Initially a painter, Hervé Yamguen began exploring photography several years ago. However, the real shift in his creative work happened in 2013 through sculpture. This discipline embodies Yamguen’s entrance into the figuration of a poetic and erotic bestiary that was first revealed in the drawing series Humain Végétal, completed over a period of five years (2005–2010). Yamguen’s sculpture works, according to the artist, allow new horizons and perspectives to surface. Yamguen paints and covers parts of wooden panels with colourful pearls to represent the creatures of his bestiary. The object then becomes an unexpected and challenging fetish, which serves to bring into focus the ways in which sexuality and spirituality is represented.

He has been exhibited at the Fondation Donwahi in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and notably produced five outdoor sculptures for the third edition of the Salon Urbain de Douala, a contemporary art triennial organised in Douala, Cameroon.