By Adefoyeke Ajao

The recipient of the first Henrike Grohs Art Award was announced on the 6th of March, 2018. The €20,000 prize was awarded to Cameroonian intermedia artist Em’kal Eyongakpa who had earlier been shortlisted alongside Georgina Maxim (Zimbabwe) and Makouvia Kokou Ferdinand (Togo).

Born in 1981, Eyongakpa holds a degree in Plant Biology and Ecology from the University of Yaoundé. With his art, he “approaches the experienced, the unknown, as well as collective histories through a ritual use of repetition and transformation”. His work has been featured at the Jakarta Biennale (2017), the 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017), La Biennale de Montreal (2016), the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016), the 9th and 10th Bamako Encounters (2011, 2015), and
the 10th Biennale de l’art Africain Contemporain, Dak’art (2012).

According to a jury comprising Koyo Kouoh (Artistic Director, RAW Material Company, Dakar), Laurence Bonvin (artist and representative of the Grohs family, Berlin), Raphael Chikukwa (Chief Curator, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare), and Simon Njami (Curator, Paris), Eyongakpa won the award due to his “poetic, subtle and poetic approach. His work expresses universal concerns of humanity. The multidisciplinary stance of his practice that includes knowledge derived from science, ethnobotany, magical realism, experimentation and utopia, aptly responds to the core values of the Henrike Grohs Art Award.”

The Henrike Grohs Art Award is a biennial prize established in memory of Henrike Grohs, the former Director of the Goethe-Institut in Abidjan who was killed in 2016, during a terrorist attack in Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire. According to the organisers, “the award intends to continue her special commitment to support artists in Africa and make a contribution towards international dialogue”.

The Henrike Grohs Art Award is open to practising visual artists who live and work in Africa.

Image credits: Goethe-Institut South Africa