Werewere Liking is an artist and scholar whose roots are in Cameroon but who has been based in Côte d’Ivoire for over forty years. Her practice spans writing – including poetry, theatre, essays and critical theory – painting, sculpture, drawing and performance, exemplifying the definition of total art. Liking’s practice operates as a cosmic compass that opens vibratory fields between the spiritual and the earthly. Genealogies of Lights, a series of sculptures made of wood and of collected, recycled and re-invested objects, are animated bodies inscribed with memory and fable. They re-activate what was discarded to forge new cosmogonies where narrative and politics overlap.
Liking’s paintings and drawings give expression to her dreams and ruminations. Her use of mended tree bark as canvas, and recurrent motifs including the sun, moon, trees, pregnant female figures and broken pots, allude to a long journey of spiritual grounding and connection, feminine power, and healing rituals. In another register, Lampedusa (2019) depicts a hectic scene unfolding in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, where people are drowning. Here, Liking denounces the political inequalities emanating from so-called illegal migration, the water transformed into a cemetery for thousands of black bodies searching for hope and a better future.
—Marie Helene Pereira
