Projects
Curator: Annette Schemmel
Coordination: Annette Schemmel and Marjolijn Dijkman
Partners: Enough Room for Space, Brussels BE / Gueststudio DCR, The Hague, NL / ArtBakery, Douala Cameroon, CM / diARTgonale, CM / NEST, The Hague, NL / SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin DE / IWALEWA-Haus, Universität Bayreuth, DE
Support: Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, NL / Stroom, The Hague NL / IFA, DE
Artists: Marjolijn Dijkman, Beate Engl, Justine Ngaga, Christian Hanussek, Achillekà Komguem, Salifou Lindou, Vincent Meessen, Alioum Moussa, Maarten Vanden Eynde, Nicolas Eyedi
Critics: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Dominique Malaquais, Ruth Afane Belinga, amongst others
“Present Perfect!” explores current and historic relations between Europe and Cameroon from five intercultural perspectives from within the visual arts. The art journal diARTgonale will be repositioned during an editorial residency of Ruth Afane Belinga, Achillekà Komguem and Salifou Lindou in The Hague at Gueststudio DCR in Sept/Oct 2011. Throughout 2012, a sequence of five special editions will present five research projects of mixed artist teams from Cameroon and Europe (Moussa/Vanden Eynde, Dijkman/Eyidi, Meessen/n.n., Lindou/Hanussek, Ngaga/Engl). A critical, contextualising section will comment on each project. These journals will be distributed in The Hague, NL, Bayreuth, Berlin, DE, Brussels, BE, Bonendale/Douala, CM, and in artist initiatives, art schools, foreign cultural institutes throughout Cameroon. A travelling group exhibition will show the artistic research projects in full size and in the context of recent work made on the same geographic axis.
“Present Perfect!” challenges “otherising” practices (Stuart Hall) of the global art world and highlights what the lately deceased artist and visionary Goddy Leye (CM) stated: “Art is universal (…) although the means of presentation and production or even the character of the works changes with the localities, we’re united in the same quest.”
