Elie Mafundwe (Eli Made’s real name) was born in December 2003 in Bukavu in Eastern DR Congo. He had a great gift for drawing, and as a teenager was already exhibiting his work in different spots in his home city, before moving to Kinshasa in 2022 to study at Kinshasa School of Fine Arts. In the end, he only studied there for a few months.

To make ends meet, Eli Made started tie-dying t-shirts, using bleach to change the colour of the fabric to create patterns. T-shirt tie-dying gave him the idea of using this technique to create art. He bought black fabric and started to “paint” on sateen using a brush dipped in bleach. It only took Made a few weeks to get to grips with the technique. He was only 19, but he was ready.

Eli Made’s artworks convey states of mind: suffering, inner struggle, meditation, mental transformation, resilience, and so on. Each work is to some extent a part of a giant mental fresco, with its apparently endless variants. Made also tackles the relationship between contemporary Africans and their ancestral roots.

Mindscapes is his very first solo exhibition. The exhibition brings together 12 artworks from the 2023-2025 period. Each of his works is accompanied by a clear and informative artist’s statement, free of any unnecessary jargon, and visitors to the exhibition can read these statements.

> Go to the artist’s biography