“Pembeni mwa nafsi” (At the Edge of the Self): Mihalina Nyota’s Meditation on Vanity
Mihalina Nyota Buzilu, one of the rising voices on Kinshasa’s contemporary art scene, revisits one of the oldest themes in the history of Western painting and brings it into conversation with the anxieties of her own generation. In “Pembeni mwa nafsi” (Au bord du soi), a reclining figure gazes into a hand mirror while a skull waits patiently nearby. A meditation on vanity, narcissism, and the life we refuse to accept, the work unfolds as a quiet warning about the dangerous border where self-contemplation becomes self-loss. Watch the artist speak.
