One of the most versatile artists to have emerged from West Africa is Yvon Ngassam. The transdisciplinary artist was born in 1982 in Bangangté, a commune in Cameroon. Beyond photography and video art, Ngassam explores metal sculpture, wood engraving and sound installations to project the issues of resilience amongst others. A natural conversationalist, Ngassam- with the aid of a translating app- opened up freely to Yinka Olatunbosun on how music and associates influenced his multidimensional artistic expressions that garner global resonance and the need for Africans to tell their own stories.
Kindly tell us about your journey into arts, your childhood, and what influenced you to pursue this career path?
I’ll start with my childhood, which I think was like that of many other children in Africa: school, games… I had a very happy childhood contrary to what is sometimes expected of artists. We are often seen as tortured souls. I am the youngest of ten children. I don’t remember being immersed in art. There was very little art around me when I was a kid, except for the music my parents played on their vinyl player. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. Nevertheless, I must admit that it was sound through music that was my gateway to art.
In the 90s I discovered hip-hop through rap. When I was in high school, I used to save up money to buy a CD of an American rapper every week. Later, when I went to university, I naturally created a label with some friends. Our label was called FREEK’1 Entertainment. We produced urban music and film. I was the sound engineer of the label. We were very well organised and we used our economics courses to create a model that would last over time. During those years at university, for the smooth running of our label, I took an interest in computer graphics and video. A few years later, needing to push my sound practice further, I decided to accept the invitation of a very good friend of mine, a brother, Rass NGANMO, to join him in Yaoundé and to manage his label, SATEC Records. He specialised in music and sound for cinema.
I arrived in Yaoundé and to diversify, I decided to create a video department. I assisted Rass on film sets as a soundman or boom operator. At the cinema, I fell in love with the profession of Director of Photography. I researched it and learned that the best in the business are excellent photographers. I got into photography and caught the bug. I worked as a Director of Photography on some successful films in Cameroon such as “Ne crains rien, Je t’aime” by Thierry NTAMACK, but very quickly I concentrated on my career as a photographer-author. You will realise that all these media and many others are present in my work as a visual artist.
Thanks to the cinema- I travelled a lot in my country, Cameroon. In my spare time, I would to take pictures. One day, I met a photographer and independent curator, Landry Mbassi. A long-time friend of Rass. He saw my photos, encouraged me to continue in this direction and later gave me the opportunity to show my work for the first time in a place dedicated to art exhibitions: the French Institute in Cameroon, Yaoundé. It was 2012.
This was the first moment of my young career. The second was my meeting with the Cameroonian visual artist Emk’al EYONGAKPA who allowed me to join a master class of video art and to create with the greatest artists of Cameroon like Alioum Moussa, Hervé Youmbi, Justine Gaga…
After these two experiences, I dedicated myself completely to art. I have learned a lot thanks to the many creative residencies I have done in my career: Atelier Sahm in Brazzaville in Congo, Bandjoun Station, Art bakery in Cameroon, Le centre in Benin… These places allowed me to sharpen my eye and improve my very experienced practice. This is how, in less than 10 years of career, I have been able to be on the biggest validation platforms on the continent: Dak’art Biennale in 2016 (off), 2018 (In) and 2022 (off), the African Biennale of Photography in Bamako 2019 (In) and 2022 (off).
My motivation remains in the fact that art has allowed me to keep and protect the human in me. Through my “work” I meet extraordinary people and experience situations that teach me humility. Art also allows me to desalinate myself and, in turn, to participate strongly in the decolonisation of my continent by speaking without complexes about who we can be.
You studied Maths and Physics. At what point did you decide to go away from all that and pursue arts?
I studied these sciences when I was in high school because I wanted to study economics later. But when I got to college, I felt disillusioned. I found the program much too theoretical. I was following a so-called “professional” course, but my university had never organised a company visit or even invited an entrepreneur to come and give a conference.
Along with my university studies, I managed our label, FREEK’1 Entertainment, which was doing quite well. It was for me a space of economic experimentation. My friends and I were strategising and implementing it into our structure. The gratifying results of our start-up and the boredom that gripped me when I was on campus led me to prefer not art, but a more pragmatic approach. I wanted to be a good administrator and not just another African with diplomas.
The Cartesian nature of my university training was a disadvantage for me when I started in art because science only considers the result and very little the path that leads to it- which is the complete opposite of the art I practise. I had to deconstruct myself and I continue to do so.
I kept from this life the taste for research, which is a characteristic of scientists.
Your work in photography is rooted in the idea of documenting. Why is documentary so important to you?
Documentary, history, our history, our stories to us Africans are what is lacking in our resilience.
How can we expect resilience if the stories that drive that resilience are written by others? We will have no excuse if we, the so-called contemporary African artists, do not tell or testify to this contemporaneity. It is literally a duty to our children; it is our responsibility.
I am part of a generation of Africans who are forced to hope for a visa from France to go and study the masks made by my ancestors at the Musée du Quai Branly. A visa that will be refused to me 2 times out of 3.
What will my daughter think of me if she is forced to undergo the same humiliation when she wants to consult the archives related to the war of independence which is raging in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon. A war that is part of my contemporaneity and that I would have negligently let others recount and archive. I would have no excuse…we will have no excuse because we have in our possession the tools and the technologies necessary to tell and archive this war.
This is why documenting is important in my practice. Document beyond my contemporaneity and periods of history defined by the West because our history does not begin with the transatlantic slave trade.
You do a lot of work in various media. Do you think we need more artists who are versatile like you in Africa?
I don’t think Africa needs more versatile artists. She needs more artists who are in the honest expression of themselves as Bruce Lee said. On the other hand, if African artists take their heads out of the standard imposed by the capitalism of the art market and from the canons imposed on us by the narrow definitions of art by the West, they will realize that the fullness of a maker of signs and objects rests in its plurality. The plurality of its mediums, of its expressions.
I summon here the memory of those who were considered in our kingdoms and empires as the artists of the king. These beings close to various spiritualities painted, sculpted, drew. They knew they were only containers, the content being the property of the divine. It is humility.
We live in a world where Africans have lost this memory. They allow themselves to be taken by the hand and be guided by a civilization which is incapable of seeing the multiple beings within them, a civilization which needs to measure, to arrange each living being in a box. Western science tells us that we use less than seven per cent of our brain capacity. You can imagine my boredom if I was only doing photography.
You take part in several art residencies. How have residencies helped you to grow as an artist?
Creation residencies are a very important space for reflection and creation in my young career.
The creation residencies through their calls for applications pushed me to develop a scientific approach in my relationship to the writing of projects. To put it simply, an artist, because he wishes to enter the prestigious residency program of an institution, is sometimes obliged to take an interest in the concerns of this institution in order to propose a project which is in line with the theme of residence. Then you have to find the link (there always is) between your own practice and the theme that the space of residence imposes on you. This mechanism contributed each time to the writing of projects that challenged me and sometimes projects that I had to continue to develop after my residency. This is what I would define as “Thinking”.
The second contribution of these workspaces in my career is in the very nomenclature of the expression “Residence of artistic creation” which is “creation”. A residency is made to go and create, experiment, find new aesthetics and experience them in relation to one’s discourse and/or one’s research. I call it “doing.”
I am sad to notice today that so-called creation residencies are perceived more as production residencies by the majority of artists. Artists arrive and produce exactly what they are used to doing. No risk taking. We stay in our comfort zone.
I noticed that your works had been exhibited in a gallery in Abuja. What has been your experience with the art space in Nigeria?
I participated a few years ago in a collective exhibition in Abuja. Unfortunately, I forgot the name of this event. Nevertheless, I know that the initiator of the project is called Dolly. Since she couldn’t return my works after the exhibition, I asked that they be destroyed. I’m counting on you to put me in touch with the managers of this gallery so that I know what’s going on.
This somewhat bizarre situation shows how much we lack professionals in this environment in Africa. The least we could do was to send me an email to tell me what we were planning to do with my work.
My experience with the Nigerian art world is not great and it is a bit sad. Sad because it goes through the exhibition curator Bisi Silva who carefully followed my work and its evolution. She had exposed me on several occasions. I was inconsolable after her death. May her soul rest in peace. Bisi forever. Love you mum Bisi.
Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the dynamism that exists in the Nigerian art scene. I hope that one day I will have the opportunity to come to a creative residency in this great country.
How would you compare that experience with how the art sector is in Cameroon?
Difficult to compare. They are two very different ecosystems. Two different cultural heritages (Nigeria=English culture, Cameroon=French culture), two very different approaches to art.
I think we just have to rejoice that these two beautiful countries participate in the influence of contemporary African art in the world by carrying within it the best artists of the continent.
Have you done exhibitions in Nigeria? If yes, what years?
I make a few. I believe the first was in Abuja and was called “Generation Y” and then I participated in Bisi Silva’s project called “The gallery of small things”. Unfortunately, I no longer remember the dates.
Tell us about your next project
I was invited a few months ago during the Dak’art biennial in 2022 by a German artist, Stefanie ZOCHE, to do a joint residency in Senegal around environmental issues. I traveled with her to Senegal and discovered the damage caused by climate change in Mboro, in Mont Roland. This trip shocked me.
This residence allowed me to understand that global warming is not just a slogan, but a reality. I live in a country where the forest is present on more than 80 percent of the territory. This residence in Senegal allowed me to understand that we are on borrowed time in Cameroon.
I recently spent two months in Bamako observing the damage caused by climate change and I reacted by producing
Yvon Ngassam
two installations that talk about it at the Médina gallery in Bamako.
I am coming out of a creation residency at the “LesChangeurs” space for two weeks in Togo in a small village called Agbodrafo. I saw houses eaten away by the rising waters. I believe that for the next few years I will focus on environmental issues.
How do you relax?
I have never perceived my practice of art as a job, a profession. I like to say that I have fun all the time. I don’t have a specific moment dedicated to relaxation. Being an artist is a way of life in its own right, my whole life is dedicated to art. Even in the execution of a fun activity I can unearth a moment of reflection, of questioning. I enjoy the grace of living; I enjoy being a human.
