John-Primo Mulimbi

About

John-Primo Mulimbi was born in Sake, Nord Kivu, in 2005. He is self-taught: no Académie des Beaux-Arts, just an early and evident pull toward painting and drawing, sharpened through intensive training at the Chukudu Art Center in Goma. His debut exhibition, at the Uhuru Knowledge Center in Sake, ran on his community’s support alone, neighbors who watched him draw for years and wanted to see where it went.

In 2022 he took the work on the road, touring the provinces with his solo exhibition “D’hier à Aujourd’hui,” carrying his paintings to audiences beyond Sake for the first time. By 2023 he moved to Kinshasa, the country’s artistic capital, to test the work on a larger stage.

His subjects come from where he is from: Congolese heritage, nature, the routines of everyday life, carried by an ambition that reaches past Sake and past Kinshasa toward a lasting place in the wider art world. Born into a region that has spent decades at war, he paints the opposite instead, work that argues for peaceful coexistence and hope for a Congo not yet arrived. His palette shifts from piece to piece, and the technique follows it; some pieces leave the canvas behind entirely for three-dimensional installation.

For Mulimbi, painting stays an open question. He keeps testing new forms, which is part of how the installation work started, and he treats artistic freedom as close to a principle: the honesty comes first, and whatever connection reaches an audience follows from that, rather than being built to order.

His own path to Kitokongo started at a Sunday market held at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, close to a year ago now, where a conversation about his paintings turned out to be memorable enough that neither side forgot it. A recent reconnection on Instagram picked the thread back up, and this profile is the result.

This page is where his work now lives online. The portfolio is below, and for an artist this young, it is already substantial.

Portfolio