Your Gateway to DR Congo’s Creators.

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

Walk through Kinshasa today, and you’ll encounter Alfred Liyolo’s legacy in two forms: bronze sculptures gracing public squares and his smiling face on Tembo beer advertisements throughout the city. That a beloved Congolese beer brand chose an artist to represent their product speaks volumes about how Liyolo captured the nation’s heart. The journey from Bolobo,… Read more