old on to your head gear: Toguo’s Institute of Visual Arts is about to morph from two cinderblock structures in small Cameroonian towns (Bandjoun, M’Balmayo) into one relatively grandiose structure in Douala, a port city of 2 million people on the Gulf of Guinea. In its new home the Institute of Visual Arts will display work not only by African artists but also by such luminaries as Damien Hirst, Martha Rosler, Marcel Dzama, Claude Lévêque, Tania Bruguera… It will offer workshops, lecture series, theatre/performance/music, and an art library to the public. Perhaps the Institute’s groundbreaking move is the largess of the French government, you think? Private European philanthropy? A Cameroonian big man bitten by the art bug? Nope. The Institute of Visual Arts is the brainchild of Bartélémy Toguo, 36 years old, a self-made artist and a local guy made good. Toguo is a versatile artist who uses sculpture, video, photography, drawing and performance to create an artistic language arising from encounters and voyages. He developed a profile in the mid 90’s through a series of performances in airports and public transit sites such as train stations and frontiers. Toguo has observed that traditional African art is today entirely in the hands of western institutions and collectors, and that contemporary “African” art is largely produced and collected in the west. That’s the reason he is investing his time and energy in the Institute. Given the double loss for Africa of traditional and contemporary art, Toguo has decided to make sure that there is some place on the African continent where both Western and African artists can experience the contemporary art world in a unique setting. “I want to do something worthwhile with my modest means,” he explains. Luckily in Cameroon you get a lot of bang for your buck, so Toguo’s new Institute should be up and running in good time. It won’t have the immediate effect that, say, the Guggenheim has had on Bilbao, but afterart news is intrigued. We’ll be keeping you informed in future issues of our paper on progress in Douala as the walls go up, the roof goes on and the art goes in. Stay tuned.
Richard Dailey (Paris)
Barthélémy Toguo
eroticotoguo
Published March 2003
This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2003 at 10:40 pm and is filed under afterartnews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
