Pah’Bèt, Dunja Herzog, 2006

Dunja Herzog’s project „Pah’Bèt“ builds on her personal contact with bronze casters in Foumban, Cameroon, the capital of the Bamum culture. In 2006, the artist and the casters produced a couple of small bronze sculptures together, which they called Pah'Bèt. In a next step, they imagined a myth and a set of traditions related to the Pah'Bèt objects and enacted them for the camera. Besides leaving copies of Pah’Bèt at the shops of local arts and crafts merchands, Dunja Herzog also researched the history of bronze casting in the Bamum culture and the ways in which global trade affects this practice; the growing impact of Chinese bronze might eventually cause this important part of Cameroonian culture to vanish.

The new publication partly developed during Dunja her residency at The ANNEX summarizes these varied aspects of the project.