Masks, colours, coffee – Pascale Marthine Tayou from Cameroon to the world

A journey to Cameroon and African landscapes through the chromatic range of cups designed by Pascale Marthine Tayou for illy Art Collection

The production of coffee in Cameroon

Pascale Marthine Tayou was born in Nkongsamba, Cameroon. 145 kilometres north of Douala and 370 kilometres north-west of Yaoundé, the capital, Nkongsamba is nestled in a triangular basin bordered by mountains, craters of ancient volcanoes. Nature is rich, dotted with lakes and the Nkam River, which descends from a height of 80 metres. About 30 kilometres from Nkongsamba is the village of Ekom, where you can admire the waterfalls, the setting for the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, starring Christophe Lambert. High up, in the lush massifs, live the shepherds. On the plains, in the villages, coffee is grown.

Lampoon Interview – Pascale Marthine Tayou

«I still remember – Tayou starts recounting – when, accompanied by my mother I used to walk through the coffee fields. Nkongsamba is my Bethlehem». The main industrial activity in the town is coffee hulling. This is a seasonal activity that allows the inhabitants to generate their income for half the year, while the other half is devoted to various activities such as maize cultivation, palm oil and small trade. After having been Cameroon’s third largest city in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Nkongsamba went through a period of decline, mainly due to falling coffee prices. Since the beginning of the 2000s, it has experienced a renaissance, with the construction of infrastructure and development projects, such as the Nlonako Valley – thirty hectares that will house a university complex, an agro-industrial hub, an ecological sanctuary, and a tourist site.

illy Art Collection by Pascale Marthine Tayou

The link with coffee not only marks Pascale Marthine Tayou’s past, but also his present. The artist signed the New illy Art Collection, recently on display at the Paris Internationale and Asia Now, in spaces set up by illy, official partner of these art fairs. The cup collection realized by Tayou is the ideal continuation of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the illy Art Collection, a project launched in 1992 through which illycaffè transformed an everyday object – the white coffee cup – into one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world and accessible to all.

The collection was also presented at Frieze in London and Paris at a breakfast at Galleria Continua – a contemporary art gallery founded in San Gimignano by Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo. 

To decorate the cups and the jar of the illy Art Collection, Pascale Marthine Tayou has chosen a chromatic range reminiscent of African landscapes: the stylised mask resting against a tree on whose branches eggs grow symbolises birth and creation, while the collection as a whole proposes a reflection on the issues of our time: conflict, environmental sustainability, globalisation, immigration. 

Pascale Marthine Tayou: the use of colours 

«Color is a tool to determine the essence of the world», Tayou explains. «It is a weapon to restructure the discrepancies in the world. Sometimes diversity can also create divisions in the world, but with colors we can symbolize the energy that comes from the world’ s variety. That’s why I use colors to express my frustrations and my desire to communicate and share with the world». 

The mask is a fil rouge in Tayou’s works

«Growing up, I noticed that we actually have a face, but that this face that represents our face is not our real face. There is an idea that you create of yourself and there is the idea that I create of myself. I do not see myself during the day, or when I see myself, I face a mirror. If each time I face a mirror, I am sure that when I don’t have the mirror I am the same person. I need to describe the mask inside, the mask that you actually wear. To do that, I adopted the mask as a working tool, because for me it defines how varied the human is. Indeed, we have the impression that we have one face, but in fact, we have thousands of faces. Through the masks, you can explore this variety that a human being carries around on a daily basis».

«I have in mind the awareness that I am diverse. If it is an impression that I have, I imagine a face, but I do not see it, it is you who see me. That’s why it gets me interested sometimes. I think of this symbol, and I try to divert it, to rework it, because beyond this mask, my source, well, it is my working tool on the human. It is the man, in his passions, which is my working tool. I am inspired by the man because I try to become a man tomorrow, because I still am a man, but I am a walking animal».

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Cultural centres of Yaoundé and Douala

Tayou’s geography continues throughout the conversation. «I also used to live in Bafoussam, another city in Cameroon were many companies involved in the coffee business, where I got my baccalaureate. Then, I moved to Yaoundé, where I studied law. I realised that law was not my path and I left university and started developing my artistic vein in Yaoundé». His artistic career started around 1994, being presented in the cultural centres of Yaoundé and Douala. «I have tried to work, first of all, by diagnosing the whole territory of Cameroon, but with the perspective of looking outside Cameroon, towards the world, to tell my stories, my passions, my humanity». Douala is the port city of Cameroon. It’s the city where most of the external products arrive in Cameroon, and it’s also the city where a lot of products leave Cameroon to everywhere. «Douala is a window city to the world, a shopping city. It is the city where, if we have a coffee from Cameroon, maybe in illy, it will pass through Douala to get to illy».

Pascale Marthine Tayou works with coffee

Pascale Marthine Tayou have also worked with coffee as a raw material, and chocolate. «I did a series called Landscape before my collaboration with illy. I have already worked, perhaps in 2015, a large painting with chocolate, coffee. In Sierra Leone I was trying to portray the territories around the diamond zone because there is coffee. So in fact it is a story of human passions again. I listed all the geographical areas in the world, as you did with the cities of Cameroon, where diamonds are found. I made a work where I wanted to talk about Blood diamond».

Pascale Marthine Tayou was born from a mother and a father – «like everyone else, but then, in my culture, there is the possibility to be sent living with other members of the family. My parents decided me to live with my uncle and aunt. They became my new parents. My true mother’s name is Martine, and my father’s name is Pascal. At some point, I said to myself since I didn’t really live with my natural parents, maybe I’ll change my official names and replace them with my parents’ names. I feminized them. In my father’s name Pascal, Pascal without an ‘e’, I put an ‘e’ and in my mother’s, Martine without an ‘h’, I added an ‘h’. In order to mark a form of distance, but in fact that allowed me to live at the same time with my mother and my father».

«On the level of the gender – I come from a city that in that sometimes the patriarchy is more dominant – I wanted symbolically to underline that there is no comparison between the genders, that there is a form of fusion between people and of course, there can be a difference, but it is important that there is the fusion of these differences. I bear that. Because we all bear our parents, we bear our father, we bear our mother. In addition, I bear a little more my mother, because is from the body of my mother that I came out, even if my father dropped me, but dropped me as a liquid. But above all as an object of my mother’s body, since I made her suffer, so it’s important that this is marked on my life».

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Pascale Marthine Tayou is a Cameroonian artist born in Yaounde, Cameroon in 1967. He began his career as an artist in the 1990s, and has carried out exhibitions in Cameroon, Germany, France, and Belgium, among others. He has collaborated with illy in order to create a special edition of cups.

Matteo Mammoli