Gabon 1977 (Limited Edition)

Prior to becoming an artist, and before reaching Italy, while not yet twenty years old, Nathalie Du Pasquier spent six months in Gabon, an ex-French colony. She stayed in Port Gentil, the second-largest city in the country, blending in with its everyday life. She made new friends. And it was a friend of hers who would then give her a newspaper cutting that Du Pasquier decided to turn into a comic strip. What came out is a story with the intense colours and the contagious humour so typical of Africa: the adventures of a clumsy Don Giovanni who brings mirth to the whole community with his undertakings. The little book offers a novel dimension to the artist’s work: the comic strip, the bande dessinée, in the finest of French tradition. The booklet is attached to a specular version, prepared especially for the occasion by the artist, who states: “It was strange to come across this book, bound together with ageing sticky tape, this forgotten relic, because I lost everything I had done before coming to Italy: the letters, the drawings and the photos. I don’t even know how it survived: I would like to think that it was the first thing I did, that I can still see myself in it, because most of all it still makes me laugh.”