Art Brussels | Jean David Nkot: Brussels, Belgium

23—26 April, 2026
  • JEAN DAVID NKOT

    BOOTH 5A-26
  • On the occasion of the 2026 edition of Art Brussels, AFIKARIS gallery presents a monographic exhibition dedicated to Jean David Nkot, highlighting a new series of works that extends the artist’s exploration of bodies, materials, and extraction systems.

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  • Following the solo exhibition Théâtre des corps, drame de la matière, presented in May 2025, this body of work marks...

    Following the solo exhibition Théâtre des corps, drame de la matière, presented in May 2025, this body of work marks a shift in the artist’s practice. He develops an evolving visual language in which painting and sculpture intertwine within a clearly defined spatiality. Balancing material grounding and sensory tension, the works adopt a three-dimensional approach where figures unfold simultaneously as motif, surface, and volume.

     

    The exhibition develops a dense reflection on contemporary logics of resource and bodily exploitation, embedding them within broader historical, memorial, and political layers. In Jean David Nkot’s work, Black bodies appear as fundamental presences, long rendered invisible in the construction of global economies as well as material and symbolic infrastructures. This act of making visible goes beyond mere representation: bodies—already central to the artist’s practice—now merge with matter and environment. Inspired by Devenir vivants (2021) by Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux, Nkot sketches an expanded ecology, adopting the term “echology,” conceived as a resonance between beings, environments, and systems of production.

  • This dynamic continues in the portrait series created on jute bags, Corps//matière.cm.org. Initiated in 2025 and further developed during a...

    This dynamic continues in the portrait series created on jute bags, Corps//matière.cm.org. Initiated in 2025 and further developed during a residency in Japan, it marks a shift in the artist’s practice toward modest supports laden with silent histories. By working with materials drawn from cocoa, coffee, or cotton circuits, Nkot does more than inscribe figures onto them: he reactivates their memory. The portrait thus lies at the intersection of material and human experience. It brings individual trajectories into dialogue with the forces of labor, capital, and consumption that traverse and shape the world. Visible seams, tears, and perforations function as bodily marks, evoking scars left by colonial history as well as contemporary working conditions.

     

    In the series Behind a Flag, these same portraits are now deployed on textiles reminiscent of flags. Inspired by strip-weaving traditions from West and Central Africa, these textiles are dyed in colors associated with national flags, without referencing any specific country. The aim is not to represent a flag, but to question what it embodies: a symbol of power, identity, and collective narrative. The screen-printed backgrounds combine archival and contemporary images with fragments of text drawn from the Harkin-Engel Protocol—an agreement by the chocolate industry to comply with the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (ILO, 1999). Deliberately rendered barely legible, these inscriptions point to the opacity of such international agreements and the persistence of invisible forms of exploitation.

     
  • ARTWORKS SELECTION

    • Jean David Nkot, Bp.cm@étreinte végétal, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, Bp.cm@étreinte végétal, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot, ##Essoufflement végétal@.com, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, ##Essoufflement végétal@.com, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot, www.//brasier végétal.com, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, www.//brasier végétal.com, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot. Cameroonian artist. Contemporary African Art. Painting, sculpture, installation. Focus on human condition, scars of history, and global capitalism. Raw material extraction in African. Global economy, social and ecological impacts. Memory and contemporaneity.
      Jean David Nkot, Corps//matière.cm.org, 2025
    • Jean David Nkot, Corps//matière.cm.org, 2025
      Jean David Nkot, Corps//matière.cm.org, 2025
    • Jean David Nkot, Corps//matière.cm.org, 2025
      Jean David Nkot, Corps//matière.cm.org, 2025
    • Jean David Nkot, www//essorage de Gaïa.com, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, www//essorage de Gaïa.com, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot, www//essorage de Gaïa.com, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, www//essorage de Gaïa.com, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot, www//essorage de Gaïa.com, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, www//essorage de Gaïa.com, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot, #Behind @ flag//.cm, 2026
      Jean David Nkot, #Behind @ flag//.cm, 2026
    • Jean David Nkot. Cameroonian artist. Contemporary African Art. Painting, sculpture, installation. Focus on human condition, scars of history, and global capitalism. Raw material extraction in African. Global economy, social and ecological impacts. Memory and contemporaneity.
      Jean David Nkot, www.//Behind a flag.cm, 2026
  • ABOUT THE ARTIST

    JEAN DAVID NKOT WAS BORN IN 1989 IN DOUALA, CAMEROON, WHERE HE LIVES AND WORKS. A graduate of the Institut...
    JEAN DAVID NKOT WAS BORN IN 1989 IN DOUALA, CAMEROON, WHERE HE LIVES AND WORKS.
     
    A graduate of the Institut de Formation Artistique of Mbalmayo (IFA) and later of the Institut des Beaux-Arts of Foumban, Cameroon, he quickly established himself through his mastery of painting, sculpture, and installation. In 2017, he took part in the “Post-Master Moving Frontiers” program at the École nationale supérieure d’art in Paris-Cergy, France.
     
    A painter of the human condition, he develops a realistic approach attentive to the scars left by history and to the logics of globalized capitalism. Since 2020, his work has focused on the exploitation of raw materials in Africa—such as cotton, chocolate, and minerals—and on the impact of these extractive systems, both on societies and on the environment. His compositions, drawing from photographic archives, question the role of these resources in the global economy and reveal their social and ecological consequences, from Africa to the rest of the world.
     
  • PRACTICAL INFORMATION

    Art Brussels
    AFIKARIS Gallery | Booth 5A-26
    Brussels Expo – Entrance Hall 5
    Place de la Belgique 1, 1020 Brussels

    DATES AND TIMES

    VIP PREVIEW
    11 AM - 4 PM | Thursday, 23 April 

    VERNISSAGE
    4 - 9 PM | Thursday, 23 April

    PUBLIC OPENING HOURS
    11 AM – 7 PM | Friday, 24 and Saturday 25 April
    11 AM – 6 PM | Sunday, 26 April