Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell was born in Cameroon in 1957 into the Bell royal family. She completed a postgraduate degree in Development Economics at the University of Nanterre (France).
She worked for nearly 10 years in rural development NGOs and was a consultant for multilateral international organizations.
In 1991, she co-founded the contemporary art center doual'art with art historian Didier Schaub. The focus of doual’art is on new urban identities and the construction of citizenship through art, artistic intervention in urban space, education, and memory.
The main tool is SUD - Salon Urbain Douala, a triennial international festival of public art created in 2007, each edition of which has a specific theme and which has proposed more than 80 works of art and artistic events in the city of Douala. The subject of SUD2021 will be heritage and the need to challenge the Western museum model.
Since 2014 she has been working on memorial projects concerning German colonial history in Cameroon.
Photo by Antoine Tempé
