Maski was born in 1990 in Kalemie (DRC) and lives in Kinshasa.

A graduate of ABA Kinshasa, Gaël Maski focused on collage and painting on wood. He used to salvage well-worn boards on which he created figurative and symbolic figures with a surrealist and humanistic tone.

He joined Kin Artstudio (Kinshasa), a collective headed by Vitshois Mwilambwe, in late 2016. Upon his return from the Lubumbashi biennale in 2017, he decided to systematically use photography to more effectively capture snapshots of the lives of his subjects and their environment. He focuses on marginalised and voiceless people. He interviews and photographs them, then prints out the photos on plain paper and cuts them up. Then comes the “recreation” phase: he uses fragments of real life to create new scenes, now on canvas.

The imaginary dimension is clear to see in his most recent works. Maski does not seek to evade real life, instead, his aim is to transform it to make it more bearable, “in Kinshasa, a lot of people, including myself, need to escape into an imaginary world in order to survive.” Hence the importance of using photos as the starting point, i.e., physical reality, which he enriches with symbols and allegories.

In 2021-2022, Gaël’s work was shown at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, as part of the Self-Addressed group exhibition curated by Kehinde Wiley.