Franck Kemkeng Noah

(Cameroon, 1992)

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).

Kemkeng Possession de la Grand-Place Very FINAL
Kemkeng_Fission Koung Gang wFINAL
Kemkeng Intronisation FINAL
Kemkeng_Le Deuxième Palais FINAL
Titre - Juju dance du Vatican, technique - Acrylique sure tapis, 133x1
Kemkeng_Protection Aveugle FINAL
Titre - Purification, Acrylique sur toile , 162X130
Kemkeng_Affirmation wFINAL
titre - possession (le louvre au rythme des dogon du mali), 116X89
Kemkeng_L'Assemblée des Sociétés Secrètes FINAL
Kemkeng_CULT_Sacrifice_140x170cm
Kemkeng_CULT_SacredExit_160x120cm
Kemkeng_CULT_Adoration_160x120cm
Kemkeng_CULT_HolyFire_160x120cm
Kemkeng_CULT_TheSacred_160x120cm
Kemkeng_CULT_Ancestors_160x120cm
Kemkeng_CULT_Ordination_160x120cm
Kemkeng_CULT_Laakam_160x120cm

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