Anje is a Cameroonian artist who has gained recognition for his vibrant and sophisticated portrait paintings. He was already considered a talented artist before completing his Masters in Drawing and Painting from the Foumban Institute of Fine Arts in Cameroon in 2018. In 2016, he was an artist-in-residence at the prestigious Les Ateliers Sahm in Brazzaville, Congo, where he became fascinated with the city's celebrated dandies and began making them the primary subjects of his work.
Anje has always been interested in figurative art and started drawing characters from comic books at the age of nine. As the president of his secondary school's art club at sixteen, he became deeply interested in the history of art. His teacher at university taught him the importance of perseverance in his practice and consistency in his work, which he has put to great use.
Anje's Neo-Pop Art paintings provide spirited insights into his stylish models while pointing out the pervasive influence of consumer culture. In his earlier works, he filled the black bodies of his models with logos from famous fashion brands, while in recent works, he portrays them on logo-layered backgrounds. Anje's art has been exhibited in several galleries across the world, including his first solo show, "Black is Beautiful," at Barcelona's OOA Gallery, which discovered his artistic talent and organized his initial European exhibition in 2017.
Anje's paintings capture the essence of the African dandies, known throughout Africa as sapeurs, who spend all their money on fashion. Anje portrays them as religious figures, following their own rules to maintain respect within the community. In his recent works, Anje depicts voguish female dandies and tackles current social issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and racial injustice.
Highly informed about contemporary art, Anje acknowledges the influence of Andy Warhol's Pop culture and his admiration for painters like Tim Okamura, Fahamu Pecou, Amy Sherald, and Kehinde Wiley, who treat the black body in their work. Anje makes his work uniquely his own by conceptually playing with the content and adding metaphors and ideas that take his paintings beyond mere physical realism into a magical realm.