Meeting of worlds and minds: Elie Kimbembe’s exhibit, in collaboration with Up Cannabis, looks to bridge divides

At a heritage-chic industrial building outside of downtown Toronto on Mar. 28, notable Toronto photographer, Elie Kimbembe, in collaboration with Up Cannabis, opened his first photography exhibit, Solo, to a packed venue.

Inside, Toronto’s Stack Lab collaborated with the artist to create a space that combines Albert Einstein’s theories on the curvature of space with Stanley Kubrick-like stylizing.

 

 

“I wanted to have something that felt good, that looked good,” Kimbembe told The GrowthOp. “I didn’t want a simple show, to have people walk through a room. I wanted to create an environment.”

Featured were large, luminous pillars of fabric, funnel-like in shape with the bottoms releasing billows of dry ice over the radiant floor and creating vaults along the ceiling. Kimbembe’s 16 large photographs hung between them as if suspended in space.

Photographing Canadian singer, songwriter and record producer, The Weeknd’s clothing line, XO, launched Kimbembe—who says he enjoys cannabis and uses it as a treat after work—into world tours with Drake and The Weeknd. That momentum landed him a job as photographer on the sets of blockbuster films, Black Panther and Star Wars: Rogue One.

“As I’m looking at the room right now, it’s pretty cool,” Kimbembe remarked about 20 minutes after ticket-holders started entering the show to view his work. “This is my first time seeing flows of people; it’s crazy because it’s a lot of people.”

Building beyond architecture

The photography, sold out days before the doors even opened, represents an accumulation of three years of Kimbembe’s art, including both celebrity work and new portrait photography. The multidisciplinary artist was born in the Congo and raised in Montreal, but it was shooting Toronto architecture that gained him an Instagram following and gave his work an international audience.

Photographing Canadian singer, songwriter and record producer, The Weeknd’s clothing line, XO, launched Kimbembe—who says he enjoys cannabis and uses it as a treat after work—into world tours with Drake and The Weeknd. That momentum landed him a job as photographer on the sets of blockbuster films, Black Panther and Star Wars: Rogue One.

Cannabis and creativity

Kimbembe’s online influencer status is what eventually brought him to meet the team at Up Cannabis. He was a plus-one at the company’s launch event last summer.

People gathered to enjoy the art of Elie Kimbembe. “I wanted to have something that felt good, that looked good,” Kimbembe says of the show.

“Up is a firm believer in the link between cannabis and creativity,” says P.M. Rendon, the company’s director of communications and public relations. “Exploring that link is part of our mandate, it’s part of our brand, and it’s a massive white space.”

Known for their relationship with famous Canadian rock group, The Tragically Hip, Up has focused on working with creative individuals, organizations and groups. The show involving Kimbembe, Rendon points out, is a manifestation of that mandate.

Stack Labs founder, Jeffrey Forrest, though not a regular cannabis consumer, says that using some Up cannabis during the planning process helped elaborate on the original plans for the show installation.

Solo is meant to be a complete visual and sensory experience, where Selena Gomez on the set of her Fetish music video gazes a group of youths posing in the Congo across from her in an unlikely meeting between celebrity and citizen.

Kimbembe says he sees no difference in working with celebrities versus everyday people, and insists it’s all about making a connection, whoever that person is.

“The difference, mainly, is that I get to spend more time with someone like Selena, whereas the kids in the Congo, I don’t get to know them, but sometimes I still wonder who they are and what they are doing,” he says.