Prière controversée
Prisca Tankwey
Performance, Video installation, 7 minutes, 21 seconds, Text, Wall mosaic
Prisca Tankwey’s work critically explores socio-cultural aspects such as religion, spirituality and cultural identity in Kinshasa. She examines colonial and neo-colonial structures, as well as the epistemic violence and hierarchies they entail. Taking as her starting point the format of preaching and prayer as practiced in revivalist churches, her work analyzes the situations of spiritual transformation and the often economic agendas behind the sermons. Combining several formats, from performance to animated video, Prière controversée consists of audio excerpts of a prayer to which Prisca responds; a text in French and Lingala, which represents the prayer of a Congolese on the one hand, and on the other analyzes societal behavior through prayers, such as the way churches shape public opinion ; an animated video and background performance of a colorful wall mosaic made of different-colored transparent plastic assembled with hot glue, which deconstructs the mosaic windows of a church.
Prisca Tankwey was born in Kinshasa in 1997. In 2019, she was awarded a master’s degree in visual arts from the Académie des Beaux-arts de Kinshasa where she is currently working as a teaching assistant and head of the painting department. In her artistic work, she critically confronts socio-cultural aspects such as religion, spirituality and cultural identity currently found in Kinshasa. She examines colonial and neo-colonial structures, and the violence and epistemic hierarchies they entail. As a multidisciplinary artist, she combines the medium of painting, illustration, photography, digital design, installation and performance. This combination gives rise to interactive performances and installations that interrogate new, experimental forms of collectivity outside current power structures. She has been a member of Laboratoire Kontempo since 2019, and has shown her work within this framework in the urban space of Kinshasa (2019), in digital space (2020), at the National Museum of the DRC (2021) and at the Haus der Statistik, Berlin (2022). Her work has also been shown at the Musée Royal de l’Afrique centrale, Brussels (2023), the figuren.theater/festival Erlangen, Germany (2023), the Biennale Yango, Kinshasa (2022), “Kinshasa (N)tóngá” at Kanal center Pompidou, Brussels (2022) and “Retours à l’Afrique” at Bandjoun Station, Cameroon(2020). In 2019, she was a guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, Germany.