January 2025
Rachel Mariembe on this:
I am interested in investigating the provenance of the cultural belongings of the Cameroon collections kept in the Ethnological Museum. As a specialist in the domain of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, I am working on the possibility of reintegrating goods into communities, giving support to the communities and investigating how goods from colonial contexts can tell their own story. On the other hand, knowing the Cameroonian cultural context, I can help to document the collections of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, as well as to plan exhibitions on the Bamum collections at the Humboldt Forum. Then the recommendations for action for possible restitution processes can proceed.
Dr. Rachel Mariembe is head of the Department of Heritage and Museum Studies at the Institute of Fine Art, University of Douala in Nkongsamba, Cameroon. She holds a PhD in Heritage Science and is the coordinator of the Heritage Sciences Laboratory within the UFD Arts and Heritage Sciences, Doctoral School of Social and Human Sciences, University of Douala. She has been an appointed member of the “Commission of Memory” since 2023, working on the role of France in Cameroon during colonization from 1955 to 1971, initiated by the French government. She was a research fellow at the University of Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, focusing on provenance research on colonial looted collections. Rachel Mariembe has participated in the creation of seven community museums in Cameroon as well as the exhibition “Sur la Route des Chefferies du Cameroun: Du visible à l’invisible” at the Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac in France. She helped draw up the application for the Nguon Festival to be included on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. She also led the application for the city of Nkongsamba to be included in UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network, which resulted in the city being admitted to the network in October 2023.
This fellowship is supported by Künstlerhaus Bethanien, which provides a studio for artistic and scientific research.