Barthélémy Toguo studied at different art schools in Abidjan, Grenoble, and Düsseldorf, gaining knowledge of art ranging from the traditional to the contemporary. He reflects on the search for humanity in the quotidian realities of migration, displacement, and systemic injustice in his paintings and installations. In 2007, he founded the Bandjoun Station, an arts centre in western Cameroon that encourages contemporary art and contests the Eurocentric art canon, which primarily focuses on classical African art. Through artist residencies, community involvement, and sustainable farming, the Bandjoun Station is another of Toguo’s artistic strategies to pursue the human cause. In 2021, Toguo was designated UNESCO Artist for Peace, celebrating his dictum of ‘culture as a weapon for peace’. One recent example is his monumental Installation Le Pilier des migrants disparus (The Pillar of Missing Migrants), installed at the Louvre Museum in Paris in 2022, composed of bales wrapped in African fabrics and dedicated to those who lost their lives migrating to Europe. Toguo’s commitment to addressing the difficulties of displacement has led him to work on the Tirailleurs’ experiences of uprooting and forced labour. Based on archival photographs, depicting the Mesdames Tirailleurs, who, since the formation of the Tirailleurs in Senegal in 1857, joined the battalions, or those who resisted captivity in the German prisoner-of-war camps, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor (who was imprisoned from 1940 to 1942 and later became the first president of an independent Senegal in 1960). Toguo’s new paintings return to the classic portrait exercise to depict the Tirailleurs’ facial expressions, while contemporary language enlivens the bodies and surroundings, in which the Tirailleurs return the gaze, asserting presence against histories that sought to render them invisible.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Barthélémy Toguo and HKW, 2026

Work in the exhibition: Tirailleurs sénégalais (2026), acrylic on canvas, triptych, each 400 × 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist / Bandjoun Station Cameroon