An Atlas of the Difficult World
École du soir: Learning with Waza
2024.04.24 Wednesday 19:00
Location
MACA Art Center
Speakers: Feza Kayungu Ramazani & Prodige Tumba Makonga
Can we shift our focus from exhibition openings, art fairs, and biennales to more action-oriented practices? Can we expand our perspectives beyond Western Europe and North America? How has Centre d’art Waza self-organized in Lubumbashi (DRC) over the past decade? How do they perceive art history? What is the relationship between Western-discovered artists and the local art ecology? How do Congolese society and intellectuals interact with them? How do they obtain project funding? How do they perceive "art" and its relationship with local society? What problems and opportunities do they face?
MACA invites Feza Kayungu Ramazani and Prodige Tumba Makonga from Waza to share their practices, thoughts, and feelings with us in Beijing. At the same time, their practices also respond to an urgent global question: how do we live together? The event will also screen a documentary film titled Walemba: The Story of the Lwanzo Lwa Mikuba, which was presented by Waza at Documenta fifteen.
This event is co-organized by MACA, Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai, and Guangdong Times Museum.
About the Speaker: Kayungu Ramazani Brigitte
Kayungu Ramazani Brigitte, better known as Feza, is an artist and researcher based in Lubumbashi. She is a member of the Power to the Commons project and Another Roadmap of Arts Education Africa Cluster (ARAC), which is a network of researchers and practitioners engaged in collaborative research revisiting the history, politics, and alternative practices in arts education through literature. She is also curatorial assistant at École du soir, administrator of Centre d’art Waza, and a critical writer questioning images of African beauty and exoticism. Her research on African values, creativity, ancestral practices and technology, aligns with a desire to reinvent the conception and conservative function of museums in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kayungu received a Bachelor of Arts and Humanities in English literature and civilization at the University of Lubumbashi.
About the Speaker: Prodige Kevin Tumba Makonga
Prodige Kevin Tumba Makonga is an artist living in Lubumbashi, where he works as Head of the Communication department at Centre d’art Waza, and is a member of École du Soir. He has hosted artistic workshops at Centre d’Éveil de la Femme orphanage. Makonga majored in Illustration and Video-Postproduction at the University of Johannesburg, and his work is informed by the visual cultures of the street, zines, and music. He has exhibited at Design Indaba Expo: Emerging Creative in 2014, and at the FNB Joburg Art Fair in 2016 and 2017. More recently, Makonga devised the spatial design for lumbung member Centre d’art Waza’s presentation at documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022. Makonga has also exhibited at the 17th Istanbul Biennial in 2022, and at the 1st Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2023.
