18/12/2024
Rest in Power Lionel Manga (1955 - 2024)
“Si nous voulons que le monde soit différent, il faut que notre langue pour le dire soit différente.” Lionel Manga quoted in Le Monde Afrique, 4/12/2022
As an artist collective, we are mourning the loss of a beautiful kindred soul from Cameroon, who died prematurely earlier this week. We remember Lionel passionately sharing his evocative views, which were both poetic and critical. We love to picture him in one of his favorite places, in Doual’Art’s garden by “the old mango tree that stands there covered with moss and epiphytes (...), a microclimate that affords a serenity in which conversations blossom between laughter and exclamation.” (Lionel quoted in “Post-Script”, ECHOES, DiArtgonale, 2013)
Our first encounter took place in 2009 in Enough Room for Space’s Rotterdam studio, followed by many meetings and exchanges in Europe and Cameroon. In 2013, we published the exchange ‘Post Script’ between Lionel Manga and Belgian artist Vincent Meessen in the journal DiArtgonale ECHOES, and Annette Schemmel quoted him abundantly in the case study “Visual Arts in Cameroon: A Genealogy of Non-formal Training 1974-2014”, Langaa, Bamenda 2016.
Lionel was a true spokesman for several generations of artists in Cameroon and beyond. We will miss his contagiously open and free spirit, extraordinary talent for words, and provocative decolonial thinking.
- Marjolijn Dijkman and Annette Schemmel
(initiators of “Present Perfect”, 2007-2017, Enough Room for Space)
“Persuadé, par ce qu’il avait vu et entendu, qu’un autre Cameroun était tout à fait possible en ce XXIe siècle, moyennant tout de même un saut quantique.” - Lionel Manga, “La Sphère de Planck”, 2022.
https://www.enoughroomforspace.org/news/in-memoriam-lionel-manga-1955-2024/
