L'arbre à palabres is a permanent sculpture located in Douala. Created by the architecte Frédéric Keiff in 2007, it looks like a palaver tree, whose trunk and branches are made of painted iron rods, while attached fragments of colored glass represent leaves.
The artwork
The Arbre à Palabre by Frédéric Keiff is a tree whose trunk and branches are made of painted iron rods, while attached fragments of colored glass represent leaves. The installation is more than 5 meters tall with a canopy circumference of 7 meters, and it is equipped with wooden slabs embedded in the trunk, serving as benches. It is a passageway installation. Initially conceived to substitute the former palaver tree of Douala, a huge baobab located in the district of Bonaberi, which fell down in 1993, the symbolic meaning of the installation forced some changes in the process. Traditionally, around the palaver tree, the chief of the village and the council members meet and seat in order to take the most important political and social decisions concerning the community, and it is there that tradition values were orally transmitted through generations. This artwork became the subject of a long discussion between the chief of the village and the notables, who finally decided to forbid a foreign artist to place his artwork next to the rest of the former palaver tree. However, it was important that Keiff’s installation was positioned in a public space, easily accessible to inhabitants in order to guarantee that the contemporary palaver tree would keep on holding its symbolic function as a meeting, discussion, and sharing point. The superior chief of Douala, the Prince René Duala Manga Bell, offered one of his properties in Bonanjo for repositioning the Arbre à Palabre that was inaugurated for and officially donated to the city of Douala. The park where the Arbre à Palabre is located belongs to the Bell family, even if the installation itself is in the public domain. This area is surrounded by three historical monuments of Douala: to the North, the Vault of kings Bell, where today the same René Douala Manga Bell lies; to the South, the Espace doual'art from which one can clearly see the Palace of the Kings Bell, commonly known as “La Pagode”, built in 1905 by German colonizers for the kingAuguste Manga Ndoumbe; and, finally, to the West, the Old law court building.
