The project will focus around Gbadolite, a northern city in D.R. Congo, that Mobutu, the former country president urbanised. The city features its grand palace where Mobutu used to host lavish parties. Since the change in regime in 1997, the palace has been occupied by various military groups and its walls are marked by messages reflecting their experiences and forming a collective memory of the area's tumultuous past.

The artistic project aims to explore how trauma affects community evolution. It involves interviewing descendants of those connected to the palace. Through their stories, photographs, and physical artefacts, Gael will create artwork that juxtaposes personal narratives with collective memory using collage techniques, ultimately aiming to redefine identities in light of historical reconstruction.

Gael is a young artist whose talent has captivated the Defise Foundation with his vision and creativity from the moment we met him. A graduate of Kinshasa's eponymous Academie des Beaux-Arts, hiswork primarily focuses on collage and painting to create figurative and symbolic figures with a surrealist humanistic tone. Since 2011, he has taken part in several exhibitions in Kinshasa (Centre Wallonie and Texaf- Bilembo), Lubumbashi (Biennale), Kampala (Makerere Galley) and Uganda (National Museum). He had his first solo show with Angalia Gallery in Belgium in 2023.