Artist's statement

I live and work in Kinshasa - in the heart of the chaotic megalopolis of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I was born there in 1981. In my early childhood i lived in Kalemie - a city in the province of Katanga in the south East of the DRC.

I returned to Kinshasa - to my birthplace, which is a phantom for me...
I made my schooling and studies in Visual arts at the Art Academy of Kinshasa. I made the diploma of the Institute of the Art schools
and the diploma of the Art Academy in 2000 and 2003. After that I made the Artistic formation on Visual Arts at the School of Decorative
Art in Strasbourg from 2004 until 2005. From 2006 – 2007 i worked at the Academy of Kinshasa and 2008/2009 at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

I was a member of the collective of young Congolese artists. We tried to explore with passion and engagement free and innovating creations. The collective was constituted as a framework to exchanges the different experiences in our lifes, spirits and expressions, but also to fight for human rights and our freedom. All the attempts are articulated around a concept which is called - the librisme. This is a movement of young revolutionary thinking artists in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries of the African continent by being opposed to colonial and old school academic art.

My current work, Investigates questions about my new society, the cultural encounter of humans as well as the dialogues between peoples from different parts of the world.
These images created in this body of work are a compilations of various body parts from different images cut from popular international fashion magazines. These compositions are also inspired by the various countries i have travelled and worked in around the globe.

My art provides the creative space for experimentation, a territory in which I try to co-habit painting, installation, performance and the act of joining recycled images from fashion magazines and photographs. I use all the means of expression available to me as a vehicle, a lens through which I highlight the political, social and economic situation in the world staging interventions through my work by recreating.

My technique of using cuttings to compose figures, bodies, portraits and heads starting from fragments of faces and body parts cut out from reviews in fashion magazines, in a multitude of parts of unknown bodies is a way for me to recreate the human body construct a new society and question the multiplicity of races and the various challenges arising from this multiplicity. The body is mutilated and chaotic, confronting us with the chaotic situation reflected in current political and socio-economic trends in Africa and worldwide.

My art is neither limiting nor restrictive; instead, it reflects the openness and dialectical denial of physical, geographical and mental boundaries. Globalization leads to continuous random exchanges. It is an expression of resistance to homogenization, to the creation of a world of uniform people, but also a reaction to the confusion of aesthetic codes and cultural references. My approach is meant to present and examine the problems of Africa in particular and the world in general. I create art to conscientize, to show things in a different way, through elements simultaneously hidden and revealed.

Through art I seek to represent the violence that has rocked the African continent and the rest of the world and the law by which the strong dominates the weak through guns trade and exploitation. My work is also a reflection on the positive and negative effects of a modern society dominated by multinationals and by powerful people who apply justice according to their interests, neutralizing the weak through the use of violence and war.
Wars, massacres, mutilation of populations, injustice, religious and ethnic conflict, child soldiers, human rights violations, acts of violence committed on women and children, these are universally topical issues that are reflected in my work. The mutilated bodies are a confrontation, making us aware of the chaotic situation and reflecting on current contemporary conflicts in Africa and in the world (for example the religious and ethnic conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Angola, Israel, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Libya, Gaza,...and various parts of the world.)

In my art I question the catalysts of these global conflicts and the impacts particularly on the African continent and the world in general.
I search myself asking questions about society, the cultural encounter of humans as well as the dialogue between different peoples. I try to make sense of my current realities, investigating various means of expressing this reality through the hybridity of my artistic journey and utilising the image of new territories to research a true mobile identity.
My creative vision is to awaken consciousness through my art, through the subtle decomposition of body parts in recombined compositions, assemblage and acts of joining, I veil and reveal at the same time. My work is a mirror of the negative effects of a contemporary world, dominated by political, religious and ethnic conflicts.

Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo - Art Omiå, 2011