“Imaginary Trip II” is a traveling exhibition showcasing the photographic work of Congolese artist Gosette Lubondo. It continues its journey at the Musée National du Cameroun in Yaoundé, where its artistic project comprising a series of twelve photographs will be on display until July 31, 2023.
The “Imaginary Trip II” exhibition provides information on Gosette Lubondo‘s past, as well as on the history of her country, which will be presented as part of the “Memoria: Tales from Another History“ exhibition.
Born in Kinshasa in 1993, Gosette Lubondo graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. The photographer then took part in numerous workshops and an international photography masterclass. Troubled by the timeless imprint found in abandoned places, Gosette Lubondo decided to breathe new life into these neglected places by staging imaginary travelers whose presence evokes the atmosphere that once reigned in these places.
She then enveloped Kinshasa’s disused train station in her creative art and created “Imaginary Trip“, a photographic series launched in 2016, which definitively launched her career and of which the “Imaginary Trip II” exhibition is the extension.
For her second photographic series, Gosette Lubondo decided to take over a former school in the village of Gombe Matadi, in the Central Congo region, now abandoned.
This series of photographic works was produced as part of the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac’s photographic residencies. Founded in 1936 by Brother Adrien, a member of a Christian congregation, the school chosen by Gosette Lubondo was once a prestigious and highly selective boarding school, but unfortunately fell into disuse around the 1970s due to the rural exodus provoked by the policies of President Joseph Désiré Mobutu.
Blending reality and fiction, Gosette Lubondo’s “Imaginary Trip II” brings the abandoned school back to life through her photographs. She creates scenarios and reconstructions based on the free testimony of former students of the school, shedding new light on it through her art, aiming to revive its history in today’s societal context. Gosette Lubondo creates anonymous, ghostly-looking characters that plunge you into a dreamlike universe of ambiguous, unreal temporality.
