Connecting Historical and Contemporary African Art: Totem 01/01–18

Now on view at the CMA, and a highlight of the must cma campaign featuring some of the most beloved artworks in the museum’s collection is the sculpture Totem 01/01–18 (Baga-Batcham-Alunga-Kota) by Cameroonian artist Hervé Youmbi. In the essay below, CMA’s Curator of African Art Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi discusses the artist’s influences and the sculpture’s connection between historical and contemporary African art.

Totem 01/01–18, is a soaring masterpiece of form and concept consisting of a combination of celebrated canonical African styles from disparate cultures.

In this stunning sculpture, two Gabon Kota-Mahongwe reliquary figures sit atop the impressive tsesah crest, widely referred to as a Batcham mask in reference to the area of the Cameroon Grassfields where the earliest example was collected.

The back of the tsesah cradles a section of the four-sided Alunga society’s initiation mask of the Bembe people of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Both forms surmount a Janus-faced Baga headdress of the countries of Guinea and Guinea Bissau that sits solidly at the base of the superstructure.

The sculpture’s entire surface is covered with a mix of white, yellow, black, and red beads, finely put together to simultaneously elicit harmony and contrast. The beads were first strung together with thread and then adhered to the wood surface with glue. Silicone mastic, a transparent adhesive, was applied to the entire beaded surface to seal it off from dust and moisture that might seep in between the beads. The beaded hybrid sculpture is by the Cameroonian artist Hervé Youmbi.

Born in 1973 in Central African Republic, Youmbi is based in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city and its economic and cultural capital. He first trained at the Institut de Formation Artistique de Mbalmayo, in Cameroon’s center province, the only dedicated art school in the country in the 1990s. He had further training in the early 2000s at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, France. From the onset, Youmbi’s practice has engaged with questions around the local and global forces that shape the art object. A prime and recurring consideration in his work is the art world’s value system and its role in the reception, interpretation, and circulation of African art, both historical and contemporary. In addition, he contemplates how longstanding artistic traditions can remain relevant and attuned to the demands of modern life. Both concerns anchor the brilliantly conceived Totem 01/01–18.

Since 2010 Youmbi has travelled from metropolitan Douala to the more rural Cameroon Grassfields to engage with the local masking traditions of his ancestral home. This was something that he was already doing throughout his teenage and early adult years, journeying regularly to the Grassfields to visit family and attend social events. Such back-and-forth movement between the urban center and the countryside is customary for many people in Africa. He would subsequently widen his focus to incorporate canonical styles from other parts of Cameroon and farther afield, as is the case in Totem 01/01–18.

In the Grassfields, Youmbi enlisted village artists in a manner that recalls the workshop model in African art. He does not do the actual carving and beading of his sculptures; instead, he supervises the village artists who do the carving and beading. He first conceptualizes and makes renderings of what he has in mind. He then transfers the sketches as rudimentary outlines with chalk on a single block of wood — as with Totem 01/01–18 — or on several logs if they are expected to be grouped, as in other works.

Totem 01/01–18 is the first completed piece in the new Totems series that Youmbi began in late 2017. It builds on his previous bodies of work, such as Les Masques Célèstes (2016–17) in its combination of multiple mask forms assembled in a superstructure, as well as Visages des Masques, which Youmbi began in 2014.

Visages des Masques was Youmbi’s initial experiment in contemplating ways of reinventing tradition-based art forms to serve a ritual function in the Cameroon Grassfields and simultaneously act as contemporary art to be collected by public and private collections. Inspired by the visual and conceptual complexity of the Bamileke Ku’ngang society performance he witnessed in 2010, and with the consent of Ku’ngang leaders, he began to create the series of masks that were first performed and ritualized by the Ku’ngang society during a communal event. They were subsequently desacralized and collected by institutions, including the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey.

Totem 01/01–18’s connection between historical and contemporary African art is particularly striking and shows how African artists continue to draw from indigenous aesthetic traditions and belief systems.

“Totem 01/01–18’s connection between historical and contemporary African art is particularly striking and shows how African artists continue to draw from indigenous aesthetic traditions and belief systems.” — Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, Curator of African Art

The Kota guardian figures symbolize the passage to the world of the ancestors and is attached to a basket that bears ancestral relics. The Kota-Mahongwe mask in Totem 01/01–18 maintains structural and stylistic fidelity with the Kota reliquary figure from the Mahongwe region in northeast Gabon, which abuts the Congo.

Typical of Kota-Mahongwe, it has an austere, concave, and shield-like form and is abridged at the bottom. Alternating strips of yellow and black beads mirror the copper and brass strips that would cover an original mask. The conventional Alunga-Bembe mask marks the transition from adolescence to adulthood and is used in the context of initiation and rites of passage by the Alunga male secret society. Brightly painted, the mask has an owl-like visage on its two sides that represents the omniscient world of spirits and ancestors. The imposing tsesah, or Batcham, crest embodies power and social mobility and is used to mark important events in the society, such as the coronation of a new king, and would be danced during the funeral of a high-ranking person. The Baga mask, which is borne on the shoulder in traditional settings and danced to herald the farming season, represents a nurturing woman, fertility, and growth. As a whole, the sculpture reflects an African truth that a mask or masquerade is three-dimensional and, as such, must be viewed from multiple vantage points.

The artist’s careful selection of these masks suggests that he is well aware of their significance, function, and meaning. As a composition, the masks narrate the cycle of life — beginning with birth, moving to growth, and ending with the journey to the ancestral realm. It is instructive that the work is titled 01/01–18, the first of a series, marking the birth of a new year and the beginning of life.