Many thinkers have reflected on images of the Other, stereotypes and norms that are a form of denial of reality. The construction of the Other reflects a hierarchical position: far from understanding the Other, the construction of the Other serves to construct oneself and justify one’s own ideas about the world. Mukenge/Schellhammer work on the layers of real and imaginary imagery that shape our (un)consciousness. They develop artistic strategies that subvert and deconstruct dynamics of power and hierarchies of representation and imagination resulting from the Western imaginary construct of an elsewhere.
Your exoticism is my daily bread
Experimental film, 8:33 min, Kinshasa 2020
Mukenge/Schellhammer feat. Harmonie Eley, Maitre Claude, Pasquet alias Choco
The film was presented at (selection):
Gloria Kino in the framework of Lumbung film by Centre d’art Waza, Documenta fifteen, Kassel (DE), 2022
Salts (City Salts), Boda Boda Lounge, Kunsttage Basel, 2021
Guggenheim Museum, New York, Re/Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda, invited by Christian Nyampeta (US), 2021
Laboratoire Kontempo 2020, Académie des Báux-Arts de Kinshasa and online
„Boda Boda lounge“ : Cross-continental digital, multimedia and video art festival that featured in over 20 spaces throughout Africa (AFRICA), 2020
The film was produced and selected in the framework of the open call Boda Boda Lounge by Waza Art Center and Visual Art Network South Africa (VANSA):
The Boda Boda Lounge festival is based on the conviction that video art can create meaningful exchanges between different contexts in Africa that allow both the transcending of physical boundaries and the creation of an intimate atmosphere for introspection and contemplation.
Emerging from this conviction arrives the theme for this year “, now bite the hand that feeds you’’ inviting submissions that fit within or respond to this theme in productive ways.
This edition’s theme: “ ,now bite the hand that feeds you”
Somewhere in the so-called global north, someone purchases and accumulates commodity goods. These same goods, such as clothing and food, are then thrown away and exported to a third-world country in what is usually called an act of charity, feeding a system of intermediaries who profit from it. Whilst someone else in the global-south side of the world sells the same used clothing on a sidewalk, instead of producing such items locally. And so there are various implications out of this circulation.
