Africana artist Fran莽ois-Xavier Gbr茅 visited Bryn Mawr and Haverford this fall. This residency took place between September 4-11, 2015, in conjunction with the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery exhibition , August 28-October 9, 2015 at Haverford College.
About the exhibition:
How is a country鈥檚 national story told through its architecture? When should the structures of the past be dispensed for the future? Ivorian artist Fran莽ois-Xavier Gbr茅 creates photographs that survey relics of the built environment, from the ruins of colonial-era monuments to the futurist symbols of the cosmopolitan city.
About the artist:
Fran莽ois-Xavier Gbr茅 was born in 1978 in Lille, France. After studying at the 脡cole Sup茅rieure des M茅tiers Artistiques in Montpellier, he worked in fashion and design photography in Milan. This experience led him to explore African stories through landscape and architecture.
Gbr茅鈥檚 work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Africa and Europe, including Abroad, Art Twenty One, Lagos, Nigeria; Surfaces and Fragments, Galerie C茅cile Fakhoury, Abidjan, C么te d鈥橧voire; DAK鈥橝RT: The 11th Dakar Biennale, Dakar, Senegal; FLOW, Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery, Japan; We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, U.K.; Synchronicity II, Tiwani Contemporary, London; and Rencontres de Bamako鈥揟he African Biennale of Photography. In September 2015, he will participate in The Lay of the Land, an exhibition on emerging African photographers, at The Walther Collection in New York.
Gbr茅 lives and works in Abidjan.