Malam is an artist who lives and works in Douala.
Malam is Cameroonian and was born in 1967 in Douala.
Malam is both sculptor and painter and he makes installation art.

Malam's work is highly sensitive, confronting and raw.
The very first work I saw in Douala was a life-sized and blackened soldier-figure, armed and monkey-sculled completely out of place in the silence and tidiness of the Doual'art gallery. There is no way around that work as it expresses a penetrating horror with the same undeniable force as the bare tenderness expressed in some of the paintings I saw later that week. (see video-reportage).

In his work Malam tears the reality inside out to reveal what lies beneath the surface of day-to-day life.
First and foremost terror.
From universal terror such as war inflicted by evil leaders to the personal terror of the individual who commits a horrible crime.
Often terror is swept under the carpet without compassion for its victims. Malam testifies for these victims and makes the public aware of their complicity. For Malam art and life are one and while hanging out with him in Douala I realized that Malam and his work are totally complementary.
Malam is also a Weather Reporter and last November I asked him to answer the following questions:

R: Can you tell something about your work, your vision & aim?

M: My works deals with the reality of life, the suffering and the inequality, the slavery that still exists today. In everyday life everyone witnesses poverty, war, murder, abuse, hunger, etcetera and is therefore responsible. Most people however choose to ignore or even cover up evil. My aim as an artist is to provoke and shock the public with the terror they try so hard to avoid and to confront them with the evil things they cause. Above all I want to haunt and taint those who are directly responsible. I want people in general to become aware, to take responsibility and to undertake action, to share the suffering and to find the solution.

R: What is in the past?
R: What is happening now?
R: What is in the future?
R: What is everlasting?
M: On the whole the past and the present can be considered the same. The future can make a difference.
It strikes me that today the fear of death beats the will to safe another. I would like to make people aware of the possibility to change by making them understand that the collective exceeds the individual.
It is always the other that can set you free and make you a good human being.

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