ABOUT
Laboratoire Kontempo is a digital and analogue platform for experimental contemporary art in Kinshasa. Within the project, local and international artists, researchers and theorists work together in a transdisciplinary experimental space to question common post-colonial power structures and the dominant trends in the international contemporary art scene.
“Kontempo“ is a term that has emerged as a neologism in Kinshasa‘s independent art scene. As a counter-narrative to the Western-influenced academic discourse of the last two decades, Kontempo has emerged as a new code and reinterpretation of the term ‘contemporary‘ in Kinshasa.
This project brings together Kinshasa‘s conception of contemporary art, known as ‚Kontempo‘, and the way in which Kinshasa‘s contemporary art is perceived elsewhere: a theoretical and visual dialogue designed to counter the simplifications and stereotypes attached to contemporary creation in the DRCongo, and to offer a new platform for artistic creation and discourse. Following a transdisciplinary and experimental approach, the project explores the artistic possibilities of today, with a focus on digitalisation, artistic research and writing.
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The team
Laboratoire Kontempo is a project founded by the artist duo Mukenge/Schellhammer in Kinshasa in 2019. Mukenge/Schellhammer consists of Christ Mukenge (*1988 in Kinshasa) and Lydia Schellhammer (*1992 in Constance). The artists expose themselves to transcontinental situations of conflict within rapidly evolving social systems between Europe and the Democratic Republic of Congo and respond to their experiences and investigations in an ongoing artistic process that includes digital and analog paintings and drawings, experimental videos, installations and performances. Both artists sign their works in pairs, working together on canvas, video or digital painting. In this way, the clear classifications of author, tradition or geography are blurred. And so, over the past seven years, a third style has developed from the working methods, painting styles and visual habits of the two artists: the pictorial universe of the “duo”. The duo has its own aesthetic, and has become a being in its own right, a two-headed monster, shaped and deformed by the pressure of the political conditions of our time.
Legal information
Project/Website
Lydia Schellhammer, Christian Mukenge
Email: lydia_schellhammer(@)web.de, christ.muke(@)yahoo.fr
Homepage: mukengeschellhammer.com
Design & Programming
Design: Elsa Westreicher
Original rat design: Mukenge/Schellhammer
Site programming: Juan Pablo García Sossa & Max Wohllebe
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