"I want to paint the everyday life of the people around me."
Marc Padeu (b. 1990, Melong, Cameroon) is one of the most compelling painters of the new Cameroonian generation. His large-scale acrylic canvases translate the everyday life of contemporary Cameroon, family gatherings, plantation communities, moments of joy and rest, into monumental compositions built on the plastic poses of Italian Renaissance and Caravaggesque painting. Religious iconography, from depositions to annunciations, is Africanized in the fabrics, the skin and the light, turning the sacred into a lens on the human condition. A graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts of the University of Douala at Nkongsamba, he has held solo exhibitions in London, Berlin and Milan, and took part in "When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting" at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town. His work is held in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. He lives and works between Douala and Nkongsamba.