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An enthusiast of art as testimony, with a strong social dimension, Théo Mwamba is modernising Congolese popular art with an innovative take on his country’s social fabric and history.

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Théo Mwamba_Portrait_Galerie Angalia

Born on 16 September 1997 in Kasaï (Democratic Republic of the Congo). He lives in Kinshasa (DRC).

Théo was born in Kasaï Province and grew up in Lubumbashi, before moving to Kinshasa in 2017 to study at ABA (School of Fine Arts), graduating in late 2022. He worked while studying.

While so many young artists immediately seek to nail down a style, sometimes without sufficient exploration, Théo Mwamba stands out from the crowd by taking the opposite approach: he researched, experimented, and became fascinated by the sheer diversity of worlds that painting enables him to reach. His research has led him to develop a technique of painting on printed canvas, using historical archives or his own photographs.

He quickly made a name for himself with realistic works with strong social connotations. Child labour was his very first topic of interest when he was still a young student. Mwamba used barcodes applied to realistic scenes to symbolise it. The theme of injustice makes another appearance in his second series focusing on DR Congo’s colonial past. Mwamba makes use of archive images to pay tribute to the victims of the Congo Free State. His third series saw another change of scene and intention: it was a tribute to the leading figures of the Congolese musical scene. Finally, he has returned to social issues in his current series on the topic of night work, in which a colour range and light effects hold sway.

Shown for the first time in Europe at the group Congo – Passé composé exhibition in spring 2023 in Paris, Mwamba’s first solo exhibition, Congoscopie, will be held in February 2024 in Kinshasa at the Texaf-Bilembo Cultural Centre.

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