Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Jenny Shimizu

Jenny Shimizu is a Japanese-American model and actor who became one of the defining androgynous faces of 1990s fashion. She was working as a mechanic in Los Angeles when she arrived at a Calvin Klein casting on her motorcycle and was noticed in the parking lot. Her crew cut, tattoos and men’s clothes were retained rather than styled away. Within weeks, she was appearing in Italian Vogue, walking for designers including Jean Paul Gaultier and becoming the first Asian model to walk for Prada. A Banana Republic billboard later placed her above the words “American Beauty”—a description she had never felt applied to her.

La Grande-Motte

La Grande-Motte is a seaside resort near Montpellier, built almost entirely from scratch by the French government during the 1960s and 1970s. The project was intended to transform a marshy, mosquito-heavy coast into a domestic rival to Spain’s increasingly popular beaches. Architect Jean Balladur responded with an entire town of white concrete pyramids, curved apartment blocks and geometric sun screens, drawing inspiration from Mesoamerican temples and his idea of the 21st century

Yamoussoukro Basilica

The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace is an immense Catholic church built by Côte d’Ivoire’s first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in his hometown and newly appointed capital, Yamoussoukro. Completed in 1989, it closely resembles St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, only larger by some measurements: its dome rises 158 metres and its interior holds 18,000 people. Each of its 7,000 seats has an individual air vent, while one stained-glass window includes Houphouët-Boigny kneeling beside Jesus.

Gbadolite

Gbadolite is a city in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the ancestral home of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country—then called Zaire—from 1965 to 1997. Mobutu transformed the remote settlement into his personal capital, complete with three palaces, a five-star hotel, hospital, Coca-Cola plant and a 3,200-metre runway built to receive chartered Concordes from Europe. Foreign leaders were entertained among marble, fountains and Chinese pagodas in what became known as the “Versailles of the Jungle.” When Mobutu fell in 1997, the palaces were looted and abandoned. Vegetation entered the ballrooms and the airport nearly emptied.

Gaddafi’s travelling tent

Muammar Gaddafi was Libya’s ruler from 1969 to 2011 and an unusually committed practitioner of political theatre. On foreign visits, he often received dignitaries inside a large Bedouin tent, presenting it as a connection to his desert upbringing. The tent travelled to Brussels, Moscow, Rome and Paris, where it was erected in palace gardens and surrounded by security, communications equipment and Gaddafi’s considerable entourage. Its greatest difficulty came in New York in 2009. Central Park refused it, New Jersey objected and officials ordered it removed from an estate owned by Donald Trump for violating local regulations.

Kinshasa’s Traffic Robots

Since 2013, several intersections in Kinshasa have been governed by eight-foot aluminium robots. Designed by Congolese engineer Thérèse Izay Kirongozi and built by the women-led cooperative Wotech, they rotate at the waist, raise their arms and flash red or green lights from their palms. Solar panels rise from their heads like enormous hats, while cameras in their eyes record motorists. They were introduced partly because traffic lights were unreliable and human officers could be ignored—or bribed. The robots cannot pursue anyone, but drivers reportedly obey them.

Nana Benz

The Nana Benz were a group of women who turned Lomé’s fabric market into one of West Africa’s commercial centres. From the 1960s onward, they controlled the distribution of sought-after Dutch wax prints, travelled to Europe to advise manufacturers and gave anonymous factory designs names such as “My Rival’s Eye” and “If You Go Out, I Go Out.” The names turned clothing into public messages—and stock numbers into stories people remembered. Their fortunes bought property, paid for education and brought political influence. They became known as the Nana Benz because many drove Mercedes-Benz cars through Lomé.

Zambian Afronauts

In the 1960s, teacher and independence activist Edward Makuka Nkoloso founded Zambia’s unofficial National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. He intended to beat the United States and Soviet Union to the Moon, then send teenager Matha Mwamba, two cats and a missionary to Mars. Outside Lusaka, his “Afronauts” trained with oil drums and rope swings intended to simulate weightlessness. The programme had no government support, its proposed funding never arrived and its homemade rocket remained on Earth. Whether Nkoloso was entirely sincere, satirising the space race and colonial attitudes, or doing both at once remains unresolved.