In this intimate conversation, Cameroonian artist Salomon Moneyang speaks with Lindokuhle Nkosi, Rele's Communications Specialist, about the emotional terrain of return, the domestic as a site of memory and tension, and the evolving roles of gender, care, and space in his life and practice.
Coinciding with his first solo exhibition at Rele Lagos, "ètô y’a Nda-bot: Intimate Interiors", the interview delves into the textures of rural life in Ebolowa, the visual language of dreams and memory, and the quiet power of Black masculinity in the home.
LN: Your exhibition “ètô y’a Nda-bot: Intimate Interiors” is deeply rooted in personal return, both geographic and emotional. Can you tell us what prompted your return to your ancestral village of Ebolowa, a town in southern Cameroon known for its agricultural richness and quiet historical weight within the post-independence era? How did the textures, rhythms, and memories of Ebolowa, its landscapes, homes, and silences, shape this body of work and your sense of belonging?
SM: My return to the village was motivated by several things. One of them was financial, life in the city is expensive, and I was looking for a change. I had spent much time in the city before, and I felt suffocated.
You know, cities in Africa can overwhelm you very quickly. There’s this constant buildup, construction everywhere, traffic, noise, pollution, people. There’s a kind of overpopulation of both bodies and energy. I wanted to go to a place people often run away from, especially young people. In my village, most of the youth want to escape to the city. They say there’s nothing there, that rural places are backwards or boring. I wanted to go back and experience it for myself, outside of those preconceived ideas we’re often taught.
It was also about my practice. In the city, I live in a small space. Everything is compact and expensive. But in the village, I have access to a big family house, and life is more affordable. I can breathe. I can create.
And most importantly, I wanted to spend time with my grandmother, and with the people who still live there. That time, that presence. It was important. It grounded me, and it shaped the work.
LN: The domestic space in your paintings is charged with intimacy, but also with silence, solitude, and even tension. What draws you to the interior as a site of artistic exploration, and what stories do you feel these spaces hold?
SM: I think we’ve all heard this before, that walls have ears, right? But I also believe they have eyes. And they have a language.
There’s a ritual I remember, or at least, I remember hearing about it, something you do when you’ve lost something. You speak to the walls, you remind it that it never sleeps. You say: “Walls, you never sleep. You know everything. Help me find what I’ve lost.” I don’t remember exactly how it goes, but the idea stuck with me… that the walls see, and remembers.
That’s how I feel about interiors. They witness everything. How we live, our joy, our pain, our tenderness, our silence. They absorb it. They see us. And sometimes, if we’re quiet enough, they can speak back.
Even the police know this. When a crime happens in a room, they reconstruct the scene because the space tells the story. The walls hold that story. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly, but I hope you feel what I’m trying to say, the idea is that space is not neutral. It knows us. It carries what we leave behind.
LN: As a Black male artist attending so closely to themes of care, vulnerability, and the home, traditionally seen as the domain of women’s labour. How do you see your work engaging or disrupting those gendered expectations?
I think that the idea of the home being only a woman’s space, it comes from a way of thinking that’s rooted in tradition, maybe even ritual. But things are changing. Today, women also go out to work, just like men. And yet, they’re still expected to carry the full weight of the household – raising children, cooking, cleaning – on top of everything else. I don’t think that’s fair.
Art, for me, is a tool to shift perspective, to show another way of seeing, another possibility. That’s what I’m trying to do with my work.
In my own life, I was raised by my mother. She was both mother and father to us. And when she wasn’t around, it was just me and my brothers at home. So we had to cook. We had to figure things out. If no one’s in the kitchen, what are you going to eat?
Let’s be honest, if you’re a young man and you live alone, and you think the kitchen or doing laundry isn’t for you, how are you going to survive? If you refuse to learn how to care for yourself, then you’ll never eat properly, dress properly, or take care of your space.
We’re not in the past anymore. Maybe in our mothers’ or grandmothers’ time, they were limited in what they could do. They stayed in the kitchen because they didn’t have the same opportunities to go out and earn. But today, women can make money. Men can cook and care. We all have to participate. These roles are not fixed. They can shift. They must shift.
LN: Your watercolours and acrylics present two distinct emotional registers – one quiet and ethereal, the other assertive and saturated. Can you speak to the material choices you made in this series, and how they relate to memory and affect?
SM: What I’m trying to do is suggest the feeling of a dream, or of memory. Both of those things are already hard to hold onto, because they’re intangible. You can’t grab them. So I try to recreate that sense of something fading or slipping away.
My work often looks like it’s being destroyed and rebuilt at the same time, like something being remembered and forgotten at once. You can see figures, but they’re not realistic. It’s not realism I’m after. Like dreams, they’re not realistic either. They come and go. They blur. They disappear. That’s the feeling I want to bring into the work.
Because when I talk about memory or dreams, I know you can never really catch them. You can try, but you can’t hold them fully. Even if you have a good memory, there’s always something missing. Something shifts. Something becomes abstract. That’s what I want to express in the technique. The way memory always escapes, and how dreams always live just out of reach.
In terms of colour, I like to play with contrast. I use bright colours, but I also bring in cool ones. Hot and cold together. Warm reds or yellows next to blues. That contrast helps create a certain mood. It sharpens the emotion, but it also creates a kind of visual tension. Like memory again, you know, sometimes soft, sometimes sharp. Always shifting.
LN: Wilfried Mbida’s Kédé Ndap was a major for you. What resonated with you in her approach to domestic space and memory, and how has her work shaped your own artistic language?
SM: Mbida is like an academic elder to me. We went to the same art school. I’ve admired her work since my early days in fine art.
What really resonates with me in her practice is the spontaneity. I don’t know if I’m saying it right, spontaneity? Her work feels very alive in that way. The way she composes scenes of everyday life. It feels natural, unforced. That energy speaks to me.
I also really love the light in her paintings. There’s something gentle and powerful about it at the same time. It draws you in. It pleases me, honestly. And I think, maybe directly or indirectly, her work has influenced mine.
LN: You’ve said this exhibition is not about romanticising return, but about inhabiting its complexities. Can you talk about the tensions you experienced between rural and urban life, and how those manifest in your paintings?
SM: In my opinion, rural life is better than city life. The people are warmer, life is cheaper, and there’s no pollution. Maybe it’s because I’ve learned to appreciate what rural life offers. You can go to your farm. You can breathe. Life feels better there.
In my case, I live in a big space surrounded by trees. I can feel the fresh air. I can walk freely. Like I said, people are kind. They want to give you things: food, greetings, their time. There’s a generosity that feels natural. But in the city, everyone is rushing. Everyone’s chasing money. People are stressed, angry. The traffic alone. It’s overwhelming.
Of course, sometimes I go to the city for the vibe. I like the city when it’s time to enjoy myself. But when I want to work, when I want peace, when I want to think or create… I go back to the village. There, I can be calm. I can meditate. I can do my things in silence. That balance is important to me.
LN: Bessie Head writes, “Nobody can measure what a home means.” What does ‘home’ mean to you now, after this journey of return, and through the making of this work? Has your sense of belonging or identity shifted in the process?
SM: I think home is the place where I feel secure. It’s where I can reveal myself without fear of judgment. It’s where I feel confident.
Home is the people I trust. It’s the people I love. Home is something very important to me. Home is happiness.
It’s the place where you can really be you, fully, without any filter. That, for me, is what home means.
Salomon Moneyang is a Cameroonian artist whose work explores themes of home, identity, and the emotional architecture of domestic space."ètô y’a Nda-bot: Intimate Interiors" marks his first solo exhibition with Rele, offering an intimate exploration of return, inheritance, and the quiet politics of interior life and is on view unti 14 June 2025.
