For the first time, MIAM gallery welcomes artists from the African continent to Sète, France. They live and work mainly in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The exhibition “Kinshasa Chroniques” proposes an approach to the Congolese capital, the third largest city in Africa, born from the perspective of artists whose practice is rooted in an intimate experience of the urban space. Seventy creators, individuals, pairs, collectives, pay a tribute through art, words, sound, to Kinshasa as they see it, live it, question it, imagine it, hope it, contest it.
The focal length is eminently contemporary and committed: most of the invited photographers, video artists, performers, slammers, rappers, painters, comic artists, were born after 1980. In this respect, the exposure reflects the demographics of Kinshasa, city where the vast majority of the population is under forty years of age.
Against the backdrop of a stroll through Kinshasa that takes visitors from one district to another, the exhibition is structured around nine chronicles. Performance, sport, music, capital, spirit, resourcefulness, future, memories: although the themes are diverse, they do not have the objective of offering an all-encompassing vision of Kinshasa.
With its 13 million inhabitants, life in Kinshasa is often very difficult. This fact should not be ignored. But despair is not the focal point here. And for good reasons. The disastrous portraits of Kinshasa, and of Congo more broadly, that are conveyed by the media in the “North” find little echo in the city’s artistic production. Devastated infrastructure, endemic unemployment, militarization of space, daily violence… These topics and obstacles obviously make an appearance in some of the performances simultaneously with poetry and hope. Kinshasa, seen by its young artists, is a space of possibilities. This exhibition is dedicated to these possibilities.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
A series of events will be offered during the exhibition. An exhibition co-produced by the International Museum of Modest Arts and the Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine. The exhibition will be presented at the Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine from April 2020.
http://miam.org/fr/les-expositions-et-evenements/expositions-a-venir/article/kinshasa-chroniques
