The Private Portrait
THE PRIVATE PORTRAIT
GOMBO
Virtual reality animated film – 2024
About the artwork
The Private Portrait is a virtual reality experience that invites the public to use a headset where they can view interpretations of Afro-European historical portraits created by visual artist Gombo. Immersed in the painting, the audience listens to a memory of one of the characters. Addressing the audience directly against a 3D painted backdrop, the portrait shares its point of view and recounts its experience during the transatlantic slave trade. Somewhere between an animated portrait and a documentary fiction portrait, the work aims to reinterpret European sources on historical Afro-descendant figures. From the perspective of men and women, the project prompts us to reflect on the duty of remembrance, forgetting, and the representation of Black individuals in history. This work thus contributes to a poetic exploration of new perspectives on history.
The creative process
As a visual artist, I employ various mediums such as digital drawing, textile design, and artisanal screen printing. However, my goal remains constant: to tell a story and share a perspective on the world that seeks to poetically construct a more inclusive and nuanced memory of our shared past, thereby offering new and stimulating perspectives to consider the challenges of the contemporary world.
About the artist
Franco-Angolan visual artist based in Marseille today, Gombo studied fine arts in Poitiers and narrative drawing in Nantes before embarking on a career as a storyboard artist in the animation industry. The turning point came when he moved to the Château Rouge neighborhood of the 18th arrondissement of Paris, known for its shops selling imported African products. Here, the artist rediscovered wax fabric, prominently displayed in the neighborhood’s boutiques. This fabric brought him back to memories of his childhood in Luanda (Angola), where his paternal grandfather owned a textile shop. Intrigued by the history of wax fabric, which sits at the crossroads of three continents – Europe, Asia, and Africa – the artist began to reinterpret wax iconography by designing his own textile patterns. He printed these patterns using the silk-screen technique to create artworks that illustrate the exchanges and blendings between these three continents. Learn more
