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Kongo Astronauts is an artist collective founded by the Kinshasa-based duo Michel Ekeba and Eléonore Hellio. Their multi-media practice includes photography, film, sculpture, and performance, and engages with Kinshasa’s alternative culture network. Kongo Astronauts’ Afrofuturist prism projects a reality that surmounts both the postcolonial unpredictability of their urban setting and rural environments. At the same time, they beam a critical spotlight on the forces that have shaped this environment and continue to form it. In their images, we sense our own human fragility and catch our own reflections as we struggle with the crises of late capitalism and climate change.
Kongo Astronauts’ images of travel—such as the astronaut in his golden suit, plastered with digital detritus made from minerals mined in the Congo, who stands in the belly of a cargo plane in their “After Schengen” series—“function as a platform for thinking through Earth’s decimation by an economic project rooted in the colonial project and amplified in the neoliberal era, ” as Dominique Malaquais points out in her recent “First Word” in African Arts. European states that bonded together under the Shengen Agreement imposed a unitary visa system through which they now control the entry of African visitors—much less immigrants—to the colonial “fatherlands” that once exercised authority over them.
Kongo Astronauts describe their own practice as “crossing the vertiginous divide of worlds by responding with artist acts to the troubles and syncopations of the contemporary cyborg. A fluctuating collective, Kongo Astronauts is built on the confrontation of experiences and is an attempt to resist the psychic ghettos that cover multiple postcolonial realities. Kongo Astronauts manifests in the inter-zones of digital globalization, where past, future, and present collide with the politics of privacy and the realities of urban and rural life. A player in post-discipline, Kongo Astronauts’ cosmic apparitions and polysemous fictions engage us to take a multidimensional look at different forms of exile and survival tactics. Infinitely remixable, to the rhythm of crazy funkitude, Kongo Astronauts is an interstellar visual, sonic, textual, and space-time concept that reinvents itself every moment. Kongo Astronauts ‘space station’ is co-piloted by Eléonore Hellio and Michel Ekeba. Other thinkers and artists regularly participate in Kongo Astronauts’ spatio-temporal transmutations.”
Kongo Astronauts are interested in the creation of works that sometimes might be difficult to classify, works whose forms might be ephemeral or unstable, works which generate attitudes and processes, works which respond to a place or a context, given or constructed. The absence of fixed physical objects is integral to many projects carried out by Kongo Astronauts.
UPCOMING
2024 La Biennale di Venezia, CONGO (DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE), LITHIUM. Commissioner: Joseph Ibongo Gilungula; Curators: Michele Gervasuti, James Putnam
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 After Schengen : RaDaR Transcontinental. Multidisciplinary program including solo exhibition, performance, screenings and conference. Médiathèque de Mérignac. Part of the Season de l’Institut des Afriques (Africa Institute) and the Semaine de l’Espace (Space Week) organized in partnership with the City of Mérignac et Cap Sciences.
2022 Congo Gravitational Waves // A Metadigital & Tantalean Tale. Solo exhibition, College of Visual Arts and Design Galleries, University of North Texas, Denton. June 14-Sept. 3, 2022
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
(Kongo Astronauts participants: Michel Ekeba, Eléonore Hellio, Bebson Elemba, Céline Banza, Amourabinto Lukoji, Daniel Toya)
2024 Panorama of Congo: Unrolling the past with virtual reality, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Lisbon, Portugal. 25 February – 16 June, 2024
2024 Africa Space Art Project, exhibition. Institute Française de Kinshasa, March, 7-30, 2024
2023 DIG WHERE YOU STAND – From Coast to Coast: Seke, Palais de Lomé, Togo, —March, 23, 2024
2022 Africa Space Art Project, a collaborative work, in which Michel Ekeba of Kongo Astronauts is one of the creators, was adhered the Arianespace 5 fairy and launched into space on Dec. 13th, 2022 at 12:30, accompanying EUMETSAT #MTGI1, a satellite that will monitor climate change and weather patterns over the African continent
2022 METAMORPHOSIS–MUTATION, 6th edition of the International Biennale of digital art, (BIAN) organized by ELEKTRA, Arsenal Contemporary Art, Montreal, Canada Dec. 5 2022 – Feb. 5, 2023
2022 (N)Tonga: between future and dust, Brussels, Belgium. Sept. 23- Nov. 20, 2022
2022 Entrelacs/Interlaced, Cité International des arts, Paris. Exhibition, performances and roundtables. 3,4,5 June 2022. Exhibition open through July 13, 2022
2022 iN/Off, Biennale OFF Dakar, La OUAK Gallery, Ouakam Dakar May 19- June 21, 2022
2022 Transfigured Boundaries, curated by Hyash & Sofia Peypoch Cineteca Nacional de Mexico Ciudad de México. April 29-May 5, 2022
2022 Kinshasa-(N)tonga: between future and dust. Academy of Fine Arts, Kinshasa, DRC
2021 Congo in Harlem, New York, USA
2020 Kinshasa Chroniques – Cité de l’architecture & du Patrimoine – Paris, France
2020 “disCONNECTED 2020” – Dresden, Germany
2019 Biennale de Lumumbashi – Lubumbashi, DRCongo
2019 Heterotopic planetarium – Kaserne Basel, Switzerland
2019 Kinshasa Chroniques – MIAM – Sète, France
2019 Système Kinshasa ! – B’ZZ pour l’Agence Française pour le Développement – Paris
2018 Traversantes – Le Tarmac – Paris, France
2018 Kinshasa 2050, Les Femmes d’abord ! – Institut Français – Kinshasa, DRCongo
2018 Festival MIDBO – Bogotá, Colombia
2017 Karachi Biennale – Pakistan
2017 Kinshasa 2050 : La ville du Futur ? – Institut Français – Kinshasa, DRCongo
2017 Festival pour un temps sismique – Arts Hors-Format HEAR – Strasbourg, France
2015 Arte en Orbita – Quito, Ecuador
2015 Pan African Space Station – Cape Town
2013 Lowave Film Festival – Johannesburg
PERFORMANCE
(Kongo Astronauts participants: Michel Ekeba, Eléonore Hellio, Amourabinto Lukoji
2023 Médiathèque Michel Sainte-Marie, Mérignac, France. Organized by Cap Sciences, & l’Institut des Afriques, Bordeaux.
2023 “Kongo Astronauts’ performance by Michel Ekeba, The Artists Party, and The Cape Town Art Fair, AAD and the Leridon Collection. February 17-19, 2023
2022 Memory of Today, Memory of the Future, ASAP, Ariane Space Air Shuttle unveiling of collaborative work & Kongo Astronauts performance. 1:54, Christies, Paris. April 7-10, 2022
2019 Excerpts Postcolonial Dilemna #Track4 in PAIN BENI (Ornella Mamba) / Mise en scène Valentine Cohen – Brazzaville, Congo Republic
2019 Short film « After Shengen » Max Mo films / Laboratoire NEO
2019 Feature length film « Systeme K » by Renaud Barret
2018 Clip « Niama Na Yo » Album Polaroïd Experience – YOUSSOUPHA
2018 Short Film « Zombies » by BALOJI
2017 Repatriation of the White Cube IHA/CATPC – Lusanga DRC
2017 CFAO Inauguration – TEK Agency – Kinshasa DRC
2017 Photographic research by Belgian photographer Colin Delfosse
2016 BALOJI Concert – JAZZKIF Festival – Kinshasa DRC
2015 Clip “Capture” for the EP “64 Bits and Malachite” by BALOJI
2015 Short film, « How to become Kongo Astronauts » de Borut Bučinel
2015 Biennale Yango (OFF) – Urban performance series – Kinshasa, CRC
2015 Clip « From Kinshasa to the moon » BONGWANA STARS (?)
2014 Series of urban performances in the city of Kinshasa, DRC
2013 Flight Box Night Orange, Optimum Production – Kinshasa, DRC
FILMOGRAPHY
(Kongo Astronauts participants: Eléonore Hellio, Michel Ekeba, Bebson Elemba, Céline Banza)
Postcolonial Dilemma Track #5 (in the process of) 2021
TranspatialIncidents, 2010. 2020. Duration: 11”28’’
Postcolonial Dilemna #Track4 (Remix mix) within the multidimentionnal world of Bebson Elemba. Duration: 14’08’’ – 2019
La Predic(a)tion in collaboration with Céline Banza, 2018. Duration: 21’51’’
Postcolonial Dilemna #Track4 (Stay tuned). Duration: 8’38’’ – 2017
Postcolonial Dilemna #Track0 (unedited). Duration: 7’30’’ – 2015
Postcolonial Dilemna #Track3 (Unended). Duration: 6’31’’ – 2014Z
Postcolonial Dilemna #Track2
Postcolonial Dilemna #Track1 (Redux)
RESIDENCIES
2024 Institut Français de Kinshasa. Artist residency for a Worlds of the Solar Republic #1[-10], a co-production with THYME
2023 As part of the Season de l’Institut des Afriques et de la Semaine de l’Espace (space week) organized in partnership with the City of Mérignac et Cap Sciences, Sept. 15 -30, 2023
PUBLICATIONS
Hanna B Hölling, Jules Pelta Feldman, Emilie Magnin Performance: The Ethics and Politics of Conservation and Care. Volume 1, Routledge, 2023
Eléonore Hellio. “GHeTTo GeT In-GrOw Up!” OtherNetwork/e-flux Architecture, October 26, 2022
Rob La Frenais & Ewen Chadronnet. Eds. Space Without Rockets. UV Éditions, 2022
Gabriella Nugent. Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Leuven University Press in the Fall/Winter 2021
Espace (s) no. 20. Mythologies Individuels. Observatoiredel’espace. 2020. p32.
Kinshasa Chroniques. Les editions de l’oeil, Paris. 27 February, 2019
TALKS
2023 “Conference Afrofuturismes ? Utopies spéculatives africaines”, Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux. Elara Bertho, resercher LAM/CNRS, Emilie Guitard laboratory researcher PRODIG/CNRS, Michel Ekeba et Éléonore Hellio, co-founders of the collective Kongo Astronauts.
New narratives and speculative imaginaries, artist talk and online workshop led by Stacy Hardy, LOD music theatre, Ghent, Belgium. December 10, 2022