World Cup Art: The Day before Yesterday & the Day After Tomorrow

Cameroon Mon 16-08-2010

World Cup Art: The Day before Yesterday & the Day After Tomorrow
By Mwalimu George Ngwane|AfricanColours.com

The World cup Football competition in South Africa has gone but not the inspiration of Cameroonian Artists who in song, dance, clay and canvass continue to chronicle the memory and history of Cameroon’s football team-the Indomitable Lions.

In spite of the dismal performance of the Indomitable Lions at the World Cup, and the national angst as well as the financial scandal that went with it, 23 year old Cameroonian painter and plastic artist, Herve Momo returned to the lion’s den with his brush, oil paint, water paint and canvass to immortalize three generations of Cameroon’s football history.

Eto'o by Herve Momo

Eto'o Fils by Herve Momo

In his usual abstract style, Momo uses oil paint and a combination of bright colours to capture most of the elements of his 22 characters. With enormous flair and flexibility, Momo’s brush on both canvass and post card readily brings his characters to recognisable icons (even without conscious identification) on the pantheon of Cameroon’s football.

Momo’s focus is on 22 football players who arguably have left their footprints on the tapestry of time. The 22 footballers represent the three generations of Cameroon’s rich football history with Samuel Mbappe lepe representing the players of the 1960s-70s, the football maestro Roger Milla representing the 80s and 90s and the young, talented and present captain of the Indomitable Lions Samuel Eto’o Fils representing the comptemporary generation.

Momo has been carrying his 22 characters in canvass through an exhibition in six of the ten Regions of Cameroon. The exhibition that began in February 2010 at the Alliance Franco- Camerounaise in Yaounde is expected to end in December 2010 in Buea.

Roger Milla by Herve Momo

An innovation is the water painting on post cards that are offered as complimentary gifts to the hundreds of art lovers who throng the exhibition sites on a daily basis.

According to Momo, there must be a conscious effort to immortalize and eternalize the works of heroes and heroines in our society at every level and from every domain. Hear him “I realised that in my country, some important people were not in our memory”.

Indeed the bright colours of Momo’s paintings are indicative of the emotional drive that carries the present generation of football heroes to fame and fortune even if the early generation lived and sometimes died in penury and oblivion.

Samuel Mbappe Lepe by Herve Momo

However, the Achilles heel of Momo’s painting is his failure to drink deep from the fountain of national football history as players of Anglophone Cameroonian extraction who shot themselves to goal, gold and glory like Joseph Ewunkem, Nji Sunday, Ben Bola and especially Stephen Tataw who captained the famous 1990 Lions squad in the World Cup have been conspicuously marginalized in Momo’s Turf of fame.

Nonetheless, Brushes from the Den remains a veritable wedlock between individual art and collective prowess as well as Cameroon’s celebration of football excellence the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow.

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