
Fiona Bobo
Kabongo
From Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse
2019, photograph
Fiona Bobo, commissioned by Museum Rietberg Zürich

Fiona Bobo
Kabongo
From Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse
2019, photograph
Fiona Bobo, commissioned by Museum Rietberg Zürich

Fiona Bobo
Toko
From Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse
2019, photograph
Fiona Bobo, commissioned by Museum Rietberg Zürich

Fiona Bobo
Toko
From Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse
2019, photograph
Fiona Bobo, commissioned by Museum Rietberg Zürich

Fiona Bobo
Chaises bleues
2015, installation view

Fiona Bobo
Untitled
From Chaises bleues
2015, cellphone photo, C-print, approx. 20 × 14 cm

Fiona Bobo
BWANIA
2015, installation view

Fiona Bobo
BWANIA
2015, installation view

Fiona Bobo
Untitled
From BWANIA
2015, video still

Fiona Bobo
Untitled
From BWANIA
2015, video still

Fiona Bobo
Me in African dress
From BWANIA
2015, C-print

Fiona Bobo
Marques
From BWANIA
2015, cellphone photo, C-print

Fiona Bobo
Marques
From BWANIA
2015, cellphone photo, C-print
Fiona Bobo: Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse
The Congolese Diaspora on Fashion and Identity in Switzerland
Laura Falletta
17.03.2023
The multimedia installation Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse (Style, Our Country, and Switzerland) is the work of the Zurich-based artist Fiona Ndetani Bobo (1992) in collaboration with Fabrice Mawete (1983) and Antonin Wittwer (1992). It addresses fashion as a cultural aspect of the Congolese diaspora in Switzerland and hence is part of the “Design and Elegance” section of the Congo as Fiction exhibition. Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse is the result of several months’ research into the Congolese community in Zurich and environs. It soon became clear that external appearances and their presentation play a prominent part in Congolese society and are a way of asserting oneself in the community—not only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but also in the European and Swiss diaspora. Yet how is this phenomenon manifested and what are the differences between the DRC and the diaspora in Switzerland?
Raised in the canton of Zürich, Fiona Bobo has a Congolese father and a Swiss mother. She is studying social work at the ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences), and from 2012 to 2016 she was a student of media arts in the Department of Art & Media at the ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts). During her art degree she mainly focused on issues surrounding her Congolese roots and the cultural differences between Switzerland and Congo. Fiona Bobo’s interest in people and their histories has always been crucial and served as her key to these respective spheres. When she traveled to Kinshasa with her father and brother in 2012, she was fascinated by the urban architecture and lifestyle in the capital. Over the following years she increasingly explored this kind of subject. Her journey and family connections have led to close communication with friends and relatives in Congo with whom she collaborates across national borders on her art projects. This is how the work Chaises bleues emerged, for example, for which she asked her cousin via Facebook to take photographs of all the blue plastic chairs that stand on every corner in Kinshasa and have a formative influence on the cityscape. Central to this work is her cousin’s unique view of the objects, as well as his approach to the task and handling of the camera. In a sense, the artist’s final project at university, BWANIA, is a combination of her earlier works that now features herself more prominently as an individual. At the core of this installation is a video of her grandmother’s funeral in Kinshasa. Commissioned by her relatives, the video shows the entire twenty-four-hour burial ceremony, at which all family members wear custom-made mourning clothes cut from the same fabric. At her request, one of the artist’s aunts made her a dress from the fabric and sent it to her in Switzerland. Fiona Bobo portrayed herself wearing this dress in various photos, which are likewise part of the installation. Another element of the artwork focuses on the way the Congolese population presents itself. Here her cousin photographed people on the street in conspicuous branded clothing.
The themes of fashion, presentation, and identity are a recurring theme in Fiona Bobo’s work and to a certain extent constitute the red thread in her oeuvre. Her collaboration with others and the participatory approach as an explicit creative practice are key to her artworks and are also expressed in her cooperation with the Congolese diaspora in Switzerland.
Raised in the canton of Schwyz as the son of Congolese parents, Fabrice Mawete is a qualified social pedagogue with a HEB coaching diploma. During his collaboration with the Congolese people living in the diaspora here for the exhibition Congo as Fiction, he took on the important role of mediator: he established contact with Congolese representatives of la sape and with other members of the Congolese community in Switzerland and conducted conversations with them in French/Lingala to elicit their attitudes to the topic of the sapeur in the Swiss-Congolese community. Starting points for his research were key community meeting places, such as the Flory hairdressing salon and other establishments in Zurich’s Langstrasse district. Via this work Fabrice Mawete saw the community from a different angle and was able to explore his own identity in more depth.
Antonin Wittwer, who completed a bachelor’s degree in Design, Film and Art at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, was responsible for the filming of the project. He focuses on developing documentary film portraits of people in extraordinary circumstances. For example, in his final degree project Anders Als Andere (Different than Others, documentary film, 20 minutes), he portrayed the regulars at his grandmother’s pub. During his many years of freelance work, he also gained experience in documentary filmmaking and music videos. For this project he captured on film the opinions and voices of the Congolese community, as well as his impressions of community life and festivities.
At the foreground of Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse was the question of what value is given to style and elegance in the diaspora, how these aspects are expressed, and to what extent they might form a cultural identity. On the basis of interviews with “key figures” like the sapeurs, but also more generally by attending the community’s parties and weddings with their ostentatiously dressed guests, those involved in the project attempted to gain an insight into the subject. This process is a subjective approach.
La sape (Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes) is a fashion phenomenon from the urban centers of Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The members of this fictitious society call themselves sapeurs and feel obliged to dress elegantly or outlandishly. Their history can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, to the age of the first encounters with the French and Belge in a colonial context. Given the Europeans’ debasement of the African body, Western clothing was seen as an opportunity to increase one’s status in colonial society. On the other hand, even at that time items of clothing were used as a medium of exchange between the local population and diverse European expedition leaders. By the 1920s at the latest, Congolese domestic workers were increasingly being remunerated in secondhand clothing. Viewed in this light, today’s generation is actually the fourth or even fifth generation of sapeurs.1
The sapeurs in the Congo-Kinshasa enjoy an almost heroic status that is often associated with Christian moral values, as Daniele Tamagni writes: “Non-violence, good education, the dialogue of generous spirit and a passion for all the values that must be integral to be a true sapeur.”2 Consequently, among the Congolese la sape represents an elegant attitude accompanied by equally elegant behavior and appearance, as Tamagni explains: “In the Congo elegance is very important. Perhaps in no other country is a sense of style so crucially identified with its own cultural history. A significant part of this heritage is the sape and the sapeurs.”3 La Sape embodies the pride and self-confidence of Congolese culture and is an influential aspect of identity and belonging in the community. The reportage photography Gentlemen of Bacongo by Daniele Tamagni and the impressive photo series Vanité apparente by Yves Sambu provide an authentic insight into the sape scene in Congo. The viewer soon becomes aware that the aesthetic and visual contrast between the sapeur and their tidy surroundings here in Switzerland is very different from that in the Congo, where the elegance of the sapeurs clearly contrasts with the urban context of the cities where infrastructure is sometimes lacking. In Switzerland the contrast is instead between the sapeurs and even other members of the Congolese diaspora and the local, rather modest clothing culture.
During the project there was also a discussion of the—in part fierce—criticism of the sapeurs that comes from the members of the diaspora themselves. For many Congolese people living in the diaspora, la sape symbolizes a degree of superficiality and they disapprove of the fact that fashion seems to be considerably more important to the sapeurs than family and community values.
What became apparent during the research was that the Swiss sapeurs have perhaps adopted a touch of local restraint: although their outfits come from the latest collections of the big fashion brands and are very elegant, they also conform to the contemporary clothing style in Switzerland. Perhaps the sape movement ultimately lives off paradoxes, and possibly it is the contrasting backdrop that lets creativity bloom, as Paul Goodwin states: “It is at once a throwback to a lost world of precolonial elegance and decadence. At the same time it is also futuristic and even a little freakish given the extremity of the urban conditions in which many of the sapeurs live, particularly in the Congo. La sape is a movement of contradictions and paradoxes.”4
Finally, the project aims to open our eyes to society and culture:
Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso—et la Suisse offers an opportunity to amplify the voice of local Congolese people about the subject of design and elegance and to gain an overview of this very prominent community in Switzerland. From this, a thought-provoking work emerged: thoughts about individual stories of identity, migration, and local coexistence—and even moral issues. Maybe the project will even succeed in making us aware of extravagance in new contexts in our everyday lives.
Source:
Guyer, Nanina: Fiona Bobo: Mvuatu-Mboka Na Biso – et la Suisse: The Congolese Diaspora on Fashion and Identity in Switzerland. in Nanina Guyer and Michaela Oberhofer (Ed.): Congo as Fiction. Art Worlds Between Past and Present. Zurich: Museum Rietberg / Scheidegger & Spiess, 2019
1
Gondola, 2010.
2-4
Tamagni, 2009.