The Sky is Not the Limit II (Credit: Felix Fokoua)

Color: Gold “Gilded Dream Colours”
Country: Cameroon

Artwork rationale:

This image is the will of hard work and wish to fulfil ones’ dreams and make tomorrow brighter - Future ‘Felix Fokoua

Colour appeals to emotions, to our sensitivity; to our sense of repartition and further to our personality. So, relying on the personification to describe a space remains a most complex activity because in certain aspects the space (Cameroon) is more complex than the unit (man).
All the excitement of this challenge is in the fact that; it is the most difficult of the subjects that I have met, of course it is a question of describing a Cameroon with the accuracy of my emotions, but it is also a question of telling a story. Story that unfolds every day. In reality, it is about revealing the daily magic of Cameroon through a colour.

Cameroon is a story; it is that of a people; but above all it is those of his sons and daughters. This is my story, this is the story of this golden honey that reveals itself every day beneath a bright, scorching bright contrasting sun, filling our gourds with its energy; of its vitality.
Difficult to detect, there is a Cameroonian dream, that of the child who wants to serve the nation in adulthood, that of the banana seller who will become an industrial or even that of the popular district who will become an architect (Hermann Kamte) or Graphic Designer (Felix Fokoua). With abnegation, our shared stories, our dreams realised or sometimes shattered, constantly reminds us that hope; vitality, originality, hard work and humility are far synonymous on the path to success.
The iconic figures that abound in this country have allowed us to believe that even the sky is not a limit, there is a lot of love, passion, pleasure and even friendliness in our interactions.

What it means to be African:

* Know your culture, your values and those of others,
* Be aware of its learning capacity and thus multiply the training courses useful to Africa,
*Look ahead, move forward but do not forget the positive and negative lessons of history, archive, write, create, communicate, transmit by taking part in the world symphony,
*To be and simply remain oneself in the face of the movements of the world.

Biography:

Hermann Kamte is an award-winning Cameroonian Architect and the Creative Director at HKA | Hermann Kamte & Associates. He is the Chairman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at HKA.
Born in 1992 in Yaounde, Cameroon, Kamte is recognised as a young talent of contemporary and African architecture through major conceptual and theoretical projects. His project, Lagos’s Wooden Tower | Abebe Court Tower, Lagos – Nigeria, enjoyed a series of international awards and media coverage in publications such as The Architectural Review, Business Day and Financial Times.

In 2016, Kamte earned his master’s degree in architecture at the prestigious EAMAU (École Africaine des Métiers de l’Architecture et de l’Urbanisme) and shortly afterward founded his eponymous practice.
Since graduation in 2016, Kamte has received a series of international awards including but not limited to the inaugural WAFX Prize 2017 (1st Prize Cultural Identity) at the World Architecture Festival 2017; the American Prize for Architecture 2017 (Gold in Architectural Design/Green architecture); Rethinking The Future Awards 2017.

Kamte has taken part in several collective exhibitions across the world (United Kingdom, China, India, Italia, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Togo, Albania, Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Australia), and has exhibited the research project ‘Lagos’s Wooden Tower’ in London at Roca London Gallery under the theme: “Timber Rising: Vertical Visions for the Cities of Tomorrow”.

Kamte has been featured on several international media platforms including The Architectural Review, Financial Times, CNN, Business Day, CTBUH, Afrique Magazine, Australian Timber Magazine, African Design Magazine, and Design Indaba.