Jean David Nkot

Biography
Jean David Nkot, www.blancmanteau@gmail.com, 2024
Jean David Nkot, #@L-111-024//No more my / awd - 2023
JEAN DAVID NKOT WAS BORN IN 1989 IN DOUALA, CAMEROON, WHERE HE LIVES AND WORKS.
 
After painting for his A-levels at the Institute of Artistic Training of Mbalmayo (IFA), he joined the Institute of Fine Arts Foumban where he obtained a degree in drawing and painting. Throughout his training in the fine arts of Foumban, he received several artist distinctions (Best sculptor, installer and painter). In 2017, he joined the « Post-Master » Moving Frontiers, organised by the National School of Arts of Paris-Cergy (France), on the theme of borders. Conscious of what his elders can bring him, he is frequently in the workshops of Hervé Youmbi, Salifou Lindou, Jean Jacques Kanté, Pascal Kenfack and Ruth Belinga.

While he is a painter of the human condition, since 2020, he tackles the issue of the exploitation of raw materials in Africa and the economic and political stakes underneath. He now focuses his thought on cotton growing, which he associates with the beginnings of capitalism through its cultivation and trading. He underlines its environmental and human impact and links it to the North/South relationship.
Within his work, Nkot compensates for the lack of visibility and recognition of those who work in the shadows. By giving them the status of contemporary icons, he invites us to rethink our economic model to protect 'man' and the planet together. A deep sensitivity to humanity has never ceased to exist in his work, ecology is a new component in the work of this painter regarding the human condition. Nkot reminds us that man cannot be considered independent from their environment and that the protection of one comes with the conservation of the other.
 
Nkot’s work has been shown at art fairs in Miami, New York, London, Paris, Marrakech and Cape Town. It has also been exhibited in international institutions such as the Guangdong Times Museum (Guangdong, China), Institut des Cultures d’Islam (Paris, France), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin, Germany), Kunsthalle Krems (Krems, Austria) and the Fondation Dapper at la Rotonde des arts in Abidjan (Ivory Coast).
download artist's portfolio (PDF, opens in a new tab.)
Works
Exhibitions
Art Fairs
Press
Publications
Interview

From the beginning of your career in 2015, your work has dealt with the topic of immigration and the superficiality of borders. Starting in 2020, you focussed on the over-exploitation of natural resources – specifically mining – and humans, serving the market economy. How did you come to focus on cotton fields,  evoking the past and the present at the same time? 

It has to be said that even before I focussed on the issue of migration, I was interested in violence, and more particularly the violence I experienced in my own country. Between 2013 and 2015, Cameroon was going through a terrible time as a result of terrorist acts. I wondered how I could document and keep a record of this period. That is how I became interested in the human condition. The human condition led me to question the notion of space. 

 

By working on the notion of violence, I represented and froze the spaces where these massacres had taken place, simply by inscribing the names of these places onto my works. At the time, each of my canvases represented a stamp. I used the structure, I mentioned the price and the country issuing the stamp, which I modified according to the location of the attacks. One thing led to another and I began to want to represent the notion of space differently. That's what led me to the world of cartography, and then, by studying cartography, to questions of borders. The subject of migration came naturally to me in this context where I was materializing spaces, dealing with the question of the human condition. As far as I'm concerned, any subject is a good one to tackle, as long as the humans remain at the centre. For me, any subject that reflects a form of injustice is important to be highlighted. This is how, little by little, I moved from migration to economic issues and, in particular, the exploitation of raw materials. So, it was logical for me to tackle the theme of cotton, linked to the past and history. It's a common thread. 

 

I work on the different forms of raw materials: fossil materials, agricultural materials and liquid materials. At the moment, I am focusing on agricultural materials. When you look at agricultural materials, and cotton in particular, you naturally open up a whole area of human history. This includes the period of slavery and the deportation and displacement of black people. We must therefore ask ourselves what role these events have played in the development of the economy of the Western world today.

 

 

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW