The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of October 23, 2019

Totem 01/01-18 (Baga-Batcham-Alunga-Kota)

2018

Hervé Youmbi

(Cameroon, b. 1973)

Wood, beads, glue and silicon mastic

Overall: 188 x 53 x 38 cm (74 x 20 7/8 x 14 15/16 in.)

Purchase from the Karl B. Goldfield Trust 2018.5

Location

108A Sub-Saharan

Fun Fact

The towering hybrid sculpture consists of contemporary carvings of four canonical African masks.

Description

Totem 01/01-18 is a brilliant work that plays off the conventional codes of African art to present subversive arguments around issues of taxonomy, commodification, identity, and the system of value that underpins African art in the market and museums. It is a contemporary carving that combines five canonical African mask forms—Kota-Mahongwe guardian figures sit atop a Batcham mask of the Cameroon Grassfields whose back bears a Bembe Alunga mask, which surmounts a Baga d’mba headdress of Guinea/Guinea Bissau at the base—into a soaring superstructure.

Provenance
2018
(Axis Gallery, New York, NY, 2018, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
2018
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, 2018
Citations
Malaquais, Dominique. “Imag(IN)ing Racial France, Take 3 – Herve Youmbi.” In Public Culture 23:1 (2011).
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi. “In the Long Shadows of Euro-America, or, What is Global Contemporary,” In African Arts 48, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 10-11. p. 10-11
Malaquais, Dominique. “Playing (in) the Marketfield: Herve Youmbi and the Art World Maze,” In Cahiers d’etudes africaines, no. 223 (2016): 559-579. p. 559-579
Forni, Silvia. “Masks on the Move: Defying Genres, Styles, and Traditions in the Cameroonian Grassfields.” In African Arts 49, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 38-53. p. 38-53
König, Kasper, Britta Peters, and Marianne Wagner. Skulptur Projekte Munster 2017. Exh. Cat. Leipzig: Spector Books, June 10 – October 1, 2017.
Source URL: https://cmaweb23-bbn-2.clevelandart.org/art/2018.5