This work is part of a series of sculptures commissioned for the exhibition A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science-fiction, which took place between November 2, 2022 and April 10, 2023. Josèfa Ntjam presented a diorama taking the the form of a phantasmagorical seascape for the panoramic bay of the Centre Pompidou, Metz.
Its luxuriant waters, inhabited by anemones and algae, form a shelter, perhaps the lair of the African water goddess Mami Wata, where fragile bubbles nestle entwined and interlinked with a web of algae. These spheres harbour fragments of intersecting histories, both Cameroonian and French: faded portraits of resistance fighters appear alongside those of Adama and Assa Traoré or figureheads of the anti-colonial struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Félix Moumié or Ernest Ouandié, leaders of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC). The whole installation forms a symbiosis, an “ecosystem of interconnected revolts and uprisings”, according to the artist, that embraces stories of resistance, past and future, with the tides of time.
This work appeals through its peculiar shape. It is a tondo, which was installed in the exhibition to appear as a porthole enclosure, like a door to another forgotten world. The superimposed holographic photographs and effects creating a sensory overload.
