De Dieu Luwungu

About

Alain de Dieu Luwungu Liyongo, who works under the name De Dieu Luwungu, was born into a family of nine in Lubumbashi and now lives and works in Kinshasa. An early pull toward drawing carried him first to the Institute of Fine Arts in Kinshasa for his artistic humanités, where he took a State diploma in Plastic Arts in 2004, and then to the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa, where he finished a Bachelor’s in Plastic Arts, painting option, in 2009. He has taught at the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts in Kinshasa since 2008.

Luwungu works across canvas, mural, and illustration, and resists being fixed to any one of them; he calls himself an eclectic visual artist and treats reductionism as something to refuse outright. The line work that first drew him to art became the root of a broader idea he calls arborescence, branching used as a model for how people can live together: differences added up rather than set against each other, complementarity standing in for antagonism. He paints that idea in acrylic and oil, and also, unusually, in matchsticks, in a style that moves between expressionism and surrealism. The paintings work as a kind of hymn to living together, built on the same line work that started him drawing as a child.

Among his declared influences are Ndamvu Tsiku-Pezo, Matemo, and Roger Botembe, the same Botembe who trained Patrick Kusakana directly and stands behind the trans-symbolism referenced in Kitokongo’s interview with Sculpture Libende Today. Luwungu names two further reference points from outside Congo: Van Gogh and Rembrandt.

His exhibition record includes two recent showings: in 2021, a place in “When Art Meets the River” at the Fleuve Congo Hotel, and in 2022, work included in “RD Congo, Land of Artists” at the Wallonia Brussels Center, under its COVID-19 and RUMB’ART components.

This page gathers De Dieu Luwungu’s work in one place online. The portfolio is below.

Portfolio