Artists in Collectives: Prisca Tankwey and Cedrick Nzolo
Kinshasa-based artists Prisca Tankwey and Cedrick Nzolo will be leading a guest lecture on Monday, April 24 12.30–14.00 at the LVMH Lecture Theatre E002, Central Saint Martins. Prisca and Cedrick will be talking about their artistic practices and collective work with Laboratoire Kontempo and Another Roadmap Africa Cluster.
Laboratoire Kontempo is a project founded by the Congolese/German duo Mukenge/Schellhammer in Kinshasa in 2019. “Kontempo” is a term that emerged as a neologism in the Kinshasa independent art scene. As a counter-narrative to the Western influenced academic discourse, “Kontempo” has established itself as a new code and a reinterpretation of the term “contemporary” in Kinshasa. The team currently consists of Cedrick Tshimbalanga, Priska Tankwey, Paulvi Ngimbi and Jean Kamba.
The Another Roadmap Africa Cluster consists of a group of scholars and practitioners of artistic and cultural education who are working in both formal and informal contexts within the African continent. Together they are collaborating to pursue a joint programme of research into arts educational practices in their respective localities within Africa. Their research is critically informed and grounded in historical analysis, particularly with respect to Africa’s colonial heritage. The group’s aim is to build a shared knowledge base and a structure of mutual learning that will benefit African practitioners and contribute to advances in thinking and practice worldwide. ARAC participated in Documenta fifteen. The Kinshasa Working Group consists of Cédrick Nzolo and Jean Kamba.
Prisca Tankwey was born in Kinshasa in 1997. She obtained her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Kinshasa in 2019. She is currently a teaching assistant there in the painting department. Her work critically explores socio-cultural aspects such as religion, spirituality and cultural identity in contemporary Kinshasa. She investigates colonial and neo-colonial structures and epistemic violence and hierarchies that arise from them. As a multidisciplinary artist, she combines the media of painting, illustration, photography, digital design, installation and performance. From the interconnection of these media, interactive performance and installations emerge that ask for new, experimental forms of collectivity outside of current power structures.
She has been a member of Laboratoire Kontempo since 2019 and has exhibited within its framework at the Urban Space of Kinshasa (2019), Digital Space (2020), the National Museum of the DRC (2021) and the Haus der Statistik, Berlin (2022). Her work has also been shown at the Yango Biennale of Kinshasa (2022), “Kinshasa (N)tóngá” at Kanal centre Pompidou, Brussels (2022) and “Retours à l’Afrique” in Bandjoun Station, Cameroon. In 2019, she was invited to teach at the Art Academy of Dresden in Germany.
Cedrick Nzolo is a designer, visual artist, writer and researcher who lives and works in Kinshasa. He teaches textile design, styling and fashion design in the Institut Supérieur des Arts et Métiers in Kinshasa and is the director of Congo Design Arts, an institution dedicated to the establishment of creative industries in the field of design under the label CDA Design from the DRC with which the project 26/24 brings together different designers. Nzolo graduated in densign from the Haute École des Arts du Rhin in France and from the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Kinshasa in interior architecture. His transversal and multidisciplinary activity embraces various fields ranging from graphic design to fashion design, interior architecture, event coordination and research in design.