From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
The drive from the capital Yaoundé to the Western Highlands of Cameroon is longer than the map suggests; five hours punctuated by freelancing traffic officers, near-constant potholes and huge trucks, loaded with timber bound for China and treating the road like a personal bobsleigh run. We are here to visit Bandjoun Station, the art centre and museum of painter and sculptor Barthélémy Toguo. I am visiting with the art dealer Olivier Hervet, whose gallery HdM represents Toguo in China. Toguo asked him to bring a few key items from his preferred supplier in France. This means Olivier arrives with a microwave, rice cooker and toaster. A microwave, it turns out, can count as hand luggage.
The first thing Barthélémy wants to show us as soon as we arrive, hurrying us along before the sun sets, is another road. This one is in full construction. We admire. The workmen are mixing cement and placing paving stones on the red dirt trail through a luxurious undergrowth of creepers and vines, banana and avocado trees, under the glowing, darkening sky. He praises them for working on New Year’s Eve. Good workmen are hard to find everywhere. These men are from the anglophone part of Cameroon, about 60km north, which has been embroiled in civil conflict since 2016. President Paul Biya, who is 92 years old and has been in power since 1982, is not doing much to smooth things over. He is not doing much in terms of infrastructure either. Toguo says he has spent a fortune of his own money on the road because the track turns into a muddy coulis during rainy season. There is no point in waiting for authorities to step in.
Barthélémy Toguo was born in 1967 in Mbalmayo in southern Cameroon, though his family is from Bandjoun. He works across painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, performance and photography. In 2022 he was commissioned to create The Pillar of the Missing Migrants, a site-specific installation in the glass pyramid of the Louvre Museum. He has had solo exhibitions at the Musée du Quai Branly and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and his works are included in major public collections around the world. He stands out wherever he is thanks to his trademark sunglasses and heavy jewellery – large silver rings decorate his fingers like ornate knuckledusters. In Bandjoun Station, he sits at the head of the table in the courtyard, watching, giving orders, sometimes bantering, in the middle of the caravansary.
He was one of the first African artists to build an art centre in and for his local community, launching Bandjoun Station in 2007. Many artists have since followed suit with similar projects on the continent. Two of the most high profile are by diaspora artists: Yinka Shonibare founded Guest Artists Space Foundation (GAS) in Nigeria in 2019; and the same year, Kehinde Wiley opened Black Rock in Dakar, Senegal, a more luxurious establishment (it has a spa and gym).
Barthélémy Toguo in front of his work Las Meninas at the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, in 2022. Photo: Cesc Maymo via Getty Images
On the corner of a road, opposite a shack of a bar called L’Ambassade de Joie, Bandjoun Station is an imposing proposition, a largescale canvas for motifs that recur in Toguo’s watercolours and sketches. Shards of tiles make geometric patterns and anthropomorphic figures. Silhouettes of heads are linked by tongues of red. A cockerel-like creature sports horns. There are calabashes, human-looking crocodiles and patterns of clubs that make the gates look like gigantic playing cards.
There are circles and patterns that have an uncanny gaze. When we were shown around the museum and gallery that occupies half the complex, we were told that for many years local residents were reluctant to visit, fearing witchcraft.
The other half of the space is accommodation and facilities for guests. Earlier in December, the Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté had given masterclasses to a group of students in the seminar room. The ground floor is dedicated to Toguo’s library and his career to date; posters and leaflets from exhibitions and special commissions such as a poster for the 2011 Roland-Garros and Cameroon’s shirt for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. The first and second floor are occupied by a sustainable fashion showcase for local designers and a digital art exhibition of varying quality.
The last floor is devoted to his private collection, including some of his own delicate watercolours, some young Cameroonian artists, and more familiar names such as Soly Cissé and Chéri Samba. There are even two iPad prints by David Hockney. It is a singular place. There are Pygmy fetish dolls in a cabinet; a set of phallic-looking wooden traditional musical instruments; and a collection of intriguing objets in a display case: a Paul patisserie carton, a case of Dannemann cigarillos, a Plumier fountain-pen box. Tucked in the right-hand corner is an Air France meal tray. Toguo finds the design of aeroplane crockery pleasing. He has more among the 1,200 pieces he keeps in storage in his home.
While we are there, we also explore the environs of Bandjoun, a town and commune of some 7,000 people. It is one of the most important centres for the Bamiléké people, one of Cameroon’s largest ethnic groups, who trace their ancestry back to the Egyptians. Their traditions are better preserved than those of many other peoples in Cameroon – they say because they were one of the last to be colonised, and their rituals are kept alive by a network of local kings. We visit a new museum shaped like a giant spider with a two-headed snake wrapped around it. At a neighbouring chefferie we meet the king of Bafoussam, one of Toguo’s friends, who is a keen traveller and sculptor himself. All the figures of humans, spiders, calabashes and lions carved in wood have symbolic meanings rooted in Bamiléké myth.
On our return, I ask Toguo if he thinks people appreciate his work better once they have come to Bandjoun and understand the symbols, the colours and the culture of the place. He stiffens, challenging me to explain why it’s relevant. He is tired of the presumed subtext: that he is an African artist, not an artist first. I mention he is concerned by issues that are particularly pertinent to Cameroon: migration, the environment, corruption. Barthélémy continues to push back, arguing that his works deal with global issues. A performance work is brought up in which, dressed as a road-sweeper, he went to sit in the first-class carriage of a train in France and monitored people’s reactions. But he is adamant: ‘That was about class.’
Toguo evidently chafes against the label ‘African artist’. But regardless of this categorisation, Olivier Hervet thinks many artists who have built their careers in France find it difficult to break free of their home market. As well as delivering household appliances, Olivier is here to discuss Toguo’s upcoming solo exhibition, which will take place in November at HdM Beijing, after a month spent producing new paintings, new works on paper and paintings on Chinese ceramics in the city of Jingdezhen, known as the capital of ceramics in China.
Toguo is not as internationally well known as anglophone artists such as Shonibare and Wiley. African American artists fetch prices that are in a different league. The thought of those figures prompts Toguo to joke about moving to Miami. It is true that in some ways life is much easier there; for starters, they have good roads and a steady electricity supply.
The lack of infrastructure in Cameroon, and the complete absence of government support, means that Bandjoun Station only survives through Toguo’s drive, his passion, his money and his interest. He has plans to kit out a recording studio in the basement to record the funeral songs of the Bamiléké. For the moment, the only public place in Cameroon which displays his art is his own gallery. The rest of his work is leaving the country. He is thinking of building a contemporary art museum in Yaoundé, but for now, government regulations are stymieing progress. It is a lot for one man to do.
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.