Fight the Power
Rachel Nyangombe
Fight the power
Actor: Benito Baras
Music: Village Papa Nyangombe
Video, 8s, Kinshasa 2021
In Rachel Nyangombe’s video, the will to end the SYSTEM, the power, is highlighted. A real will that the artist manifests through a music conceived in the sense of going to the antipodes of the levers of power incorporated in everyday life also via mechanisms currently known and publicly designated as “Soft power”. The artist attacks the system while using the tools of the same mechanism including the New Information and Communication Technologies. Here, the format of short video, commonly used in social networks, is transformed into a work of art via the QR code that allows phones to copy the work and contemplate it via their phones. As well, the images were projected during the exhibition in video format. This approach bypasses the monodirectional vision of what art is, the consecrated and sanctified vision in the rooms is here short-circuited.
As a self-taught and multidisciplinary artist, Rachel Nyangombe integrates music composition, writing, video, performance and costume into her practice. In 2007 she founded the Kinshasa-based afro-punk band Village Papa Nyangombe. Her lyrics sing of love, tragedy and the enchantments of the world. The thread running through her work is individuality (mixed race, woman, artist) in the community in relation and confrontation with antagonisms. Since 2016 Rachel Nyangombe works solo and in collaboration with artists of various disciplines under the name NYANGOMBE. She performs in international art events and in the urban and alternative scene of Kinshasa.