INTERVIEW WITH GÉRALDINE TOBE

 

In my work, smoke came later. My practice was initially devoted to painting. I was driven by the desire to do something other than painting. I was looking for freedom. And it was this search that led me to smoke. I set out with the idea of destroying and rebuilding. Something just clicked. 

 

Throughout my childhood, I was taught only to paint. You either do sculpture or painting. Contemporary artists are shifting away from traditional materials like clay and are using different mediums for their sculptures. For example, Freddy Tsimba uses balls, spoons, etc... I wanted to do the same for my paintings. I wanted to find a medium other than paint. And I found smoke. It’s the fire that consumes, the force that incinerates. When life ends, we are reduced to ashes. That is all that remains of my beloved mentor and dear friend, Hans de Wolf.

 

Smoke is a process of destruction and re-creation. I began to understand that smoke was a tool which helped me to heal. It allows me to express myself because there are certain things I'm unable to say with words. For me, it's a form of therapy, a way of opening up. This smoke has given me the path, the elements to exploit. Each of us has something to heal in the search for truth. And generally speaking, when we create, it's the expression of the soul that we transmit.

 

 

Art has profound depth. I often listen to Gregorian chants, and there's something about their depth that always draws me in. My work may not be flashy, but it's present, grounded. Art carries the identity of its creator, and I’m someone deeply attuned to the world—its injustices, its suffering. An artist, like a sponge, absorbs everything around them. What I express comes from my surroundings. We're all unique, and that's the beauty of art and culture. Life is intense, constantly throwing challenges at us, but we rise, fall, and keep moving forward. In some ways, I guess I'm a bit old school.

 

Still, I encourage the viewer to experience my work not as a passive observer but to engage with it, to listen and have a personal dialogue with it. Art should be read and felt in your own way and interpretation should remain free. I remember when I was in art school, our art history teacher told us that every work holds multiple meanings. I dislike the idea of putting labels on art. When we create, we do so for others, but each person will see something different.

I want to open doors, not confine the meaning of my paintings.

 

 

Spirituality is very important. This approach is first and foremost a form of autobiography. I'm a child who grew up in a duality between two spiritualities: the ancestral cultural side and the beliefs of the Catholic religion. On the ancestral spiritual side, I was able to benefit from certain teachings passed on to me by several people. This is just one piece of the puzzle. 

 

In my family, in the 70s, my mother had a daughter who died tragically at the age of 9. Her death was a blow to the whole family. My mother always cried in the name of her ancestors, for her daughter to come back to her. Children are angels, innocents. I, Géraldine, was born in 92. When I was born, the whole family thought that Patricienne (my sister) had returned. I ask questions for which I have no answers but sometimes I feel like I've already lived, I've always behaved as if I were the eldest. People often say that I'm an old soul in a young body. It's because of all this that I feel I have a kind of duty to pass on.  

 

 

Before I start creating, I first think about a concept, a theme or a message. It's at this point that I move on to the concrete phase, determining how to give shape to my idea. There are a lot of steps involved in arriving at the final result. I start by drawing on paper, sketching shadows and other details. To get a precise shape, I have to prevent the smoke from diffusing. I cut out and collect the cut-out pieces, taking care to maintain the circumference. I glue all around to fix the paper to the canvas; without the glue, the paper could be weakened by the fire. Then I collect all the details sketched in pencil, drawing all over the place. I think about the cuts, tape the papers to fix them, then my assistants hold the canvases up. It's about teamwork and patience. Once the final result is achieved, I remove the paper, leaving the drawing in place. I create the volumes with the smoke, by drawing and letting the smoke unfold. I aim the lamp, wait, adjust and keep the process moving.

 

I like stories that make me think, and I like a challenge. Often, when I'm looking at a painting, I don't know where to start. On the one hand, I accompany the creation itself. When the canvas is hanging, I don't yet know what the final result will be, despite my preparatory drawings. It's the smoke that decides. I'm impatient to see the final work and I'm often surprised by the result. When I start working, I lose all sense of pain and enter an almost transcendent state. At that point, it's no longer my own actions, but other forces that seem to take possession of my body.

Some things are left unexplained.

 

 

There's an element of imagination in my work, but it's mainly based on the idea of chance. Many events in our lives are linked to chance, so I allow myself the freedom to choose faces randomly. Each series I create is autonomous and everything depends on the context. For example, the series I did for the exhibition at the Tervuren Museum - ReThinking Collections - focused on spirituality. The subject was abstract, and the characters represented were not clearly defined individuals.

 

In other series, the characters are more detailed and precise. It all depends on the concept and the theme that accompanies each series. I've painted the faces of people who existed in the past or contemporary figures, particularly old people. It's all about getting a message across to my community today. The younger generation sometimes has a different way of looking at the elderly, sometimes seeing them as witches. Yet they are the ones who have shaped who we are today. My works depicting children illustrate the transmission between generations, as in Terre-Mère  (2021).

 

 

Everything is vanity. One day we'll all be gone. It's not the body that goes, it's the being inside. You get rid of it. It's a work about vanities. I'm passing on a message: before you fly away, if you think you can do something for someone else, do it. 

You'll continue to live on through the memories people have of you.

  

 

This symbol represents scarification marks. I was inspired by the symbols found on women's bodies. Scarifications were the teachings that accompanied humans in ancestral society. They also represented divinity. A circle was drawn on a woman's navel. This kept the child in the womb in communion with its great-great-grandparents. The mother is the descendant. Individuals are forever connected to their ancestors through their mothers' navels. When you get scarified and die, you take it with you to the grave. Wood is part of nature. That's also why wood is carved into statuettes. 

 

Man becomes dust and nature remains.

 

The eagle is an important animal. When I was a painter, in this spirit of innovation, I wanted to do something other than painting. When I started painting with smoke, my work was very much rejected and criticised. Back home, academicism dominated. I struggled to build my career around smoke until one of our elders, the photographer and film-maker Kiripi Katembo, contacted me. He was behind the first Kinshasa Biennale in 2014. He contacted me and told me that he found my work very strong. I agreed to take part in the biennial. The curator of the biennale [Sithabile Mlotshwa] wrote a lot about my work. This opportunity exposed my work to other eyes, which enabled me to go to Europe in 2015 following the biennial.

 

In my village, there's this myth that's passed down orally. Myths teach us how to live with others through anecdotes. My grandfather used to tell me the story of the eagle [tshikolo in my mother tongue]. A female eagle was looking for a place to lay her eggs. She travelled through several villages. Each time she arrived in a village, she asked the village chief if there was a place where she could lay her eggs. The traditional chiefs all rejected her request: ‘There's no place for you’. She continued on until she reached the last village. The traditional chief told her: ‘All the places are taken, but in our village, we can't let foreigners leave. Behind the cage, there's a place where you can lay your eggs’. The eagle laid its eggs. The land became fertile thanks to their presence. So much so that the whole village became fertile: everything they put in the ground grew. People from neighbouring villages flocked to the village to find food.

 

This story reminds me of my own. When I started the smoke technique, everyone rejected it. Eventually, I received an invitation to exhibit at a biennial, which opened the door to many other opportunities to show my work. I started thinking about other forms of art, such as art therapy, to benefit the rest of society, especially those who are ill and don't necessarily have access to art. That explains the eagles. It's a personal symbolism.

 

 

I'm the president of an organisation in Kinshasa [Losa] that does art therapy. The aim of this approach is to reintegrate patients into society, teach them a trade and use art as a treatment. The practice of art therapy also sometimes allows psychologists to benefit from a new treatment medium for these patients. I'd also like to extend the project to the mentally handicapped. The University of Kinshasa has an art therapy centre. The energy of the city of Kinshasa is enormous, but the idea is also to extend to the provinces. We also have a twinning project with other European centres to benefit from their expertise in mental health. This project goes beyond art, as we are working with doctors and psychologists.

 

The reason I'm in the arts today is because of my older brother, who is mentally disabled. When he was 8, he stopped going to school because of the psychological problems he suffered from. But he used to make art at home, and he introduced me to it and turned me into a real artist.

 

 

I'm currently in residence in Germany to prepare the group exhibition The True Size of Africa, to which I've been invited by the Völklinger Museum and which will be on show from November 2024. For this project, the idea is to launch an invitation from beyond to represent all the people who worked in this factory. I'm going to give them a face again through the smoke. I can't reproduce all these faces. It will be random : I'm not targeting, I'm just taking it as it comes. I'm going to reproduce certain faces and imagine others. Not all the workers had the chance to be photographed.