Bienvenue FOTSO

“Nature feeds and regenerates our bodies and souls – our very survival depends on its conservation.”

Visual artist Bienvenue Fotso is both a painter and a photographer. Luminous flowers or majestic trees laden with fruit cover her canvases. The blooming flowers are depicted with their leaves and roots intact as in botanical illustrations, while the trees are solidly anchored to the ground. Despite the whirlwind background, these “portraits of plants'' feel still and peaceful. They awaken many feelings in the viewer: wonder at nature’s beauty; nostalgia for its ephemerality; contentment at its bounty; curiosity as to what the artwork is meant to convey.

Fotso’s photographs and paintings capture nature and our common destiny. They are meant to remind us that nature feeds and regenerates our bodies and souls, and that our very survival depends on its conservation. Fotso often chooses the plants she portrays for their medicinal properties - flowers, leaves, roots, or bark can be used in a decoction or ground in a paste to cure an illness, heal a wound, or promote our well-being.

Fotso paints with acrylic on canvas. She builds her paintings slowly and works minutiously with a palette that is very clean, harmonious, and bright. Her brushstrokes are fluid, and the contours are precise. She creates an effect of transparency and symbiosis by allowing us to peer through the main subject.

Fotso trained with the Association Futur’Art in Douala for many years as well as in the studio of Maurice Pégoué between 2015 and 2019. Her work has been featured in prominent exhibitions in Senegal, in Cameroon - Aujourd’hui – an exhibit organized in 2020 by the World Bank and curated by Simon Njami at the Musée National du Cameroun in Yaoundé - and in Washington, DC. Fotso has already sparked the interest of collectors internationally.

Submitted by African Art Beats