Bijoux Cailloux present a selection of works by Guy Woueté crossing twenty years of career from 2000 until now unveiling the different faces of his hybrid practice. In Woueté’s work the notion of encounters and transformation take shape in forms that are consciously unclean; it’s a constant work of imbrication of materials, a cross beyond discipline and a constant negotiation of borders between video, installations, sound, photography, screen-printing, photography, sculpture, and painting.  

Bijoux Cailloux takes inspiration from the context of Njombé-Penja, a historically and politically loaded commune in Cameroon where Woueté grew up. There, a few years ago he started the setting up of an institution, a laboratory of imagination, and a studio for artists in dialogue with local communities: WAKA Studio.    

As a former colonial territory, Njombé-Penja is also known as a massive agricultural hub that has been in the hold of big corporations occupying its fertile lands for the expansion of monoculture. The neoliberal economy in Njombé-Penja has shaped and transformed its society by becoming a place of transit.  

Thus, WAKA is an active attempt to shift the power dynamic in Njombé-Penja, explore the aftermaths of its history and in this process, Bijoux Cailloux plays a role as a transitional space, a step towards a collective making of new underground forms, ideas and gestures to build transnational territories of imagination. 

Biography

Aude Christel Mgba (1991, CM) is an independent curator and art historian based between Cameroon and the Netherlands. She’s currently curator of contemporary art at the Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle.

Aude engages with decoloniality through research projects and creating platforms that aim to transcribe, translate, and embody ancestral knowledge. Her curatorial experiences include collaborations that question forms of making and showing art which tend to be centered between art institutions and art workers. She is more interested in collaborations that expand beyond these spaces to embrace other communities.

Mgba was the founder and coordinator of Rencontre (2014-2016), an exchange platform focusing on the work of art professionals from the contemporary art scene in Cameroon. Before moving to the Netherlands, she worked as a curator at Doual’art in Douala (2017-2018).

Among many other projects, Mgba was assistant curator for the 4th edition of the triennial SUD(Salon Urbain de Douala (2017), co-curator of Sonsbeek20->24 (2019-2022), co-curator of the Hartwig Art Foundation Special Project (2020-2021), curator of the Curated section of Art X Lagos (2021), and curator of the Prix Region Sud in Marseille ( 2022).

Mgba is also the artistic director and curator of the next edition of the Luleåbiennialen 2024 in Norrbotten, Sweden.