GOSETTE LUBONDO

Imaginary Trip III

Imaginary Trip III is the third chapter of Gosette Lubondo’s research on the memory and history of her country, focusing on the colonial industries of Lukula, in the Kongo Central province, Democratic Republic of Congo. Specialized in the manufacture of wood and other regional products, these industries were part of the “civilizing mission” of the colonial system and represented important hubs of the local economy. After independence, they managed to survive into the 1970s, only to shut their doors in the following decade. Lubondo’s interest in Lukula’s former industrial life was to explore the idea of mimicking the past of the community, but at the same time to think about a certain form of resurrection of the soul of the place through the artistic act. The artist thus visited the area and photographed former employees who even today continue to look after the abandoned buildings, overgrown with lush vegetation, sometimes hoping that the industrial production might be revived. Lubondo walks around the industrial grounds with her subjects, inviting them to move through the spaces. She portrays them as ghostly characters, vigils of the past, there – but not there, capturing them in dynamic or more contemplative poses as they respond to their own private memories. In her exquisitely choreographed photographs and accompanying video, Lubondo traces this collective industrial history and complex colonial legacy through the prism of the broken dreams and unfulfilled promises of independence, as well as of the irrepressible utopia of a resurrection.

Born in 1993, Gosette Lubondo lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. A graduate in visual communication at the Academy of Fine Arts Kinshasa in 2014, she was inspired from a young age by the work of her father, a photographer by profession. Her work addresses the theme of memory and the history of spaces but also of people. Through her staging and photo performance, she questions the history of her country, her own history and her identity.