The year is 1996 and the place is Kinshasa. Francis Mampuya was still a student at Kinshasa School of Fine Arts when he burst onto the DR Congo art scene. He decided to storm out of the school, along with some fellow students, to flee an academic philosophy that was suffocating him. Together they created a movement that they would later call “librisme”. They were joined by other young artists and received the backing of the Centre Culturel Français which enabled them to exhibit their work.

The movement disbanded shortly afterwards, and each of the members took their own path. However, librisme remained an important milestone in the short history of contemporary art in DR Congo. Indeed, Congolese art was developing in a ponderously conformist fashion in the mid-1990s, apart from popular painting and two or three outstanding and uncategorisable artists. A generational leap and original individuals would be needed to bring about renewal.

While they did not develop a shared form of artistic expression, the movement’s members unleashed abstraction and expressionism in DR Congo. They also introduced previously unknown or very little used artistic practices to DR Congo: collages, installations, artistic performances and usage of reclaimed items.

Mampuya burst onto the art scene by saying no to conventions, and in a way, he has never stopped saying no since that moment. In his paintings, he says no to injustice, arbitrariness, the stranglehold of irresponsible politicians, wrecking of the environment, to Africa being forgotten or shown contempt, to the horror of migrant journeys to Europe.

His work alternates between semi-figurative and abstract, with the abstraction always supposed to be allusive. While the message is most often sombre, it is not hopeless. Mampuya also knows that people are brimming with possibilities, despite depravity and injustice. And so, he hopes.

> Go to the artist’s biography