Raconte-moi l'histoire
Sarah Ndele
Multimedia installation, burnt plastic, video (Matsuela technique)
The importance of masks has always been crucial to Sarah Ndele’s work, as she researches, recreates and reimagines the role of masks in ancestral practices from Kinshasa to Salvador de Bahia, and how they relate to performative and oral traditions and literatures. In Raconte-moi l’histoire, telephones containing looped performance videos (entitled “Walé”, “Sentinelle” and “Décision”) are superimposed on the masks, becoming their “eyes”. The installation examines how masks can become a common ground, both metaphorical and physical, between past and future, old and new, with masks symbolizing ancient technologies and telephones modern ones. The masks are made using a process called matsuela, which involves melting broken chairs and other plastic objects in a fire, then gluing them together. The performances presented in each mask reflect the exploration of the masks, placing old and new technologies in dialogue, and examining the role of masks in the reappropriation of erased knowledge and memories.
Sarah Ndele, born in Kinshasa in 1991, is a visual artist who graduated from the Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts. She expresses herself through sculpture, painting and performance, and has recently taken up writing. Through the legacy of anti-colonial revolutionary and syncretic prophetess Kimpa Vita (1684-1706), Sarah Ndele explores the idea of memory, roots and education. This is how she began her rigorous research into Kongo art. Her Yombe origins led her to work with so-called traditional masks – to metaphorically “nurture the roots”. She calls her technique “matsuela” (meaning “tears”), to express their creative duality, and sees in them the possibility of rebuilding a new, completely independent Africa. Her work has been presented internationally, amongst others at the International Festival of Performance Art in Kinshasa (Kinact), (Tango, Spam with Africa Diva), Togo (Emmome Art), Benin (exhibition), Cameroon (Atelier Nkate in Batier and Bandjoon Station), Uganda (Festival Nyege Nyege), Brazzaville (Ateliers Sham), and Brazil, Salvador de Bahia (South to South project). She participated in collective exhibitions in Amsterdam (Sandberg Institut and Framer Framed), Switzerland (at Cima Sitta, Art au Pluriel, and Galerie Salt in Basel during Art Basel). She also took part in the Yango Biennale 2 in Kinshasa, the Lubumbashi Biennale and the Kirata project at the Waza Art Center. She has organized two nocturnal exhibitions, also called night flights, and coordinated the first edition of the Women’s Festival “Kasala dans l’âme de la femme”, accompanied by several workshops.