Pr Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Dr Christine Eyene in conversation

Join us for a conversation between Pr Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Dr Christine Eyene as part of the public programme associated with What the Mountain Has Seen presented at Exhibition Research Lab (ERL) Gallery, Liverpool.

In this event taking the forest as artistic motif, network of living organisms, and repository of knowledge and histories, Pr Dr Ndikung will dialogue with Dr Eyene’s research on the links between Liverpool’s maritime history, colonisation, economic botany, and practices of extraction in rural Cameroon, presented in the exhibition. The conversation will resonate with themes explored by the Berlin-based scholar and curator in his writings and curatorial practice across Haus der Kulturen der Welt and SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), SAVVY Kwata (Limbe), and the 36th São Paulo Biennale.

Curated by Dr Christine Eyene, What the Mountain Has Seen is inspired by Mount Mbanga a mountain located in Lolodorf (Cameroon) a semi-rural municipality bordering an evergreen forest. The exhibition posits the mountain as witness to the history of the land and its peoples. It features artworks by Shiraz Bayjoo, Joy Gregory, Yvon Ngassam, Jean David Nkot, Boris Nzebo and Freya Tewelde who explore narratives around plants, forest, and maritime histories in Cameroon, East Africa, the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, and their relation to Britain.

Supported by Liverpool John Moores University’s Enhancing Research Cultures Grant.

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Prof Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

Prof Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a curator, author, and biotechnologist, currently serving as director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin, Germany, and chief curator of the 36th São Paulo Biennale. He is the founder and was artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, as well as the artistic director of sonsbeek20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

He also worked as curator-at-large for Adam Szymczyk’s Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany in 2017, and was guest curator of the Dak’Art biennale in Dakar, Senegal, in 2018. Additionally, he served as the artistic director for the 12th and 13th editions of the Bamako Encounters photography biennial in Mali, taking on this role in 2019 and 2022. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he curated the Finland Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, 2019.

Prof Dr Ndikung was a guest professor in curatorial studies and sound art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and he is currently a professor in, and head of, the faculty of Spatial Strategies Master’s program at the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin. He was the recipient of the first OCAD University International Curators Residency fellowship in Toronto in 2020. His published works include, inter alia, The Delusions of Care (2021), An Ongoing-Offcoming Tale: Ruminations on Art, Culture, Politics and Us/Others (2022) and Pidginization as Curatorial Method (2023).

Dr Christine Eyene

Dr Christine Eyene is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art and Co-Director of the Exhibition Research Lab at Liverpool John Moores University, and Research Curator at Tate Liverpool. At LJMU, she teaches Exhibition Histories and curatorial practices from an African and Diasporic perspective. From 2012 to 2022, she worked with Professor Lubaina Himid CBE RA on Making Histories Visible, an interdisciplinary visual arts research project then based at the University of Central Lancashire.

Her recent exhibitions include George Hallett: Home and Exile, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, and The Plant the Stowed Away, Tate Liverpool + RIBA North, Liverpool (2025). She was curator of Landskrona Foto Festival 2024’s Konsthall exhibition in Landskrona, Sweden, and Seeds and Souls, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2023-24).

Dr Eyene’s latest essay ‘Lolodorf: Memories of a land’ is soon to be published in Ibou Coulibaly Diop, Franck Hermann Ekra and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (eds.), Deberlinization: Refabulating the World, A Theory of Praxis. Zurich: Diaphanes, 2025. Recent published essays include ‘Where an artist finds freedom’ in Alicia Knock (ed.), Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2025.

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Pr Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Dr Christine Eyene in conversation

Moderated by Gabriela Saenger Silva

Tuesday 23 September, 18.30 – 20.00

Exhibition viewing extended from 17.00 to 20.30

Exhibition Research Lab Gallery

Liverpool School of Art and Creative Industries

John Lennon Art and Design Building

2 Duckinfield Street

Liverpool L3 5RD

For more information visit www.exhibition-research-lab.co.uk or contact info@exhibition-research-lab.co.uk.

Image: Prof Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Director and Chief Curator Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Photo: Dale Grant/HKW.