Cameroon: Art, Music and Literature

Imbolo Mbue is a native of the seaside town of Limbe, Cameroon. She holds a BS from Rutgers University and an MA from Columbia University. A resident of the United States for more than a decade, she lives in New York City. BEHOLD THE DREAMERS, her critically acclaimed debut novel, won the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was named by The New York Times and The Washington Post as one of their Notable Books of 2016.

Leopard Caryatid Stool retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/24624913

Bead-covered wooden stools and thrones are one of the most prevalent art forms among the various kingdoms and chiefdoms in the Cameroon grasslands. This example, once part of the royal treasury, belongs in the category of "travel stools," usually used in conjunction with more private, minor ceremonies and rituals at the palace. The leopard imagery confirms the object’s royal status. It alludes to the belief that the king was able to temporarily transform himself into this feared predator.
In Cameroon powerful animal imagery was associated with the wealth and prestige of rulers. This stool incorporates a ferocious leopard. It was once owned by the king of Bandjoun, a kingdom located on the west coast of Africa.

Shot in Cameroon and Brussels, Je ne suis pas moi-même examines the complex network surrounding the international market of African antiquities, and the contradictions in a European art market hungry for new tribal objects. Where do the African masks come from? What journey do these masks make before their unveiling in the windows of the biggest galleries or art collections in Europe? Who determines the economic and aesthetic value of these objects now that colonialism is supposedly dead? And then there's a continent called Africa, in need of economic resources and therefore willing to sell its cultural heritage or, if need be, to fake it. The authenticity of the objects becomes blurred when the people that once adored them start to sell them.