Take a seat to the Saper Airways with Moke

The theme of this particular work is light and joyful. Five accomplices fly over a wide river separating two cities linked by a bridge. They are sitting in a stylized airplane belonging to an airline called “La Sape Airways”. The characters are very stylish, elegantly and colorfully dressed, smiling and relaxed, clearly enjoying the flight. The plane is as much a shoe as it is a purse, with its wings in the form of straps. The artist is there himself, with his striped suit, his brush in his hand, and his black shoes monogrammed MF for Moké fils.

But what is SAPE? Acronym for Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elégantes, it is a cultural movement uniting the two Congos. It manifests as a certain dandyism that references the dress codes and the manners of the colonial past, while reinterpreting them with a taste for luxurious accessories, color and an obsession with appearances. The movement was started at the beginning of the 20th century by European domestic servants who desired to imitate the dress style of their bosses in order to integrate better. It was brought back into fashion as an assertion of a certain social success, then took on a political aspect, notably in opposition to the power of Mobutu (Dictator in the DRC from 1965 to 1997) whose regime, until 1991, had imposed upon young people the wearing of a uniform. This uniform was called abacost, which signified “down with the suit”, and was made of a Congolese fabric without collar or tie, as these were claimed to be signs of submission to colonial culture. SAPE adherents were at that time seen as agitators, thugs, and derogatorily called “Parisians”.