Procession I & II, 2026

Mercerized cotton, glass beads, red pigments, jacquard weaving, embroidery

50 cm x 120 cm

Procession I and Procession II draw on photographic archives, including those of the Défap photo library (the missionary organization of the Protestant churches of France), to examine the persistence and circulation of images in colonial and postcolonial contexts. By mobilizing the figure of the procession, these works shift a motif that is both political and spiritual, at the intersection of history and ritual.

Here, the procession appears as an ambivalent form: it evokes both popular marches and independence movements, in which the collective asserts itself through a forward-oriented trajectory, while also recalling its inscription within religious practices introduced or reconfigured by missionary activity. This dual register invites a critical reading of the ways in which bodies have been guided, constrained, and assembled.

By reactivating these images, the works do not seek to restore them, but to place them under tension. They give form to the discontinuities, silences, and erasures that traverse historical narratives, particularly in the post-independence context of Cameroon. The procession thus becomes an operative figure: that of a memory in motion, continually recomposing itself through its own gaps.