MONUMENTAL INSTALLATION 2025
This year AKAA renews its commitment to immersive and spectacular forms of contemporary art by presenting a monumental, never-before-seen, installation by Serge Mouangue, represented by gallery space Un (Tokyo), in the central aisle of the Carreau du Temple.
Through a sculptural staging imbued with collective memory, the artist offers a visual language marked by slowness, rhythm and silence. A vision where forms, materials and gestures become vessels of transmission. Serge Mouangue calls this vision The Third Aesthetic. Conceived as a work of art in its own right, this installation will, invite visitors to slow down, contemplate, and journey through a universe imbued with spirituality, symbols, and silence. It promises to be imposing, poetic, and deeply rooted in a dialogue between cultures, materials, and memory.
Serge Mouangue is an artist, designer, and thinker born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and trained in France. His life journey across Africa, Europe, and Asia has shaped an artistic practice that is deliberately cross-cultural and boundary-defying. Now based in Japan, he has found in its culture an unexpected reflection of his West African roots. His coming of age in Japan proved transformative: « Living and working in Japan brought me closer to Africa. The Japanese carry a part of Africa within them. » Through his project Wafrica, he merges the formal elegance of the Japanese kimono with African textiles and visual rhythms, crafting a bold aesthetic that transcends traditional frameworks. His perspective is outward-looking, driven by the desire to open new dialogues: « When we speak of African creativity, we often look inward. I choose to look outward. » Mouangue’s work has been exhibited in major institutions in New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Zurich and Dakar. Through beauty, ritual, and form, his art explores the idea of identity. His immersive, often monumental pieces weave together spirituality, memory, and contemporary vision in a language that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant.