Mayangani
Prisca Tankwey
Interactive multimedia installation: Collage, Sculpture, Projection, Assemblage
Kinshasa 2021, Berlin 2022
The Kinshasa Academy of Arts was founded in 1943 by Brother Marc Wallenda, a missionary from the colonial era. The selection and structure of the academic courses were also defined by Marc Wallenda according to the European model and have not changed much since. The studies of Paulvi Ngimbi and Prisca Tankwey at the Academy of Fine Arts were therefore also limited to European art history and a Eurocentric conception of art.
Starting from the close connection between art and religion in European art history but also from precolonial expressions of spirituality, the „Mayangani“ project examines the connection between art, religion and coloniality. Mayangani is a movement, a passage from one state to another. Drawing on spiritual/religious rituals and symbols, the project explores the definitions of the sacred and the profane.
Based on the artists’ personal experiences in contemporary Kinshasa, the project aims to develop new experimental forms of collectivity, gathering and community. How can we create spaces that allow us to come to- gether outside of the current power structures? How can art contribute to the creation of such spaces and make them accessible to the public for open exchange?
Prisca Tankwey was born in Kinshasa in 1997. She obtained her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Kinshasa in 2019. She is currently a teaching assistant there in the painting department. Her work critically explores socio-cultural aspects such as religion, spirituality and cultural identity in contemporary Kinshasa. She investigates colonial and neo-colonial structures and epistemic violence and hierarchies that arise from them. As a multidisciplinary artist, she combines the media of painting, illustration, photography, digital design, installation and performance. From the interconnection of these media, interactive performance and installations emerge that ask for new, experimental forms of collectivity outside of current power structures.
She has been a member of Laboratoire Kontempo since 2019 and has exhibited within its framework at the Urban Space of Kinshasa (2019), Digital Space (2020), the National Museum of the DRC (2021) and the Haus der Statistik, Berlin (2022). Her work has also been shown at the Yango Biennale of Kinshasa (2022), “Kinshasa (N)tóngá” at Kanal centre Pompidou, Brussels (2022) and “Retours à l’Afrique” in Bandjoun Station, Cameroon. In 2019, she was invited to teach at the Art Academy of Dresden in Germany.