Franck Kemkeng Noah

"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 such as 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."

Born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 1992, Franck Kemkeng Noah took an interest in drawing at a very early age. He graduated with a Master’s in Fine Arts from the Foumban Institute of Fine Arts (IBAF) in his native country. In 2017, he moved to France and took a second Master’s degree, this time in Art Research at the University of Picardy Jules Verne in Amiens. 

His roots in Cameroon’s Bamileke ethnic group and its culture would become one of his main sources of inspiration. He would base his art research on the works of a number of artists, including Hervé Youmbi, Beatriz Gonzalez, Helio Oiticica and Etienne Martin, and on The Cannibalist Manifesto by Oswald de Andrade.

Kemkeng Noah paints on pieces of carpet and household objects he finds lying in the streets. They provide a new medium for a series of works that function as narrative points in the history of migration. Often labelled “hybrid art”, Kemkeng Noah’s work pursues an experimental approach that is essentially characterised by painting. The artist’s aesthetic research, from the heart of which emerge mixed artworks, offers a uniquely vibrant take on the concepts of interculturalism, identity and civilisation. At the centre of his concerns is the fusing of human cultures. 

Kemkeng Noah has taken part in many collective and individual exhibitions. In 2022, his work is featured in a collective exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac.