Nobosudru. The becoming icon of a Mangbetu woman

This exhibition explores the development of the photographic image of Nobosudru, a Mangbetu woman, taken in the north-eastern part of the Congo by G. Specht and L. Poirier, who were responsible for the photographic and cinematographic shots of the famous Citroën automobile crossing known as La Croisière Noire (1924-1925). Directed by G. M. Haardt and L. Audoin-Dubreuil, it crossed Africa from Algeria to Cape Town. Very soon, the profile image of Nobosudru with her characteristic headdress, which was only a status marker but was falsely taken as an ethnic sign of all Mangbetu women, became an icon of Black Africa. The use of this image in the most diverse practices and social contexts, as well as its different material supports, all of which are present in the exhibition, led to its formal and semantic mutation from the 1920s to the present day.