Born in Yaoundé in 1992, Franck Kemkeng Noah graduates with a Master in Fine Arts from IBAF. In 2017, he moves to Amiens (France) and follows a second Master in Artistic Research at Université de Picardie in France. Soon, he starts painting on abandoned carpets. The discarded household objects he finds on the streets become a new support for a series of works which serve as narrative points in the history of migrations.
Often labelled hybrid art, Franck Kemkeng Noah's work is an experimental approach mainly characterized mainly by painting. The artist's aesthetic research, at the core of which mixed productions are born, is a uniquely vibrant perspective on notions of interculturalism, identity, and civilization. The mixing of human cultures constituting the center of his concerns.
" My traditional culture thus constitutes for me a true richness and my main source of inspiration which, in my creations, will merge with that which opens to me but also which is imposed by means like globalization or immigration
creating a kind of palace of memory. The confrontation with the works born from this experience encourages personal questioning about oneself, about the other, about our human and cultural nature. This idea of fusion between my traditional origins and the culture of the other for the creation of a new self is also inspired by Oswald de Andrade's Brazilian Anthropophagy."
Articulated through various means of artistic expression such as painting, sculpture, interactive performance, or installation, the dialogue between traditional African dances and masquerades, and mostly Western geographical and architectural spaces is the true protagonist of Kemkeng Noah's artistic universe. His distinctive style and artistic approach brought his work to global attention in exhibitions like On the Road to Chieftaincies of Cameroon at the Musée du Quai Branly (Paris, 2022), at Fondation Blachère (Marseille, 2021), or more recently at Texas Southern University Museum (Houston, 2023). Since 2021, the artist has been living and working in Brussels (Belgium).
Selected Exhibitions & Collections
Solo exhibitions
2023 “CULT” BLAACKBOX, Antwerpen, Belgium
2023 “MEMORY PALACE – The Creations of Franck Kemkeng Noah”, Texas Southern University Museum, Houston, USA
2022 “MEMORY PALACE” at Didier Claes, Brussels, Belgium
2020 AKAA, Es Saadi Palace, Marrakech, Morocco
2019 AAC gallery, Amiens, France
2016 “Hybridity as a Factor of Tolerance", Hilton Hotel, Yaoundé, Cameroon
2015 “All in One and One in All", Goethe Institute, Cameroon
Group exhibitions
2022 Abderrahman Slaoui Foundation Museum, Casablanca, Morocco
2022 “On the Road of the Chieftaincies of Cameroon, from the Visible to the Invisible" at Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, Paris, France
2022 Cape Town Art Fair, African Arty gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2021 Blachère Foundation, Avignon, France
2021 Afritopia, BLAACKBOX, Brussels, Belgium
2019 “Young Artist", Art' Course gallery, Strasbourg, France
2018 “Quinzaine de Parrainage ", Stéphane Salord Gallery, Marseille, France
Collections
Texas Southern University Museum of Houston, Texas, USA
Fondation Blachère, Avigon, France
The Pas-Chaudoir Collection of Contemporary Art from Africa and the Diaspora, Antwerp, Belgium
Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva, Switzerland
Klaus Pas +41 78 614 54 02 / +32 468 57 56 57