Eddy Kamuanga

Merging the past and present together, the artworks of Congolese artist Eddy Kamuanga reflect on the contradictions of past and present identities while celebrating the creative artefacts and motifs of Congolese traditional culture.
Often showing figures draped in eloquent fabrics and materials and painted in classical poses, the figures of Kamuanga are painted in stark flat black. The figures are further inscribed on with circuit patterns on their faces, skin and body. This interesting unification of the aesthetics of the natural and technological is believed to be reflective of the DRC’s successful exportation of the metallic raw material coltan which is used in modern technologies of computer processing and telephony and distributed globally. Or the pairing could be reflective of the exploitation and commodification of minerals found in Africa as well black aesthetics under the guise of modernity.
Most strikingly within these elaborate works is the circuit impositions on the skin that may echo digital memory that can never be lost. The compositions, arrangements, striking colours and ostentatious use of lavish fabric serve as an appreciation and testimony of the creative, expressive, rich archive of pre-colonial societies that cannot be forgotten or totally erased.
The inscriptions serve as visual metaphors for DNA or even modern scarification evoking a sense of pride in blackness and black aesthetics even after modernity’s and industrialisations crushing of traditional and cultural knowledge, of art, and cultural practices.
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