François-Xavier Gbré Makes use of His Photography to Fill in History’s Gaps

“What I try to do with my work is to fill the many gaps in history, and to tell history in different ways,” mentioned artist François-Xavier Gbré, talking through a video name.

It was becoming that Gbré spoke these phrases, since a lot info remains to be transmitted orally from older to youthful generations in Africa. Born in France to French and Ivorian dad and mom, Gbré makes use of his artwork to maintain alive “the memory of the continent.” He added, “This story needs to be written. And it could be written with words, but also with pictures.”

A couple of days later after his interview with ARTnews, in late January, Gbré’s “Radio Ballast” made its US debut in a duo exhibition with fellow Ivorian Nuits Balnéaires on the International Center of Photography (ICP), in a present curated by David Campany. This physique of labor is concerning the railroad system inbuilt Côte d’Ivoire over a century in the past by French colonizers to move extracted pure minerals within the nation to the port of Abidjan. It is a poignant group of images, particularly as a result of Gbré’s grandfather was a railway employee and the artist has a lifelong fascination with trains.

The genesis of this undertaking got here within the early 2010s, when Gbré was dwelling in Mali, near a prepare station. For a couple of yr beginning in 2024, Gbré photographed the railroad line and the panorama round it, from the north of Côte d’Ivoire to the south, to interrogate the nation’s histories of colonization, independence and modernity. The title of the sequence refers each to untold tales and the crushed rocks on which railway tracks are laid.

“I’ve been looking at the new industry. At the villages that became cities thanks to the trains. I’ve been looking at the first train stations built more than one century ago,” shared Gbré. “Then I’ve been looking at the modern architecture, because when Côte d’Ivoire became independent, Félix Houphouët-Boigny [the country’s first president] decided to modify this train station to make it modern, like he did in the city of Abidjan.”

The footage got here with challenges: some railroad staff weren’t eager on Gbré taking these photos, partially as a result of they have been unfamiliar together with his work and the undertaking. Françoise Remarck, the Ivorian Minister of Culture, who had seen Gbré’s work at exhibitions in Abidjan and on the 2024 Venice Biennale, helped the photographer acquire entry.

Campany, the artistic director of the ICP, advised ARTnews that Gbré represents the “past in a political sense, but also in a kind of economic and cultural sense. François-Xavier understands photography almost like a kind of archaeology. He’s really developed quite a sophisticated way of thinking about [how] an image made in the present can be this gateway or portal into thinking about the past.”

Born in 1978 within the French metropolis of Lille, Gbré didn’t intend to change into a photographer. He broke his shoulder whereas taking part in soccer, and thereafter was invited by a buddy to hitch him in a photograph lab. Gbré’s journey within the discipline began in 2000, when he started taking pictures town the place he was born in black and white. Having “realized that I was not interested in going to the university anymore,” he left his biochemistry class to check pictures on the École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques in Montpellier, France, between 2000 and 2002. Around that point, he labored as an assistant for different photographers in Milan who specialised in trend, magnificence, design, panorama, and structure. Gbré gravitated towards the latter two sorts of pictures—particularly as a result of he had all the time liked structure. In 2007, some 4 years after he grew to become knowledgeable photographer, he formally determined to give attention to structure and landscapes.

“When you are a young photographer, you are looking for a style, for something to tell, how to tell it and what you really want to tell. I was a general photographer, shooting portraits, fashion, landscape. It was a mix of many, many things and it wasn’t really clear. And I really like working with other photographers focusing on architecture and design [then] I realized that I was really interested in that,” recalled Gbré. “That’s what I really wanted to do because when you [walk] around, you are kind of free. And you are not closed in a studio [and] you can go around wherever you want. And I loved architecture from the beginning. I used to draw. I loved geometry when I was at school so it came back.”

After just a few years of working in Italy, Gbré relocated to Africa: first to the Malian capital of Bamako, then to the Ivorian metropolis of Abidjan, the place he presently lives and works along with La Rochelle in France. Periodically, his follow additionally entails touring elsewhere, to international locations similar to Madagascar.

In 2023, Gbré was invited by Fondation H, a Malagasy artwork basis with areas in Antananarivo and Paris, for a residency on the architectural heritage of the previous metropolis, which is the capital of Madagascar, a former colony of France. He recalled that he was “free to go around the city” in the course of the residency. What resulted was an exhibition titled “Lova,” which implies “Heritage” in Malagasy. The present featured works shot throughout his time in Antananarivo: together with capturing town’s structure and colonial remnants. These footage inform tales concerning the metropolis and nation’s previous, not by recounting occasions from way back however by picturing the locations containing historical past.  

“He’s a traveler. He works like he has a map in his head. François-Xavier cannot be lost in a city even if the city is [new to him],” mentioned Cécile Fakhoury, the founding father of the eponymous gallery which has represented Gbré for shut to fifteen years. “[His] very sharp photographs [have] so much history. He captures the story of our humanity through landscape and architecture.”

Fakhoury first came upon about Gbré’s work throughout a analysis interval in 2012 previous to opening her gallery in Abidjan, which now additionally has areas in Dakar and Paris. She even had a file on her pc of the photographer’s work earlier than she knew him personally. She recalled that they met “by chance,” when the photographer participated within the Biennale Regard Beninin Cotonou that very same yr. On show in that Biennale was a physique of labor by Gbré documenting the erstwhile National Printing Factory in Porto Novo, which was in disrepair.

The photographer shared with the gallerist that he had plans to be in Côte d’Ivoire together with his household from Mali, the place he was primarily based on the time, and when Gbré finally visited the gallery months later, he did so with a physique of labor. It marked the start of the long-term working relationship.

Fakhoury disclosed that when she exhibited Gbré’s artwork on the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London in 2013, her sales space attracted guests similar to Arthur Walther, a pictures collector who then went on to inform Tate curator Simon Baker about Gbré. Walther purchased two works and donated one to Tate Modern. Since then, Fakhoury’s gallery has proven Gbré’s work around the globe, serving to place it in biennials, exhibitions, and collections like these of MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, Fondation H, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Showing his work at locations and exhibitions just like the one on the ICP is Gbré’s means of continuous to doc and show historical past.

“Radio Ballast is a part of the history of Côte d’Ivoire using the train system as a reason to look at the history of the country,” mentioned Gbré. The physique of labor and exhibition is in step with his follow being about “filling the gaps and making history accessible to everyone.”