Artist background

Borgial was born in Congo-Brazzaville in 1994 and migrated to France in 2000, following numerous civil wars in his country. After studying art marketing, he joined the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2016. His body plays a central role in his work, becoming the expression of his physical, cultural and spiritual territory.

A multidisciplinary artist based in Paris, his favourite theme is transformation, which he explores through performance, video and sculpture. He draws his references from ancient mythology, ancestral African cultures and pop culture.
<He has taken part in several group exhibitions, notably at the FRAC Lorraine, the Confort Moderne and the Atrium Scène Nationale in Martinique. To date, he has had two solo exhibitions, ÆTERNA in Paris by the Art 52 collective and OUROBOROS at the Crous de Paris gallery. He is currently a recipient of the Artagon Pantin programme (2024-2026) and the FoRTE grant (2024) from the Ile-de-France region.

Project

<Mother Water is a performance art project devised by Borgial and produced by the CNEAI= as part of the FoRTE 2024 grant from the Ile-de-France Region.
<This project explores the subject of Afro-Western cultural mixing, through the symbolism of water, mythology and the history of African civilisations and their diasporas. The performance takes place in a pool of black water, directly evoking the mysticism of water in Central and West Africa, associated with the goddess Mami Wata, a symbol of transformation, healing and metamorphosis. Borgial puts this mythology into dialogue with Western theories, notably that of Jacques Benveniste on the ‘memory of water’. In his performance, Borgial, as an archetypal hero, dives to the bottom of the water to discover relics that bear witness to a cultural syncretism between Africa and the West.

Partners

This project is supported by the FoRTE grant from the Île-de-France Region and the cneai=.