With Elima – NoBody, the transnational artist duo Christ Mukenge and Lydia Schellhammer present an exhibition that foregrounds questions of authorship, corporeality, and collective existence. The works operate at the intersection of installation, performative practice, and conceptual research, developing an artistic language that deliberately distances itself from individualized authorship.
The stance and working method of Mukenge/Schellhammer are deeply shaped by the art movement Partagisme, which originated in Kinshasa in Central Africa:
“Partagisme refers to a movement of radically collective practice in Kinshasa, founded in 2014 by artists together with students of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa. The term derives from the French verb partager (to share) and, through the addition of the suffix ‘-isme,’ becomes a theory of collective authorship.” [Christ Mukenge]
Partagisme understands sharing, collective action, and the dissolution of hierarchical structures as an aesthetic strategy. Accordingly, multiple individuals work on a single piece based on prior agreements, so that individual signatures increasingly blur into one another. Mukenge/Schellhammer take this approach a step further: they no longer conceive their work as the result of two artistic positions, but as the expression of an autonomous entity—the DUO. This DUO functions as an independent artistic system that generates decisions, processes, and manifestations without being clearly attributable to individual authorship. This shift is also evident in the exhibition title Elima – NoBody—the body becomes secondary, withdrawing or continuously transforming. The DUO’s multimedia approach consistently interweaves the physical brushstroke as it transitions into a digital realm, only to reappear as an object in “real space,” while presence and absence are negotiated simultaneously.
The title Elima – NoBody also points to knowledge, memory, and disembodiment. The exhibition explores how identity emerges when the subject dissolves and artistic production is conceived as a relational, polyphonic practice. Spaces, materials, and narrative fragments form a constellation in which the DUO appears as an acting agent—not as the sum of two artists, but as an autonomous presence.
With Elima – NoBody, Mukenge/Schellhammer open up an important discourse on autonomy, cultural identity, collectivity, and the possibility of art beyond the individual self. The exhibition invites viewers to rethink authorship and to experience art as a process of shared, constantly evolving existence.
