YRNEH GABON Spirit Leads Me

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce YRNEH GABON: Spirit Leads Me, a multimedia exhibition of painting, sculpture, and performance art, on view in Gallery 2 and Gallery 3 from February 24 through April 13, 2024. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, February 24th, from 4 to 7 p.m., and a FRIEZE Weekend Brunch will be held the following Saturday, March 2nd, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. 

In 2023, Yrneh Gabon became the first artist-in-residence at The Museum of Black Civilizations, a national museum in Dakar, Senegal, where he initiated a body of work based on the boubou, an elaborate flowing caftan-like garment that is a manifestation of the spirit of traditional Senegalese fashion. The boubou’s African origins can be traced to the 8th century, and the word “boubou” is a French distortion of the Wolof word mbubb. In essence, the boubou is both a metaphor for colonization; and, simultaneously, a sign of sartorial resistance against the imperative to adopt Western dress. Gabon designed three grand boubous with fabric selected from across the continent, and decorated them with dragonflies, a motif that first appeared in his work during the severe California drought of 2016. For Gabon, the dragonfly is a symbol of the precarity of life in a time of grave ecological crisis.

The exhibition Spirit Leads Me presents the boubous that Gabon designed at The Museum of Black Civilisations along with a series of visually rhythmic paintings in which they are depicted worn by himself and subjects the artist befriended during his trips to the African continent (such as the Senegalese twins Sena and Sana, and the Jamaican supermodel and fashion designer Lois Samuels). In addition, the exhibition includes four paintings that highlight the role of African children in a fast-changing Africa and the criticality of empowering them by encouraging curiosity and the search for purpose and prospect. These works are joined by several mixed-media floor and wall sculptures employing a range of materials, including bronze, steel, crystals, salt, clay, wood, glass, water, and paint.

Throughout these works, Gabon excavates and reveals layers of dislocation and destruction to address political, economic, racial and religious subjugation, and the violence in the history of Africa and the slave trade.  Like the dragonfly which symbolizes mutability and tenacity, Gabon’s work brings Africans from the continent and the diaspora together, connected across time and place by the umbilical cord of history, to communicate messages imbued with spirituality, empowerment and survival.