Abstract
Keywords:
Public art; Public space; Collective identity; Imagination; Memory; Decolonization; Sociability; Cameroon; Togetherness; Cultural mediation.
In the contemporary Cameroonian context, national belonging and collective identity are fraught with historical and memorial tensions inherited from colonization.
This article examines how doual’art, through its interventions in public space and its curatorial projects, contributes to the recomposition of togetherness identities and the creation of a dynamic sense of community. By mobilizing public art as a relational tool, the institution transforms daily practices, imaginaries, and urban uses. In doing so, doual’art demonstrates that collective identity is constructed through memory, gestures, interactions, and shared experiences.
Le Théâtre-Source, Philip Aguirre y Otegui, art public, 2010
© Photo : doual’art
Introduction
In Cameroon, the terms "homeland" and "nation" have gradually become established in media, political, and everyday discourse. They circulate as unifying signifiers, mobilized to invoke unity, loyalty, or the defense of a shared territory. Yet, behind this apparent self-evidence lies a deeper question: what does it mean today to belong to a homeland whose foundations have been successively redefined by colonization, administrative partitions, and post-independence political restructuring?
While the Cameroonian state exists legally, institutionally, and geographically, the shared sense of belonging remains fraught with tensions related to memory, language, and region. This situation reflects what the Senegalese economist and thinker Felwine Sarr describes as a "crisis of the imagination"¹ : a collective difficulty in producing autonomous representations of the future when the symbolic frameworks inherited from colonization continue to guide ways of thinking about politics and the commons. The imagination, far from being secondary, constitutes a strategic territory where possible forms of coexistence are defined. In this context, contemporary creation appears as a privileged space for questioning, shifting, and recomposing collective representations.
Since its founding in 1991 in Douala by Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell and the late Didier Schaub, doual'art has engaged with urban space as a critical and relational site. Its mission is to support contemporary creation, to integrate art into public spaces, and to foster participatory dynamics involving artists, residents, and researchers. Far from producing an official discourse on the nation, the institution has created situations where the nation can be conceived differently: not as a fixed slogan, but as an ongoing process. It is from this interplay between history, imagination, and creation that this journey takes shape, where the shared experience is composed like a work that is never truly finished.
I. Decolonizing and recomposing our relationship to belonging to the commons
Decolonizing and recomposing our relationship to belonging means critically examining the symbolic and political frameworks through which we collectively define ourselves. It involves examining the notion of homeland not as a natural given, but as a historical construct marked by colonial legacies, collective memory fractures, and political uses. Recomposing belonging therefore implies shifting these frameworks in order to open up the possibility of a more inclusive and relational commonality. This reinterpretation first requires distinguishing between the related concepts of nation, country, and homeland.
The nation refers to a shared political project, to what Benedict Anderson calls an "imagined community"², structured by institutions and symbols. The country designates a geographical and cultural space where the elements of relief, languages, rhythms are experienced in a relational dynamic. The homeland, on the other hand, pertains to a more intimate dimension: an internalized memory, shaped by history and by the feeling of a collective destiny, what Fatou Diome refers to as the "first country"³. These registers cross paths without merging. One can recognize a state without deeply identifying with it; one can live in a territory without sharing a common memory. It is within this gap that the need for a critical recomposition for doual’art arises.
In Cameroon, colonial narratives have profoundly complicated the construction of a shared national identity. The German, then French and British administrations established ethnic classifications designed to facilitate territorial control. These categories, stemming from a logic of management and fragmentation, were partly reused after independence. They contributed to reinforcing symbolic hierarchies, fueling regional rivalries, and undermining the emergence of a shared vision. Decolonizing the idea of homeland does not mean erasing history, but also transforming these rigid categories into spaces of relationship. For example, by addressing the notion of "motherland", we open up a fruitful perspective in this regard: that of thinking about belonging not as a vertical injunction, but as a horizontal bond based on transmission, care, and shared memory. It is about relearning to read our differences without ranking them and reflecting on how to transform symbolic boundaries into relational constellations.
II. I. Public art as a socio-aesthetics of togetherness
Public art is central to doual’art’s reflections and investments. The institution does not limit itself to intervening in physical locations: it engages with urban space to create situations where social connection, sensory experience, and collective participation converge. Thus, doual’art’s approach consists of conceiving public space as a shared territory, a space for relationships and shared experiences, where sociability, collective memory, and a sense of belonging are built. Public art thus becomes a privileged tool for producing and mediating shared experiences. As Nicolas Bourriaud notes (Relational Aesthetics, 1998)⁴,Contemporary art is not limited to creating objects, but constructs situations where relationships between individuals are central, transforming public space into a place of sociability, exchange, and co-experimentation. The work of doual’art perfectly illustrates this logic: the artwork is not merely a physical object, but a relational device capable of creating connections, facilitating interactions, and transforming perceptions of the city, while simultaneously producing situations where bonds and a sense of belonging are redefined. This is particularly true of SUD (Salon Urbain de Douala), a triennial festival launched by doual’art in 2007, where some of its commissions transform the city of Douala into an open-air museum. It invites artists to create site-specific projects that explore urban, social, and cultural issues, while encouraging the active participation of residents.
Among the emblematic works of public art in Douala, some reveal the relational and emotional power of the city. Joseph Francis Sumegne's La Nouvelle Liberté (1996), commonly known as Ndjoun Djoun at the Deïdo roundabout, is made from materials salvaged in an urban reuse context. It is more than just a sculpture. The work engages in a dialogue with passersby, reflecting back to them what they share in the public space. It evokes an imagery linked to fetishes, the waste that everyone discards in the city, and forms of collective identity visible in advertising posters or in certain institutional symbols such as the passport of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC).
In 2007, Alioum Moussa created La Passerelle de Bessengue to connect neighborhoods long isolated due to tensions related to traffic and urban life. The work thus projects an imagery of coexistence and mobility. To this day, it acts as a catalyst for encounters and interactions among the residents of Bessengue. It gives substance to the idea of togetherness in a territory previously marked by discord.
Finally, Philip Aguirre y Otegui's Théâtre-Source, created in 2013 around a natural spring in Ndogpassi III, transforms a simple watering hole in the neighborhood into an amphitheater. This space is located in an area marked by youth delinquency and various intergenerational tensions. The artistic intervention converts this space into a place for social interaction, ceremonies, and coexistence.
Joseph Francis Sumegne, La Nouvelle Liberté, Art public,1996.
© Photo : doual’art
These masterpieces fully illustrate how public art can create situations where connections, stories, and collective perceptions of the city are reshaped. They demonstrate that public art is not only visual, but relational: it transforms the city into a territory of co-experimentation, memory, and belonging, embodying the togetherness through collective creation.
These projects are accompanied by socio-cultural mediation aimed at their appropriation by communities, visitors, students, and the city itself. One of these initiatives, the School of Dialogue, engages young people in educational activities focused on artistic sensitivity, creation and civic responsibility, making public art the subject of an interactive dynamic and appropriation. The DVAH (Douala Ville d’Art et d’Histoire) program, for its part, offers tours designed for diverse audiences to convey the narratives and significance of the various artworks.
Thus, through its works and installations, doual’art not only produces artistic forms, but also participates in the construction of a contemporary heritage based on shared experience. Togetherness appears as a process in development, opening up reflection on the links between heritage, collective identities, and the concept of the in-commons.
III. Treatise on Contemporary Heritage and Collective Identities
In 2018, following the publication of the Report on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy⁵, of doual’art, questioned the nature and future of this heritage. This reflection has opened up a wider question: how to think about heritage today, not only as a legacy to be passed on, but as a collective process to be redefined in the present? In other words, how can heritage become an active space for building the common good rather than simply an object of preservation or appropriation? It is within this alternative dynamic that doual’art’s approach is situated, inviting various forms of artistic creation into its space.
Within the framework of these restitutions, the theme of Contemporary Heritage and Collective Identities serves as the guiding thread for doual’art’s initiatives, which aim to explore cultural practices and urban expressions in contemporary Cameroon. This theme has been deployed particularly among young artists through group exhibitions such as ART and COJES (Concours Jeunes Espoirs ), both conceived as preludes to the SUD (Sustainable Developments) and dedicated to fostering the creative expression of new generations. These initiatives have allowed emerging artists to question, experiment with, and represent heritage in its current forms, highlighting the gestures, hybrid languages, and social inventions that shape collective identities. All of these projects are now fueling the national debate on redefining the homeland, not as a fixed inheritance, but as an interactive space where memory, experience, and shared identity are constructed.
Oumarou Dizoumbe, Kmer-linguiste, 2020, installation, dimension variable.
© Photo : doual’art
Oumarou Dizoumbe's pictorial and sound installation "Kmer-linguiste", presented as part of the ART2020 exhibition, celebrates Camfranglais as a living heritage of Cameroon. This project explores this hybrid language, a blend of French, English, and local languages, which emerged in the 1970s and is now widely used by young people across the country⁶. Although informal and often taboo, this language embodies a collective creative process, witness to a shared historical memory and vector of unity beyond socio-ethnic divisions.
As part of COJES (2022), several works highlighted how contemporary heritage can become a shared space. Leuna Boumbimboo’s video installation La Piole (2021) illustrates this dynamic by showcasing emblematic Cameroonian dishes such as ndolé, eru, chicken DG, taro with yellow sauce, and beignet-haricot-bouillie. These dishes, which transcend ethnic boundaries, contribute to the formation of a shared culinary humanity and transform cooking and eating into a collective, aesthetic, and political experience. Similarly, Emmanuel Mbote with Toghu (2020) and Louise La Fortune Sombga with Guide (2020) celebrate Cameroonian textile heritage, particularly fabrics from the Northwest and West regions, notably Toghu and Ndop. These fabrics, worn at major international events such as the London 2012 Olympic Games, demonstrate their strong symbolic significance far beyond ethnic affiliations.
These various initiatives dedicated to questioning contemporary heritage have opened up a broader field of reflection on history itself, conceived as a critical device capable of producing collective consciousness and engaging in an active reappropriation of territories and memories.
Leuna Noumbimboo, La piol, 2021, installation vidéo,2 min 08 s.
© Photo : doual’art
IV. A critical re-reading of history as a condition for a collective consciousness
Collective memory constitutes a privileged space for exploring togetherness, not as a simple preservation of the past, but as an active tool for reflection and critical reappropriation. For doual’art, it allows us to understand how histories and territories shape collective identities and how heritage can become a vehicle for dialogue and shared experience. By combining archives, contemporary practices, and cultural mediation, doual’art, through its recent projects, explores this dimension, thus opening up spaces where the public can question the past and its impact on the present.
From this historical perspective, German colonial Kamerun (1884–1914) appears as the moment of the establishment of an imposed administrative unification that profoundly disrupted customs and reconfigured pre-existing social ties. The Anglo-French partition of 1916 then introduced a lasting structural duality, marked by the establishment of two administrative cultures, two official languages, and two distinct legal systems. The subsequent periods of independence and reunification accelerated institutional transformations without allowing the necessary time for the development of a truly shared common vision. From these historical fractures emerges a persistent tension: the nation can exist as a legal and territorial construct, while collective consciousness remains unstable, oscillating between the institutional order and the lived experience of its inhabitants.
These administrative categories were gradually internalized by the population and normalized in collective representations. Over time, they contributed to shaping mutual perceptions often marked by mistrust. After Cameroon's independence in 1960, certain political dynamics sometimes reactivated these interpretive frameworks inherited from the colonial period. Their mobilization had several effects: it reinforced symbolic hierarchies between groups, fueled rivalries at the local and regional levels, and weakened the emergence of a genuine idea of a "common homeland." In this context, ethnic affiliations, perceived as fixed and structuring, often took precedence over national solidarities, making it more difficult to build a shared political vision at the national level.
The exhibition Once upon a time the birth of Staat Kamerun (1884–1914)⁷ is part of this reflection by exploring the colonial genesis of the State and its lasting effects through a dialogue between archives, historical artifacts and contemporary works, in order to re-examine the processes by which history shapes political imaginaries and collective memories.
Once upon a time, the birth of Staat Kamerun, 1884–1914, detail of exhibition hall, National Museum of Yaoundé, 2024.
It is undeniable that identities that were once flexible, fluid, and evolving have gradually become fixed into blocks perceived as permanent. This rigidification has often occurred at the expense of a shared collective imagination and has sometimes been a point of contention among certain independence leaders⁸.
Faced with this legacy, several contemporary artists are proposing avenues for reflection and symbolic reparation. In his series of portraits, Cameroonian Heroes (2013), Hervé Youmbi revisits historical and cultural figures of Cameroon in order to question identity narratives and their construction. For his part, Justin Ebanda, through the exhibition Pa(e)nser le Vivant, presented in 2022 at doual’art, invites us to rethink the forms of coexistence and collective memory. Their approaches are not only about healing the effects of colonization, but also about rehabilitating shared narratives capable of nourishing the construction of a shared memory.
Ultimately, this exploration shows that memory, far from being a simple, fixed heritage, can become a living space for experimentation, dialogue, and reconciliation. It thus opens the possibility of rethinking the homeland as a shared territory, shaped by the intertwining of history, lived experiences, and a constantly evolving collective identity.
Conclusion
This analysis reveals that all of these reflections and projects demonstrate how doual’art has engaged with contemporary heritage and collective identities as a living space for dialogue, experimentation, and the recomposition of the in-common.
Whether it involves promoting hybrid languages, culinary practices, textiles, or revisiting archives and colonial history, the institution shows that heritage is not simply an inheritance to be preserved. It can also become a vehicle for shared experiences and a lever for nurturing collective consciousness.
The list of initiatives and projects undertaken by doual’art around this theme is particularly extensive. The examples mentioned here represent only a small sample illustrating the richness and diversity of the approaches implemented to consider homeland and identity as dynamic, open, and inclusive constructs.
Notes
1. Felwine Sarr, Afrotopia, édition Philippe Rey, Paris, 2016, 158 pages.
2. Benedict Anderson, L’Imaginaire national : Réflexions sur l’origine et l’essor du nationalisme, édition La Découverte, Paris, 1996, 216 pages.
3. Fatou Diome, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, éditions Anne Carrière, Paris, 2003, 295 pages.
4. Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, édition Presses du réel, Collection Documents sur l’art,1998, 122 pages.
5. Commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron and submitted in November 2018, the Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain : Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle, authored by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, analyzes the legal, historical, and political conditions surrounding the restitution of African works held in French museums. This report also proposes rethinking heritage relations between Africa and Europe by laying the foundations for a new relational ethic.
6. Constance Mbassi Manga, Language, home, and belonging in migratory contexts : The case of camfranglais, first edition, Routledge edition, New York, 2025, 280 pages.
7. A traveling project initiated and supported by doual’art, the National Museum and the Goethe-Institut Kamerun from October 30, 2024 to December 2, 2025. It was shown at the National Museum of Cameroon in Yaoundé and at the Sawa Palace of Culture in Douala..
8. For Cameroonian independence activists, the nation is not simply an administrative construct inherited from colonization. It is first and foremost a political and moral project of collective emancipation, founded on the dignity, sovereignty, and unity of the peoples of Cameroon, transcending ethnic or regional affiliations. For figures such as John Ngu Foncha, Rudloph Douala Manga Bell, Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix-Roland Moumié, Ernest Ouandié, and others, the nation is defined by:
• liberation from the colonial yoke and the right of peoples to self-determination;
• the rebuilding of a society based on social justice and equality;
• the recognition of a shared destiny, where cultural diversity is not an obstacle but an asset. Thus, the nation, as they conceived it, was not to reproduce the categories imposed by the colonial administration, but to unite diverse identities within a common horizon of struggle, responsibility, and a shared future.
9. This series was recently completed with the portrait of Mongo Beti and presented as part of the Ville Cruelle (doual’art) exhibition.
Bibliography
- Benedict Anderson, L’Imaginaire national : Réflexions sur l’origine et l’essor du nationalisme, édition La Découverte, Paris, 1996, 216 pages.
- Constance Mbassi Manga, Language, home, and belonging in migratory contexts : The case of camfranglais, first edition, Routledge edition, New York2025, 280 pages.
- Fatou Diome, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, éditions Anne Carrière, Paris, 2003, 295 pages.
- Felwine Sarr, Afrotopia, édition Philippe Rey, Paris, 2016, 158 pages.
- Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, édition Presses du réel, Collection Documents sur l’art, 1998, 122 pages.
© Photo : Ismail Nsangou
Patrick Ngouana
Based in Douala (Cameroon), Patrick Ngouana is an art critic and curator at Espace doual’art. His current work explores contemporary crises. Beyond their outward manifestations, he interrogates resistance, resilience, as well as the historical, social, and cultural legacies, collective memories, and power dynamics within African societies. Winner of the RIAC (International Contemporary Art Encounters) Art Criticism Prize in 2021, he has participated in numerous curatorial residencies focused on reflection and writing. His most recent residency, Asiko Art School, took place in Cairo (Egypt) under the theme "holding memory".