A JP Mika solo exhibition at the Texaf-Bilembo Cultural Centre in Kinshasa in collaboration with Angalia
29 January – 22 March 2015
For his first solo exhibition, JP Mika is showcasing some 30 artworks that are representative of his various artistic universes, making the exhibition a little like a retrospective. A popular style gives way to more recent sources of inspiration, which have proved to be a resounding success in Europe in 2014: stunning portraits on colourful backgrounds, representations with a sometimes deliberately old-fashioned feel, which evoke the portrait photographs taken in the 1960s in studios in Kinshasa and Bamako. JP Mika adds colour to them, albeit not without a dash of derision or nostalgia, a tender and ever so slightly off-beat feel which hit the nail on the head.
Born in 1980 in Kinshasa, Jean-Paul Nsimba Mika is a member of the group of popular painters whose figurehead is Chéri Samba and whose members include several other internationally renowned painters. The exhibition showcases in a dazzling way the variations and developments of popular painting, this typically Congolese artistic genre.