Justine Gaga (b. 1974)
The Cameroon artist Justine Gaga is a sculptor and video artist. She lives in Bonendale, where she has been collaborating with her mentor Goddy Leye at the ArtBakery for many years. Justine Gaga exhibits her work internationally. In 2014, she participated in DAK’ART in Dakar. With her installations, objects, and video works, the artist offers critical commentary on the living conditions and ascriptions within contemporary society. She integrates the existential experience of fragility, loneliness, and isolation into works that are characterized by resistance and revolt. By challenging hypocrisy and social control, the artist redefines herself as woman and human being, thus reclaiming integrity and independence. As part of her research project The Germans’ Baggage for Crossing Boundaries of Doubt, conducted in 2014 with Elsa M’bala in Ndekinimeki, Gaga investigates the traces of German colonial history and the oral myths originating in this context. Her video contribution Standing / Debout invokes sensitive images to describe the present-day awareness of colonial history on the part of Cameroonians, as reflected by their desire to analyze this history and retell it from a different perspective. In this sense, Justine Gaga reflects on the necessity of creating something new, a new construction of collectivity between South and North, between Cameroon and Germany.
Her contribution to crossing-boundaries-of-doubt.net :
Drawings: The Germans‘ Baggage
