Your Gateway to DR Congo’s Creators.

The cross was everywhere in the Kingdom of Kongo, and for the European missionaries who found it, the meaning was obvious. It was a sign from their God, a relic of a shared past. They saw everything but the truth. For the Bakongo people, this symbol was no mere icon. It was a key; a… Read more

You think the title exaggerates? Consider the evidence. The San Francisco Art Institute is gone. Prestigious academies worldwide are closing. Those that persist are calcifying into irrelevance.Like monarchies: ceremonial, expensive, and increasingly detached from reality. They keep issuing diplomas like royal titles. Impressive to their own circle, meaningless to everyone else. In Kinshasa, this irrelevance… Read more

An exhibition celebrating Congolese art where Congolese people owned basically none of it. A market boom that left local artists poorer than before. Master painters who no longer touch a brush. Galleries where most of the paintings are Pinterest copies. Welcome to Kinshasa’s art world a decade after “Beauté Congo”—where success became the architect of… Read more