Their projects combine these contrasting approaches to challenge universalisms about formats of production of painting.
In Kinshasa, we experience painting as a temporary medium. Materials such as fabric and paint decay after a short time due to the tropical climate and there are not many museums, workshops, or cultural centers that can store artworks.
The practice of preservation in and through art corresponds to a more performative and situational approach to the material; the dominant media logic of recording and storage is opposed by a logic of the ephemeral and variable. In our project Stretching the Notion of Painting, we combine these contrasting approaches to challenge the Western idea of painting. That is why we have started a series of works that questions painting as a sustainable, static medium and instead understand paintings as a dynamic, temporary medium.
Mobile Photo Studio
Mbok’elengi is an interactive installation composed of paintings and accessories. As a temporary urban intervention, it invites visitors to interact with the paintings. Those viewers wishing to do so can pose in front of the paintings and have their pictures taken.
The result is a direct dialogue between the painting and the public. The performers, Pigeon de la terre and Beauté Sauvage, were invited to use two paintings as accessories.
The studio installation consists of wooden panels painted with acrylic paints, spray paints, and oil pastels. The structure is inspired by historical photo studios in Kinshasa from the sixties and seventies. As a backdrop for portraits, painted backgrounds become frames for the photographed subjects. Two painted fabrics in the format 100 × 200 cm are movable parts of the installation as unframed paintings. In the case of this interactive installation, painting is also used a background and accessory for the interaction of not only performers, but also the public. The meaning of the artworks unfolds only in interaction with people; it doesn’t stand for itself. This approach responds to Kinshasa’s urban reality. A city with very few exhibition spaces and museums makes artistic intervention in urban space a necessity as an accessible form of artistic expression.
*MBOK’ELENGI – Place of Joy
→ Currently used as a popular metaphor and means something like: You have to be Congolese to understand the good life in Kinshasa.
