INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO BECOME I (2026)

Yannis Davy Guibinga is a Gabonese-Canadian photographer and visual artist whose work creates richly constructed worlds around African identity, memory, mythology, and belonging.

Working primarily through portraiture, Yannis combines contemporary visual language with African symbolism and Afrofuturist references to create images that feel both cinematic and deeply personal. His subjects are not simply photographed; they are placed within carefully considered environments where colour, styling, gesture, and symbolism all become part of the story.

What draws us to Yannis’ work is the way it holds both beauty and complexity. Beneath the striking compositions are questions around displacement, resilience, transformation, and what it means to move between cultures while remaining connected to where you come from.

Rooted in his Gabonese heritage and shaped by a broader interest in decolonizing photographic representation, his practice offers another way of seeing African and diasporic identities — not as something fixed or singular, but as layered, evolving, and expansive.

The result is work that feels like both portrait and world-building: an invitation to look closer, question familiar representations, and imagine identity on its own terms.