Playing (in) the Market: Hervé Youmbi and the Art World Maze

Dominique Malaquais ()
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Dominique Malaquais: IMAF - Institut des Mondes Africains - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - EPHE - École Pratique des Hautes Études - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: In 2010, Cameroonian artist Hervé Youmbi (1973-) embarked upon a project titled Totems to Haunt Our Dreams . This undertaking led him to several cities: Douala, where he makes his home; Aba, in Eastern Nigeria; Dakar; Johannesburg; Cotonou; Kinshasa; and New York City. Four years later, astride Douala and the Grassfields region of Western Cameroon, he set to work on a second project, called Visages de masques ("Faces of Masks"). In both Totems and Visages, Youmbi examines the place—and, at times, the non-place—that artists hailing from Africa occupy in the global art world. With considerable humor, a trenchant dose of irony and a richly nuanced reading of contemporary political and economic landscapes, he takes to task the structural violence of the institutions that constitute this world. Together, Totems and Visages powerfully critique the art market, the spaces and practices to which it gives rise, and the larger, late-capitalist system to which they collectively belong.

Keywords: Value; Contemporary Art; Hervé Yamguen; Hervé Youmbi; Art-World and Market; Commodification; Co-Optation; Decolonizing the Museum; Festishization; Institutional Critique; valeur; art contemporain; Hervé Yamguen; Hervé Youmbi; monde et marché de l'art; marchandisation; cooptation; décoloniser le musée; fétichisation; critique institutionnelle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Published in Cahiers d'études africaines, 2016, 223, pp. 559-580

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01511804

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