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Hervé Yamguen

L'arrière pays mental, 2023

Courtesy of the artist

Hervé Yamguen

Collection

Hervé Yamguen

L'arrière pays mental, 2023

Acrylic on canvas

100 x 79 cm

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

In L'arrière pays mental, Hervé Yamguen charts an inner landscape that is both deeply personal and collectively resonant. Composed in vivid tones of blue, green, and violet, the work evokes a dreamlike cartography of the mind—a place where memory, spirit, and nature converge. The central figure, whose face is adorned with stars and framed by wide, alert eyes, becomes a living terrain: a face that is also a world, a map, a mountain, a dwelling.

Above the figure, a tree grows from the head—symbol of rooted wisdom and organic thought—while other faces and figures populate the cranium like spirits, ancestors, or fragments of identity. Rain-like marks fall gently from the sky, invoking cleansing, fertility, or quiet introspection. This rainfall, like much in Yamguen’s visual vocabulary, blurs the line between the outer world and inner experience.

The artist’s practice frequently seeks to dissolve boundaries: between humans and animals, the real and the imagined, the sacred and the everyday. Here, music notes, celestial symbols, houses, and bodies all coexist within one head—suggesting that our mental worlds are as vast and plural as the physical ones we inhabit. Yamguen’s imagery, rich in intuition and symbolism, resists fixed interpretation; instead, it opens space for reflection, healing, and poetic wandering. L’arrière pays mental is both a portrait and a topography—an invitation to explore the unseen territories that shape us, and to recognize the emotional, spiritual, and ecological forces that dwell within.

Related works in the collection

Hervé Yamguen Se Sauver, 2023

Hervé Yamguen L'arrière pays mental, 2023

Hervé Yamguen Histoire de têtes 3, 2018

Hervé Yamguen Prendre soin, 2023

Artists

Hervé Yamguen