‘If the lion does not tell its story, the hunter will’: a century of thrilling Cameroonian art

Key players in the country’s art history feature in a hefty new tome that covers everything from royal-carvers to bronze-smiths to work inspired by a horrific video smuggled out of a torture chamber One Sunday last year, the Cameroonian-Guadeloupean-French artist Roxane Mbanga was relaxing in bed when she received a message that made her sit up.

It was about working on an art history project.

Growing up in Paris, she had been a regular at Maasai Mara, the now defunct restaurant owned by her father, where Africans in the diaspora, including the artists whom he helped organise exhibitions, convened to eat and chat.

Thus the concept of a book, attempting for the first time to comprehensively compile and document key players in Cameroon’s vast visual art history, made obvious sense to her.

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