Cyril Kongo’s Come Up: ‘I Just Wanted to Be Recognised’

The graffiti artist, whose practice expanded into other media and collaborations with Karl Lagerfeld, Hermès, and Airbus, is the subject of a survey show at Seoul’s Museum Wave. Cyril Kongo with designs by Chanel that drew on his paintings. Installation view, GRAFFITI ALCHEMIST: Cyril Kongo’s Journey of Knowledge and Chromatic Craft (14 March–1 June, 2024), at Museum Wave, Seoul. Born to a Vietnamese father and a French mother in 1969, Cyril Phan grew up in Vietnam and spent a period in his teens living in Brazzaville. When he began throwing graffiti on the walls of Paris, he took the name Kongo. ‘I’m half Asian and half European,’ he said. ‘Taking the name Kongo was my way of speaking to universal humanity.’ Feeling connected to other people was especially important to Kongo as a highschool student in Paris, where he was a foreigner and an outsider. ‘When I was a teenager, I was a political refugee. My concern was to be recognised. Graffiti became my voice,’ he said. Installation view, GRAFFITI ALCHEMIST: Cyril Kongo’s Journey of Knowledge and Chromatic Craft (14 March–1 June, 2024), at Museum Wave, Seoul. He went on to paint murals and more from Rio de Janeiro—’I don’t...