Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Ibrahim Njoya
Bamum; 20th-century
St. Louis, MO: Saint Louis Art Museum
84%
King List of the Bamum Dynasty. c1930. Ink and colored pencil on paper
Njoya's line is stellar and the way he's used it to build up complexes that are thick with ornamental flourish is also stellar. And then there's how he tends to situate these complexes (typically human figures with flashy vestments) within so much empty space, which amounts to a sort of drama of figuration and its difficulty: body and background, often the same color, might meld were it not for the thin outlines that don't merely limn Njoya's figures, but deck them the fuck out: everywhere line is laughing (like that king in the top right corner) in the face of how threatened, tenuous it seems. This drama, though, would be at risk of losing track of its own agon were it not for the overall celled structure of the drawing. This prevents either figure or ground from exerting dominance over the other in any particular instance; the imposition of a non-pictorial order keeps the tension from ever resolving. The occasional extension of figures into other figures' cells, too, softens the potential harshness of this enframing structure, and brings about rhymes and affinities between various decorative elements all over the page. Njoya was a king and this drawing is a sort of historical accounting of his predecessors; it was inspired by Bismarckian propaganda images. (2024)