Em’kal Eyongakpa (b. 1981, Mamfe, Camerun) lives and works between West/Southern Cameroon and The Netherlands. He attended the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and graduated in Plant Biology and Ecology at the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon. Eyongakpa approaches the experienced, the unknown, as well as collective histories / transgenerational memories through a ritual use of repetition and transformation. Central to Eyongakpa’s practice is the quest for negotiations, coexistence and relationships between subjective and objective realms. His recent projects/performances evoke transgenerational memories (epigenetics), ethnobotany, and cosmologies, among others. He works with photography, video, sculpture, sound, text and performance. His interwoven installations not only obscure the boundaries between employed media but could also distort the notion of the real and the illusory. He imagines ancient alternative knowledge systems playing a vital role in forging more sustainable futures while negotiating with the current global socio-economic and political order. He imagines a future where “objective” and “subjective worlds” could coexist more.
