Born in Bangui, Central African Republic, in 1973 and raised in neighbouring Cameroon, Herv\u00e9 Youmbi studied art theory and developed an interest in installation art, which he later pursued, through both practice and research, in France at ESAD (Ecole Sup\u00e9rieure des Arts D\u00e9coratifs de Strasbourg). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Youmbi often integrates traditional Cameroonian sculpture techniques within his installations and into performance and video. This allows him to juxtapose indigenous African art traditions with contemporary global art conventions, and destabilise what is regarded as \u201ctraditional\u201d versus \u201ccontemporary.\u201d Youmbi\u2019s series Visages des Masques\/Faces of Masks<\/em> transgresses these established categories in several ways. His departure point is to insert mask forms that diverge from the Western stereotypes of \u201cAfrican Art\u201d for this region of Cameroon into \u201ctraditional\u201d Bamileke ritual performances, thus embodying them with efficacy and authenticity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Youmbi\u2019s Les Tr\u00f4nes C\u00e9lestes<\/em> is an installation of beaded caryatid thrones \u201ctraditional\u201d for rulers of the Cameroon Grasslands, each seat of power supported by an animal traditionally symbolic of idealized leadership\u2014except for the tortoise that Youmbi has slyly inserted here to suggest that the deliberate creature might epitomize better leadership than, say, the leopard, a stealthy killer. His series Totems to Haunt Our Dreams<\/em> confronted how difficult it was for artists to travel and network within Africa, despite shared aspirations and similar subordination to commodification, which reflects the globalisation of capital that nevertheless serves to constrain African artists within parochial silos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Herv\u00e9 Youmbi is a founding member of Cercle Kapsiki, a collective of five Cameroonian visual artists established in 1998. The K Factory, the collective\u2019s home, based in New Bell, one of the poorest but also one of the most dynamic districts of Douala, is a flexible space, experimental and open to a wide range of collaborations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":750,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/residence"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}