artists Hervé Youmbi and Hervé Yamguen. the recent production of these Douala based artists stems from an intense creative dialogue with village makers that challenge dichotomies and conceptual boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

Douala based artists Hervé Youmbi and Hervé Yamguen have rather distinct poetics and practices. Yet their art making has also been informed by a lifetime of exchange and a shared vision of the role of the artist in Contemporary Cameroonian society. While both artists work in different media, Youmbi is mostly a conceptual and installation artist, while Yamguen is best known for his surrealist drawings and paintings and his poetry. This paper analyzes two recent bodies of work where both artists engage in multiple ways with ideas, technology and artists based in the rural areas of western Cameroon. In particular, I will look at Youmbi's recent ongoing series Visage de Masques (2015) and Yamguen's experimentation with beaded and lost wax cast bronze sculptures that have marked a new direction in his work. While each body of work follows a very specific personal trajectory for each of the artists, both offer interesting insights on the deep connections and tension between urban and rural. Through these works both Youmbi and Yamguen reflect on their own identity as internationally exhibited artists, living in Cameroon's largest city, yet also connected to the contemporaneity of the traditional culture that in many ways defines them. In their practice these artist challenge the dichotomic conceptual distinctions between rural and urban that often mirror the fraught separation of tradition and modernity.