La Sape and Other Local Imaginaries

La Sape and Other Local Imaginaries in Kinshasa was a series of lectures and presentations looking at the work of artists, designers, and writers working today out of Kinshasa. These talks presented various positions from the fields of contemporary art, fashion, and writing, gauging the pulse of artistic production in the African city and exploring the ways artists and designers address the necessity of articulating new local imaginaries in the face of accelerated technological and economic changes.

Events

La Sape and Other Local Imaginaries in Kinshasa

(en français) Conversation between Prisca Tankwey, Cedrick Nzolo, Sinzo Aanza, Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse, Judith Clark, Charlotte Delacour, Adeena Mey, and Mick Finch during Afterall’s La Sape and Other Local Imaginaries symposium held in SOAS, University of London.

Infectious Image Viral Content in the DRC

This talk by Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse, assistant professor at the Catholic University of Congo, will explore how and why digital content is shared and moved into circulation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ribio’s presentation discusses how visual genres such as print cartoons and popular painting now overlap with digital viral videos and memes and highlights the potential for postcolonial political critique offered by online content.

On the Improbable Memorial and Other Projects

(en français) Photographer and writer Sinzo Aanza walks us through his Improbable Memorial and explores Congolese people as the direct and indirect victims of the worldwide spread of mobile phones, which are made with many materials mined in Congo and whose ubiquitous and indispensable character extends the colonial exploitation of resources and people into the present time.

The mvuata-mable

Designer Cedrick Nzolo takes us through the soul of the Sape. Between art of living, seduction and technique of being. The mvuata-mable is drawn from the CDA (Congo Design Arts) Project which brings together three areas of research and expressiveness: textile and furniture design, fashion and architecture.

Boundaries Between the Sape and Performance Art

Artist and educator Prisca Tankwey presents on the Sape in relation to notions of identity, profile and belonging to classical categories of artistic practices. Too close to performance art, in plastic and conceptual terms, the discipline of the Sape begs a definition or the establishment of new boundaries.