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An Art Dealer from Cameroon in the Heart of Europe

Bonaventure Ndikung, an independent exhibition organizer from Cameroon is operating in Europe

June 13th, 2016
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Bonaventure Ndikung is bringing occidental, African and Asiatic art pieces together in order to create a dialogue between them. He is creating these unique exhibitions all around Europe in places such as Cassel (Germany) and Athens. Right now, his city of predilection is non other than the ever-evolving and art-thirsty capital of Germany, Berlin where he has lived since 1997. He receives his clients in the North part of the city, in the former crematorium now turned into an art creation complex.

The Cameroonian independent exhibition organizer is currently having tremendous success in Berlin as more than 1 million people attended the opening of his latest cultural event on the 3rd of June. This event which lasted for a week, consisted of a series of exhibitions, artistic performances and debates from more than 40 artists and intellectuals on the following theme : « Divinities, supra-realities, exorcism and sorcery ».

The work of Bonaventure Ndikung is known and appreciated for his unique touch which consists of associating personalities coming from different geographical and cultural areas. To fulfill his vison, he opened an “idea laboratory called Savvy” in Berlin in 2009. The main objective of the laboratory is to connect occidental art to arts coming from elsewhere. Ndikung explains that his vision arguing, “Until then, in Germany, contemporary art was almost exclusively occidental. We are systematically showing occidental, african and asian artworks.”

Furthermore, the aim of Savvy and the vision of its creator goes beyond the organization of art exhibition. Indeed, Savvy is also a library that allows the public to read ancient editions of African politic and cultural reviews that you can not find anywhere else in Germany and sometimes not even in Africa. Moreover, Bonaventure Ndikung explains that the destiny of these books is not to stay in Savvy as they also work on digitalizing them to sent them back to Africa.

Over the years and despite limited support from Germany’s public services, Savvy has became an important institution for German-African cultural exchange. Bonaventure Ndikung is now such an important figure in the German cultural field that Adam Szymczyk, the artistic director of the next Documenta, a great contemporary art exhibition taking place every 5 years in Cassel (Germany), asked him to be one of the commissioners of the exhibition. The Cameroonian does not want to share much about his vision for the project. However, he promised that the theme of the exhibition would be political and poetic.

References:

News from Berlin
Pierre Even, Berlin Global