In ‘Of Colour,’ Vibrant Portraits by Yannis Davy Guibinga Illuminate Figures

2 hours ago7 min read

Yannis Davy Guibinga’s latest series, 'Of Colour,' feels less like a static exhibition and more like a soulful album where each portrait is a track pulsing with its own vibrant rhythm. The Gabonese photographer, now based between Montreal and global art scenes, wields saturated hues not merely as aesthetic choices but as the very vocabulary of his visual storytelling, a language as potent and communicative as any lyric.In these large-scale billboard portraits, figures are illuminated not by harsh studio lights but by the emotional resonance of color itself—deep magentas that speak of regal heritage, electric blues that channel contemporary cool, and sun-drenched golds that feel like ancestral warmth. Guibinga’s work consistently centers Black subjects, often against minimalist or surreal backdrops, allowing their presence and the chromatic intensity to command the entire visual field, a deliberate move that challenges the historical underrepresentation and misrepresentation of Black bodies in Western art.This isn't just photography; it's a form of cultural reclamation, a visual album where every shade tells a story of identity, memory, and futurity. His process echoes the methodology of a music producer, carefully mixing pigments to find the perfect tone that conveys a specific feeling or narrative, much like a producer layers sounds to build a song's emotional landscape.The billboard format itself is a powerful statement, transforming public space into a gallery and making this celebration of Black beauty and complexity unavoidable, a public broadcast of pride. One can draw a line from the colorful, patterned backgrounds of Malian photographer Malick Sidibé to Guibinga’s work, though where Sidibé captured the joyous energy of post-independence youth in Bamako, Guibinga projects a forward-looking, globalized African identity, confident and unapologetic.The series continues his long-standing exploration of the African diaspora, building on previous projects that have been featured from Lagos to London, establishing him as a crucial voice in a new generation of African image-makers. By using color so deliberately as a narrative device, Guibinga joins a conversation with painters like Kerry James Marshall, who uses a profound blackness to explore similar themes, and with contemporary photographers like Ruth Ossai, who also employs vibrant, symbolic color in her portraits of Nigerian youth. The consequence of this work is a subtle but significant shift in the visual lexicon of our time, offering a counter-narrative to monolithic stereotypes and proving that the future of portraiture is as much about the stories we choose to illuminate with color as it is about the light that captures a face.

#featured

#Yannis Davy Guibinga

#photography

#portraiture

#color theory

#African art

#digital art

#exhibition

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