Homme & Mwasi Tshombo
[Cellphone Man & Woman]
2019 – [ongoing]
Various performances. Costumes made from mobile phone debris.
[Cellphone Man & Woman]
2019 – [ongoing]
Various performances. Costumes made from mobile phone debris.
The D. R. Congo is the coltan-richest country of the planet. Coltan is necessary for the production of electronic gadgets like mobile phones. It has also caused one of the most ruthless wars in human history. Six million people died in the north-eastern part of the D. R. Congo between 1996 and 2016 alone, with numbers still rising due to an ever growing demand and worsening conditions. At the same time much of the world’s electronic waste is exported back to Africa and other continents.
“Homme Tshombo” and “Mwasi Tshombo” bring these issues to the street, into the public sphere, employing performance strategies that crossover ritual practices of consciousness-raising and rebalancing with social inequalities and moderinity’s violence, so called traditional symbolism with contemporary materiality.
As global communication tools, mobile phones also symbolize the possibility or impossibility of connecting: Between the living but also between the living and the dead.
Working with discarded cell phones is part of a larger practice by Nada Tshibwabwa, which consists in using waste, that he finds during long walks in the streets of Kinshasa, or by visiting places, where debris is left en masse, as raw material for his artworks.
“Homme Tshombo” and “Mwasi Tshombo” bring these issues to the street, into the public sphere, employing performance strategies that crossover ritual practices of consciousness-raising and rebalancing with social inequalities and moderinity’s violence, so called traditional symbolism with contemporary materiality.
As global communication tools, mobile phones also symbolize the possibility or impossibility of connecting: Between the living but also between the living and the dead.
Working with discarded cell phones is part of a larger practice by Nada Tshibwabwa, which consists in using waste, that he finds during long walks in the streets of Kinshasa, or by visiting places, where debris is left en masse, as raw material for his artworks.
La Face Cachée du Coltan
[The Hidden Face of Coltan]
2018 – [ongoing]
Series of masks.
Mobile phone debris.
[The Hidden Face of Coltan]
2018 – [ongoing]
Series of masks.
Mobile phone debris.
For this series of masks, Nada Tshibwabwa dissociated the heads as masks from what would usually be a whole costume, and thus references the violent decontextualisation
of masks by colonial collectors.
Nada Tshibwabwa intends to establish a mirror effect between the viewer and the work. The masks allow a direct, multifaceted reading, from face to face, reflecting thoughts on resources, the violence of contemporary neocolonial trade, craft, spirituality and hierarchies of knowledges.
Nada Tshibwabwa transfers form-languages of wooden masks, of which some are decorated with feathers for instance, to the materiality of mobile phones. He references diverse messages and codes used in the communication with the immaterial, ancestral world, drawing our attention to the injuries and deaths people suffer and have suffered due to extraction works. He sees this as a mirror to previous generations (who are now ancestors), enduring difficulties and risks to send messages. With the use of discarded mobile phones, Nada Tshibwabwa ties a web encompassing recent, shared memory with its less recent, less shared, or rather silenced, past, counting on the reaction these daily objects, so familiar and close to global everyday lifes, may evoke.
Nada Tshibwabwa intends to establish a mirror effect between the viewer and the work. The masks allow a direct, multifaceted reading, from face to face, reflecting thoughts on resources, the violence of contemporary neocolonial trade, craft, spirituality and hierarchies of knowledges.
Nada Tshibwabwa transfers form-languages of wooden masks, of which some are decorated with feathers for instance, to the materiality of mobile phones. He references diverse messages and codes used in the communication with the immaterial, ancestral world, drawing our attention to the injuries and deaths people suffer and have suffered due to extraction works. He sees this as a mirror to previous generations (who are now ancestors), enduring difficulties and risks to send messages. With the use of discarded mobile phones, Nada Tshibwabwa ties a web encompassing recent, shared memory with its less recent, less shared, or rather silenced, past, counting on the reaction these daily objects, so familiar and close to global everyday lifes, may evoke.
Bokasi bwa nzoko mokili elingi
[The power of an elephant is what the world wants]
2023
1,60 × 2,30 m
Acrylic on canvas
Mbongo ya moyeke
[Money fetish]
2019
1,60 × 2,30 m
Acrylic on canvas
Tunyunguluke tupetangane bukula
[We turn to cross paths, that’s the power]
2019
1,60 × 2,30 m
Acrylic on canvas
[The power of an elephant is what the world wants]
2023
1,60 × 2,30 m
Acrylic on canvas
Mbongo ya moyeke
[Money fetish]
2019
1,60 × 2,30 m
Acrylic on canvas
Tunyunguluke tupetangane bukula
[We turn to cross paths, that’s the power]
2019
1,60 × 2,30 m
Acrylic on canvas
These three paintings are a large format series. Their themes communicate with each other.
1 — An elephant-like figure is being accompanied by fear inducing spirits, making it impossible for humans to reach the creature, despite many envying the elephant for his powers, symbolized by the multiplication of his eyes, his tusks, legs and trunks. The elephant embodies transformation, abundant life, resistance and endurance, and illustrates the equilibrium between creatures and nature. Despite his physical prowess, spirits have to guard him from bad intentions in his environment. A large bird indicates the elphant’s forehead, which shows a landscape on which a flower blooms. This flower represents love in the broadest sense; spiritual benevolence for creation and between creatures. The birds in the background are far less benevolent, symbolizing the avid pursuit of fresh or weak corpses, which they seek out before anyone else, as they fly over the landscape.
2 — This painting bears interrogrations on violence, supra-natural powers, energetic forcefields, power abuse and human blood as fuel for the wealth machines of the few.
3 — A belt, often symbolizing beatings and its overtones of colonial and neocolonial violence, gathers and distinguishes the centre of the painting. Looking closer, it may as well be said to be a snake with a benevolent face, symbolizing renewal and transformation. It is not closed but turned outwards-inwards, relinking the spirits and the spiritual world with the people, deformed from suffering and society’s bad intentions.
1 — An elephant-like figure is being accompanied by fear inducing spirits, making it impossible for humans to reach the creature, despite many envying the elephant for his powers, symbolized by the multiplication of his eyes, his tusks, legs and trunks. The elephant embodies transformation, abundant life, resistance and endurance, and illustrates the equilibrium between creatures and nature. Despite his physical prowess, spirits have to guard him from bad intentions in his environment. A large bird indicates the elphant’s forehead, which shows a landscape on which a flower blooms. This flower represents love in the broadest sense; spiritual benevolence for creation and between creatures. The birds in the background are far less benevolent, symbolizing the avid pursuit of fresh or weak corpses, which they seek out before anyone else, as they fly over the landscape.
2 — This painting bears interrogrations on violence, supra-natural powers, energetic forcefields, power abuse and human blood as fuel for the wealth machines of the few.
3 — A belt, often symbolizing beatings and its overtones of colonial and neocolonial violence, gathers and distinguishes the centre of the painting. Looking closer, it may as well be said to be a snake with a benevolent face, symbolizing renewal and transformation. It is not closed but turned outwards-inwards, relinking the spirits and the spiritual world with the people, deformed from suffering and society’s bad intentions.
Le pouvoir spirituel et la domination culturelle
[Spiritual power and cultural domination]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Mensonges des maladies, contagieuse
[Lies about diseases, contagious]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
La recherche de la santé
[Research on health]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Ke mbeli ya minu mibale
[A double edged sword]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Tête du pouvoir
[Head of power]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Prison
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
[Spiritual power and cultural domination]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Mensonges des maladies, contagieuse
[Lies about diseases, contagious]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
La recherche de la santé
[Research on health]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Ke mbeli ya minu mibale
[A double edged sword]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Tête du pouvoir
[Head of power]
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
Prison
2020
297 × 420 mm
Marker on paper
1 —
Central to this drawing is a composite figure between a human and a butterfly stretching its arms to both limits, descending onto a fire, creating tension between two forces that equally symbolize destruction and creation. Several worlds meet; the fantastic and the real, the concrete and the inconcrete, emerging and fading spirits. Detailed heads, faces and eyes communicate with shadowed silhouettes; chains move into shapes of animals, or remain abstract memories, speaking of spirits and beings reincarnating into the visible world, as well as the difficulties of creatures to live the freedom of their lives, controlled by omnipresent, looming powers. The drawing condemns the chains that hold people in poverty and impact culture in negative manners.
2 — Within an agglomeration of scattered houses, a pregnant women lies on the floor, birthing an infant, that pushes through her bleeding belly. From the infant’s mouth, flames rise, like a wordless scream. Below their separating unity, human shapes run left and right, while two flame-screaming, floating creatures chase them. Here, Nada Tshibwabwa reflects the sorrow emerging from contagious diseases, branching out, separating communities, confronting life with death and vice versa. A word game within the painting “Cont-A-Gieuses” (“contagese”, i.e. contagious) and “Conte-A-Jouer” (story about play) relates a double meaning. It refers to the sophisticated game “Nzanga,” played mainly by young women, where participants have to jump over a moving rope, demanding constant vigilance and fast reactivity.
3 — A hunter, with bow and arrow, aims at a multitude of birds, who are being shot mercilessly while they fly, falling into a bowl, soon ready to be cooked. A cow lets its milk drip. Another, magnified udder is dripping more milk onto the hands of the hunter, as if coming from the skies. A detached hand is writing with an arrow “A LA RECHERCHE DES VIE POUR LA SANTE.”
Whilst acknowledging the need of human beings to hunt down animals for their own survival, and constantly be on the search for new sources of energy through the food we consume, Nada Tshibwabwa draws our attention to our own blindness. While chasing birds, of which many are necessary to feed us and for which some precious arrows are lost, we ignore the milk-giving cow, that may feed us well and more abundantly.
4 — A heart shaped, warrior like creature is holding a sword, while birds move away from it, looking like arrows, sent by the heart. With this drawing Nada Tshibwabwa intends to show the double edged nature of love – not just romantic love but love in a more general sense. For the artist love is very close to hate and can be mobilised as a form of manipulation, when it comes to motivating people to go to war against another people for instance. One can also observe that the heart can be read as much as parts of male as well as female genitals.
5 — This almost perfectly circular head, with trimmed hair and beard, with squeezed eyes, nose and lips, seems to be swollen beyond normal proportions, as if it were a balloon. It is made of many small dots, coming together to give it shape. The fact that the artist entitled this drawing “head of power” is probably telling enough.
6 — This drawing, representing an explicitly male figure, can remind us of power figures, and is tearing a chain apart. The figure speaks of the duality of good and evil, represented in the decorations of the figure, and the power of culture to free forces.
2 — Within an agglomeration of scattered houses, a pregnant women lies on the floor, birthing an infant, that pushes through her bleeding belly. From the infant’s mouth, flames rise, like a wordless scream. Below their separating unity, human shapes run left and right, while two flame-screaming, floating creatures chase them. Here, Nada Tshibwabwa reflects the sorrow emerging from contagious diseases, branching out, separating communities, confronting life with death and vice versa. A word game within the painting “Cont-A-Gieuses” (“contagese”, i.e. contagious) and “Conte-A-Jouer” (story about play) relates a double meaning. It refers to the sophisticated game “Nzanga,” played mainly by young women, where participants have to jump over a moving rope, demanding constant vigilance and fast reactivity.
3 — A hunter, with bow and arrow, aims at a multitude of birds, who are being shot mercilessly while they fly, falling into a bowl, soon ready to be cooked. A cow lets its milk drip. Another, magnified udder is dripping more milk onto the hands of the hunter, as if coming from the skies. A detached hand is writing with an arrow “A LA RECHERCHE DES VIE POUR LA SANTE.”
Whilst acknowledging the need of human beings to hunt down animals for their own survival, and constantly be on the search for new sources of energy through the food we consume, Nada Tshibwabwa draws our attention to our own blindness. While chasing birds, of which many are necessary to feed us and for which some precious arrows are lost, we ignore the milk-giving cow, that may feed us well and more abundantly.
4 — A heart shaped, warrior like creature is holding a sword, while birds move away from it, looking like arrows, sent by the heart. With this drawing Nada Tshibwabwa intends to show the double edged nature of love – not just romantic love but love in a more general sense. For the artist love is very close to hate and can be mobilised as a form of manipulation, when it comes to motivating people to go to war against another people for instance. One can also observe that the heart can be read as much as parts of male as well as female genitals.
5 — This almost perfectly circular head, with trimmed hair and beard, with squeezed eyes, nose and lips, seems to be swollen beyond normal proportions, as if it were a balloon. It is made of many small dots, coming together to give it shape. The fact that the artist entitled this drawing “head of power” is probably telling enough.
6 — This drawing, representing an explicitly male figure, can remind us of power figures, and is tearing a chain apart. The figure speaks of the duality of good and evil, represented in the decorations of the figure, and the power of culture to free forces.