During the summer of 1996, I went to the police headquarters of the Isère region in order to hand over the four identity photographs required to obtain a residence permit. My face is perfectly legible: my flat nose, my two big eyes, my big cheeks and the scar I have had for a few years. One month later, I was summoned to collect my card. I then discovered that I am totally black, that my face forms a smooth black mass, a silhouette in which the details of my face don’t appear. I am told that the finish of the photograph is due to the use of new technical procedures that now enable residence permits to be digitised. Several days later, I left Grenoble to go to Germany. Having arrived at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, the police stop me. That summer, spot-checks were frequent because France had experienced a wave of attacks. One of the police officers uses his walkie-talkie to check whether or not the information on the card he has in his hand corresponds with the number of my residence permit. Once he has checked this, he asks me who is on the photo. I say that it is me. To this he retorts: “Sir, I am sorry but we can’t see who is on this photo. How do I know it isn’t Little Black Sambo?” He actually said, “Little Black Sambo”. He insists then that they need to identify me and that until further notice I am an “unidentifiable individual”… That is how I found myself at the police station with a number of people who were there for various offences. After a while, an officer came towards me and asked me why I was there: “Because I am all black on my residence permit and they don’t believe it is me.” Telephone checks start all over again. Once these formalities are out of the way, he indicated that I could leave.

translation by Caroline Hancock

In July 1999, I chose to tackle as a subject the border between Cameroon and Gabon. This boundary had been drawn up without taking into account tribal territories (in this case that of the Fang people). Based on the premise that a border generates conflicts of identity disguised as nationalism, my action confronted the fact that, firstly, the authorities do not recognise the practice of witchcraft even though it occurs in both countries and, secondly, that each country throws the responsibility for it onto the other. So I arrived in Gabon and installed myself on the market square in Lambarene. There I began a sort of occult dialogue with sculpted heads. Appearing to be a witch doctor, I was of course taken back to the border, where they told me to return home – without realising the paradox since we belong to the same ethnic family. This performance illustrated the identity conflicts bequeathed to Africa by the West – beyond its own frontiers.

translation by Caroline Hancock