A child of the Internet and the African diaspora, Josèfa Ntjam uses language that emerges from the composite materials that infuse her photomontages, videos, and sculptures. The artist maps flows and streams: She follows the circulation of data and images online, as well as water currents and tides, gas exchanges and sap circulation in plants. Citing the musicians Sun Ra and the duo Drexciya as sources of inspiration, the artist situates her work at the intersection of Afrofuturism, Afrodescendant mythology, and magical realism, wielding the Afrodiasporic oceanic imaginary to expand their scope. The landscapes that blossom from this approach obliterate both distance and scale. They plunge us into the abyss so that we can grasp the expanse of the cosmos or become an Internet Explorer.
From the tangle of layered sounds, bursts of voices, and human and vegetal figures hidden in her works, polyphonic narratives are born. Ntjam’s teeming, simmering environments draw new connections between subjects, narrations, and geographies as they upset our relationship to the linearity of time. Her poetic and plastic language adopts the authority of scientific and historical discourses in order to transfigure them. Recast as speculative and dreamlike narrations, these spheres expose the diversity of perspectives and alternative models of organization and of being in the world.
Like transparent tracts of water roiled by the rain, Ntjam’s works muddle and elude. Shot through by an accumulation of signs, they obscure themselves and become opaque in places. This profusion paradoxically enables their free interpretation. It is a work of hermeneutics in motion.
Caroline Honorien: What is your relationship to text and how does it inform your artistic practice, both from poetic and political perspectives?
Josèfa Ntjam: Text is an important part of my work – it allows me to achieve some distance from purely plastic concerns. I create narratives inspired by science fiction. During artist residencies I have met scientists, astrophysicists, and biologists with whom I continue to work. I incorporate scientific concepts into the narratives and mythologies that I try to destabilize.
In my latest film, Dislocation [2022], the characters retrace the history of the Cameroonian Independence War. In Mélas de Saturne [2020] I examine the origin – and even the non-origin – of a sort of contemporary Ulysses, Persona. He travels the internets and attempts to discover where he comes from, but the quest is impossible due to VPN encryptions. Borders and their porosity are a big part of my work – how can we dilute borders, how are culture and mythology porous, and how can we connect to one another through them?
You do not write to be read, but rather to be heard. In the texts that you give body and stage to in your performances and videos you assume a polyphonic voice that brings out non-human perspectives. How did this interest in decentering come about?
My interest in decentering comes from my parents, who hail from different parts of the world. I grew up in France and am interested in the construction of hybrid cultures, how we can create geographical clusters. I want to avoid essentialisms and instead show connections and circulations. That is why I am interested in links with biology and symbiosis between plants. I try to bring these discourses into a field of social studies.
How does the dialog you instate between your practice and science feed your speculative approach?
The dialog allows me first of all to understand movements – how do plants develop? How do coalitions form? Some plants need others to protect them or to filter the light for them. Ferns protect young shoots by sheltering them so that the heat of the sun does not burn them. These scientific discourses allow me to expand the field of the narrative, to open onto other worlds, and to establish parallels – sometimes even formal ones. I met a scientist in Los Angeles who specializes in pulmonary diseases. The 3D models of lungs that she showed me looked like the mangroves I was making at the time, and this generated conversations and parallels between science, technology, and art.
Your interest in the ocean has pervaded your interests in outer space and the microscopic. What intrigues you about aquatic space, and what connection do you see between these three spheres?
I am interested in movement. I am currently reading a book by Ernst Haeckel on the movement of plankton. I find satellite images of their migrations fascinating – they have to let themselves be carried by the current and they encounter one another thanks to the movements of the ocean. These same currents contribute to the clustering of shipwrecks, bodies, and bones. But the movements are not random – the tides are connected to the moon. That is how I make the association between the ocean and outer space. I am also interested in the calcium that is in the stars and in our bones. All of these micro-connections create branching thoughts that I sometimes find difficult to explain.
You address this opacity in your work, even in the treatment of materials and media.
Opacity is central – it is a survival instinct, as well as an in-group practice that can be found in various social groups. I give the keys to decipher my works but not everyone grasps them, though they are open to other interpretations.
I will be showing two totems in the Nicoletti Contemporary booth at Paris+ par Art Basel, as well as a part of the screen used in Unknown Aquazone [2020], which was exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo. The photomontage is a superimposition of hundreds of layers of photos that I took of 3D models, comprising a wide variety of images. This multitude of materials creates a new image to be deciphered. Not all of the symbols are visible at first glance. There are characters that appear behind tentacles, anemones, etc. I create a non-linear genealogy of characters who accompany me – many of them are political or mythical, but there are also some who are members of my family.
Do you use mythical figures as a substitute for heroes?
I reject the individuality of the hero and this aspect of being an immutable monument. Many political figures, such as the independence activist Ruben Um Nyobé, leader of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon [UPC], continue to reappear in my montages – as does Marthe Ekemeyong Moumié, a guerrilla fighter and Maquis-style member of the UPC. I link the maquis to the mangrove on a symbolic level, through the vegetal and opacity. I try to efface the hero by placing it in an ecosystem of science fiction and vegetation.
Josèfa Ntjam will be represented by Nicoletti Contemporary in the Galeries Émergentes sector at Paris+ par Art Basel.
Caption for full-bleed images, top to bottom:
Josèfa Ntjam, A Crossing of Independences, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Nicoletti, London.
Josèfa Ntjam, Dislocation, 2022. HD film, 17 min. Written and directed by Josèfa Ntjam, co-produced with Aquatic Invasion Production and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Josèfa Ntjam, Dislocation, 2022. HD film, 17 min. Written and directed by Josèfa Ntjam, co-produced with Aquatic Invasion Production and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Josèfa Ntjam, Dislocation, 2022. HD film, 17 min. Written and directed by Josèfa Ntjam, co-produced with Aquatic Invasion Production and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.