Simplus Ntoto

About

Simplus Ntoto was born in Kinshasa on May 5, 1998. Drawing found him around age 13, and in 2016 he chose sculpture specifically as his path, training at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa, where he graduated in 2018. Welding came from a separate internship, under Maître Mbikou; car shells, the actual material he builds with, he taught himself.

His process starts with research: images of animals from Congo’s national parks, until one holds his attention. He draws it in detail, builds a wire skeleton in its shape, then cuts a car shell into pieces, shapes each one, and welds it to the frame. He works less from anatomical study than from observation, watching how an animal actually moves until, in his words, the process becomes a spiritual connection that lets him recreate its essence rather than just its form.

Two animals hold a personal charge for him beyond the sculptures: the leopard, for its courage and readiness to confront, and the eagle, for its pursuit of perfection and its eye for detail, both qualities he names as his own working standard as much as his subject matter.

Ntoto trained under Papy Tamba Pambu and went on to win the medal for Congo’s best sculptor. In 2023 the two founded Sculpture Libende Today together, a collective built around turning scrap metal and wrecked cars into sculpture, an argument for the city’s art scene and against its waste at once.

His exhibition record includes a solo show at Texaf Bilembo, fifteen new pieces built over nine months, most of which found buyers within days of opening, and, currently, a place in “Territoires du vivant, fragment d’un monde en mutation,” a seven-artist group show running at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles in Kinshasa through September 13, 2026, alongside Aïcha Muteba, Patrick Kusakana, and Tamba. He is showing seven metal pieces there, among them a rhinoceros, a gorilla, kudus, and giraffes.

On what young Congolese artists need most, Ntoto is direct: visibility is the real obstacle, since selling work or even making the right contacts is difficult without connections, and galleries tend to favor names already established. His closing advice to beginners is just as plain: patience, passion, and persistence.

This page gathers Simplus Ntoto’s work in one place online. The portfolio is below.

Portfolio