Jean Kamba been active in the conception and execution of this research project through workshops and other activities including interviews with artists; Magloire Mpaka, Baudouin Bikoko and art critic Charles Tumba Kekwo etc. For more context on this timely project, you can read here and here.
Interview with visual artist Magloire Mpaka
Magloire Mpaka owns some of the precious and rare photographic archives of the École Saint-Luc, the original name of the current Académie des Beaux-arts de Kinshasa, formerly located within the Technical and Professional Institute of Gombe-Matadi (ITP), in the current province of Kongo Central. Here he recounts his career, his passion for collecting archives and how his family environment and the surveying of the historic commune of Kasa-Vubu, where he was born in Kinshasa, had an impact on his desire to delve into the past and preserve historical traces in danger, in a country where this option does not seem to be of the utmost concern to decision-makers.
Read more below:
Interview with Baudouin Bikoko
Interview with art critic Charles Tumba Kekwo
In this final video, Prisca Tankwey highlights some of these timidly taken exit routes available to participants interested in the Academic internship and professional immersion at Krithika Artprojects, where Jean is a member. This interview relating to the one-month internship period of some students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa focuses on the opening and exploration of new artistic visions nourished by temporal and environmental, local and international contexts. The Congolese art scene, especially the visual arts, being rich and vast in terms of creators and ferments, is therefore called upon to renew itself through new methodologies of learning, creation, exhibition, monitoring and mediation.