Ténèbres au Paradis

Titouan stayed in Kinshasa in 2000 to produce a portrait of the city’s rich artistic scene. In 2005, he went back there for his major project Zoé-Zoé, Femmes du monde. He returned with moving portraits of women who, from the simplicity of everyday lives exposed to extreme conditions, described the population’s conflicts and displacements in the country’s east.

Six years later, he sought to extend his work and once again give the region’s women a chance to express themselves: victims, activists, refugees or laborers, continuing to live one day at a time as the country sank into a conflict forgotten by the rest of the world.

To enlighten his readers about the issues in this complex region, Titouan called on the collaboration of specialists who echo the testimonies of the women whose portraits he produced. For it is these women, and them alone, drawn, photographed, or merely sketched, who make up the core of a work whose prime objective is to pay homage to their strength and beauty, their infinite diversity.