Saturday, 29 November 2025, 4:20 pm

Culturescapes Performance Day | Christian Etongo: Totem

Free admission,  no booking required
Culturescapes Performance Day: Languages and Movements

The Performance Day that closes Culturescapes 2025 Sahara opens a space to meet the Saharan languages and movements through performative walks, guitar music, dance, chants, and meditation by artists from different parts of the African continent. 

Christian Etongo. Totem 
40 min.

In Africa, the totem embodies a deep and sacred bond between a social group and an element of nature, be it an animal, a plant, or some other natural phenomenon. Each group has its own totem, which it respects and venerates as a spiritual protector. This sacred link between a human, society, and nature is fundamental to African beliefs, underlining the importance of nature in daily and spiritual life. In many African societies, it is forbidden to kill, consume, or trade the animal or plant incarnating the totem. This prohibition reflects a profound respect for nature and its role in cosmic balance. 

Artist Christian Etongo (Cameroon) offers a contemporary reinterpretation of this ancestral concept of the totem, integrating it into a modern dynamic while retaining its spiritual dimension. As “Ngue'Ngan," a ritual mediator, Etongo symbolically positions himself between ancestral African traditions and contemporary Africa, seeking to recover despoiled cultural artefacts and restore their spiritual role. Etongo's performance goes beyond aesthetic reflection. Through his gesture, the artist restores the symbolic and spiritual power of the objects, while calling into question the colonial practices of despoiling and appropriating African cultures. 

 

Further performances:
>> Kettly Noël (und Kojack): This body remembers - 5:40 pm
>> Yara Mekawei. El-Qibla - 6:50 pm
>> Prince Toffa : Abla Gouda. Feuer - 7:35 pm

 

Bildcredits: Christian Etongo – Totem at ICA Live Art Festival CapeTown 2022 © ZVG