1969 was a year full of creativity, milestones, love, and, war. It was known as the Moon era, where Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon. It was also when the Beatles released its 11th and final album Abbey Road. The year also saw a revolution of the hippies campaigning “Make Love Not War” towards the U.S. government that set afoot in Vietnam for 18 years—to win the proxy wars. During the Vietnam War in 1969, Cyril Phan was born. Later on, Cyril Phan who is now famously known as Cyril Kongo, lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for two years after the fall of Saigon, with his mother.
It was in 1986 that teenage Kongo started doing graffiti in Paris. He later joined the French’s famous group of artists, Mort Aux Cons (MAC) CREW. During the time, he was not only actively tagging the walls of Paris, but also joining other artists in defending graffiti as an artistic discipline be it Paris, Berlin, Japan, China, and Bagnolet. In the slum area Kosmopolite, Bagnolet, the MAC CREW was granted 15.000 Euros from the city to create MAC Sous le Granit de 68 exhibition. The area was soon brought back to life with the contrasting colours in 2008 and gained significant recognition from the lifestyle media.
FROM PARIS TO THE WORLD
In 2009, Kongo continued to gain more recognition across Europe; the media began to feature him often. “My graffiti was featured in lifestyle magazines, and it gave me the opportunity to meet and get to know more artists from around the world,” said Kongo in a recent interview with Prestige. Darbotz, is one of the Indonesian artists who got to know Kongo more.
It was Darbotz who introduced Kongo to Esti Nurjadin, Founder of D Gallerie, in 2009. “Around 2009, I held a group show in Salihara with other French and Indonesian artists. Kongo was one of the artists involved in graffiti jamming and workshop. I remembered back then that we made a graffiti in front of Cilandak Town Square. Not too long after that, I went to Paris for a month, joining Kosmopolite Art Tour—one of the graffiti programs that were made by Kongo and his crew,” says Darbotz.
“Back then, he and Darbotz asked me to provide a space for Kosmopolite Art’s exhibition in Jakarta. It was for a social cause, to recognize local talents in each city that Kosmopolite Art attended,” said Nurjadin. She agreed to do the projects, while Kongo was in Hong Kong, tagging one of the walls in the city. It was when he met a Hermès representative who made his life even busier.
KONGO’S BREAKTHROUGH WITH HERMÈS, RICHARD MILLE, AND CHANEL
“I was tagging a wall on a Sunday afternoon in Hong Kong in 2007 when a French guy approached me and asked me to have a beer,” said Kongo. At that time, Kongo had no clue of who the guy was. “He asked so many questions about graffiti, etc. for one hour, and after that, I asked him, ‘Are you a police officer?’ Then he laughed, and he told me that ‘no, I’m a Managing Director of Hermes Asia Pacific.'”
Kongo was not aware of Hermès, except its scarf—not until two weeks later after they met and the director called him back when he’s in Paris. “After we exchanged numbers, he called me while I was back in Paris, to decorate the Hermès window in Hong Kong boutique,” he adds. “It was as exciting and as easy for me to do. That’s the first time I get to know Hermès.” The French luxury brand initially requested me to do colourful tones, but the contemporary artist had something else in mind—he made it in black and white.
Hermès Artistic Director Pierre-Alexis Dumas gave him a call to meet him in person. Kongo was proposed to do a Hermès scarf project. He was invited to the Hermès museum and was introduced to the Hermès universe. “I planned to stay for one hour, but instead, I stayed for five hours. We talk about quality, time, travel, and turned out my universe and Hermès is closer than I thought,” said the artist from our recent interview in Jakarta.
After his Hermès project in Hong Kong, Kongo was back in Jakarta to hold the event that he and Kosmopolite Art intended to collaborate with D Gallerie. From 2010 onwards, more luxury brands have asked him to collaborate.
RICHARD MILLE
If you thought that graffiti belongs to the street, think again. In 2016, one of the most historical collaborations was made between Kongo and the Swiss watchmaking brand that combines technical innovation, in architecture and in exceptional watchmaking heritage, Richard Mille.
The project of making RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo took two years in the making, and a special airbrush was developed to allow Kongo to spray his signature colours with the utmost delicacy, one droplet at a time. The watch demanded that Kongo rethink his approach to graffiti in order to adapt his artistic vocabulary for the minimal surface of a calibre. The weight of the paint even had to be strictly determined beforehand to avoid jeopardizing the calibre’s equilibrium, which is essential to its functioning.
“During the Richard Mille project, I’ve spent two years in Switzerland working with people who made the Haute complication movement of a watch. It’s as tough as making an automobile but with smaller parts. We don’t need to see time from a watch, we have our phones etc., but these watchmakers are looking for the elegance of the movement,” said Kongo to Prestige. “They create a watch movement evolution, and I also made an evolution from figuring out how to translate my artwork on an enamel, canvas, or even crystals,” he added.
“Richard Mille and Kongo succeeded in taking art essentially associated with large-scale urban murals and translating it for the horological world of micromechanics and precision, thereby making a leap from city walls to bridges, baseplates and sapphire dials of watchmaking.”Richard Mille
CHANEL
“Then he [Karl Lagerfeld] seemed to riff on the Bangles’s 1986 hit ‘Walk Like an Egyptian,’ with a slew of prints evoking the mean streets of Alphabet City and the New York subway during that decade, exuberantly reimagined by the contemporary French graffiti artist Cyril Kongo—latter-day hieroglyphs you might say, and typical of the connections that Lagerfeld makes in his febrile imaginings.”Howard Bowles, Vogue magazine's Contributor
From 2001, Chanel honours the fine craftsmanship that its artisan partners bring to the Maison’s collections. With a runway show that takes place outside the traditional fashion schedule, each year, Chanel turns to a different location to pay tribute to the workshops that provide the Maison with everything from lace to silver buttons and fine embroidery work. It spans from Dallas, Edinburgh, Mumbai and New York. But it was in 2018 that the late Karl Lagerfeld decided to call a French leading Contemporary Artist Cyril Kongo to create paintings in Lagerfeld’s studio at Quai Voltaire, Paris.
Lagerfeld set a magnificent setting of the 10 B.C. Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the backdrop for Chanel’s latest Métiers d’Art show in New York. He mashed up the ancient Egyptian’s culture and New York.
Also read this one: Our Favourite Piece from the Chanel x Cyril Kongo Collaboration!
A LIVING LEGEND
His “first love” was Hermès, and then he collaborated with the late Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel’s artisan line, Metiers d’ Art, making him the first-ever artist who was commissioned for an exceptional Lagerfeld’s last design for Chanel, right before he passed away. Have his projects over the last 20 years showcased his highest career milestones, coming from a self-thought artist? Absolutely. But what makes most of the art enthusiasts, fellow artists, and respective media in the world refer him as a legend?
“As a friend who knows his career development from the first time we met up until today, I am really proud of Kongo. And the most interesting part is, not all graffiti artist can survive by selling their artworks with only just writing their name, and using a graffiti style font,” said Indonesian Artist Darbotz. “You have to be a legend for it and he did that. What I also admired of him was when he collaborated with Hermès. Ever since the collaboration, his projects are getting ‘crazier’ and massive!”
From a high-school drop out, street artist, to self-made world-renowned French-Vietnamese Artist, Cyril Kongo has persistently created dialogues with passionate people who share the same level of curiosity in their respective fields through his artworks—whether it’s in the form of graffiti, paintings, supporting young artist generations, art community, or other exciting projects with luxury brands—whenever, wherever. He is driven by an endless search for excellence, especially with tools for creating his artworks, thus further elevating the art of graffiti.
Up until today, Kongo continues his international tour with the Hermès Carré Club. He also paid homage to the Caribbean; he recently painted a series of 50 unique humidors, that contain 100 cigars of his own blend. And, he also had his first-ever solo museum exhibition Immortals, which opened at Wall House Museum of Saint-Barthélémy island in March and runs until 25 May 2019.
Recently, he visited Solo, Indonesia, to do a batik project, “But I’m still working on it, I need to find how to transform my artwork on batik. It’s hard.”
When Prestige asked him about the batik project, we found an interesting fact about the Indonesian heritage and how it travelled the world. “Batik is interesting. I grew up in Africa, and we also have batik there. When I did early research for the project in Solo, I found out that the fabric they used to make African batik is not from Africa, it came from the Dutch. When I visited the batik factory in Solo, I learned that each Batik patterns have various designs for each specific occasion—and lots of stories to tell.”
The project is still underway, but seeing Kongo’s perseverance throughout the years, we have high hopes that he will create a new dialogue using his graphic vocabulary, applying it with the wax technique, and infuse his artwork on the authentic batik fabric from Indonesia.
JAKARTA-PARIS-TOKYO
On 8 November 2019, Kongo visited Jakarta to launch the Les Ephémères de Cyril Kongo (Kongo’s Studio), presented by D Gallerie. The exhibition runs from 17 October 2019 – 17 January 2020 at Galleria Grand Hyatt Level 3. In our interview, he revealed some of his next projects that will be located in Paris and a show in Tokyo next year.
If you are curious to see his artworks, you can always visit Kongo’s Studio in Jakarta up until 17 January 2020 or in his pop-up studio in Singapore at the Mill which runs until 23 November 2019.
ONE LOVE FOR CYRIL KONGO
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Maya A. Siregar
Online Editor
Maya A. Siregar is the Online Editor of Prestige Indonesia. Always opt for dressing-up, a make-up lover, and love to watch noir movies on the weekend (esp. the ones with Humphrey Bogart in it). Her biggest guilty pleasures? Able to interview incredible personalities and direct them for Prestige's videos.