‘ART TALK WITH ANNE WETSI MPOMA (BE)’

AFROPOLITAN CONTEMPORARY ART

Anne Wetsi Mpoma is an activist, journalist, curator.
Wetsi graduated in History of Art at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2007. She is enthousiastic about visual arts and performing arts. After a short experience in an art gallery in New York she sets up the association Nouveau Système Artistique at the end of 2008. The purpose is to contribute to the promotion, diffusion and realization of projects by artists of  African descent within the Belgian and European society. Through her field of work she organized for instance the theme days of Afro Brussels City (meetings with artists, film projections, performances), the 2010 Independence Day Festival or the exhibition Présences Congolaises en Belgique at the Maison des Cultures of Saint-Gilles in 2016. She takes also part in various cultural projects with federal institutions.
Wetsi has a weekly column within Africana, the cultural programme on Radio Campus. She is a member of the group of experts appointed to participate to the consultation of the African diasporas which was established by the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the latter.

She presents here Belgian artists who deconstruct stereotypes, and allow a new gaze on persons, objects or realities that are usually invisible. Critical artists who give us material for thought.

Laura Nsengiyumva, Brussels
Aimé Ntakiyica, Brussels
Guy Wouete, Antwerp
Aime Mpane, Brussels
Bers Grandsinge, Brussels
Nganji, Brussels

Laura Nsengiyumva

Made of spatialities and images in movement , the installations by the Belgo-Rwandan artist Laura Nsengiyumva explore themes such as the diasporic experience, multiple identity, North-South relationships and empathy. This is a transcultural look at History through the human histories that make it up, which invites us to discover what brings us together. Laura Nsengiyumva lives in Brussels. In 2011 she won First Prize at the Ghent Kunstsalon, and a prize at the 2012 Dakar Biennale.

Aimé Ntakyica

Aimé Ntakyica’s work is about visual metaphor. He asks himself questions about his identity and naturally turned to Burundi, his home country.
“I created a bridge for myself between the abundant ‘palaver’ of Burundi, the country in which I was born and the secular painting of Belgium, the country where I live.
Justifying the big gap between an origin (both present and far off) and an adoptive land where the image is secular.
This bridge is my ’tradition’, my ‘present’. This bridge is my identity, my creation space.”

Guy Wouete

Guy Wouete’s work is a journey between the finite and the infinite. He doesn’t hesitate to contravene academic rules in order to decode his daily life and open other spaces. Guy transcribes emotions like the unexpected one he experiences as he listens to a child singing as he eats or observes the powerful movement of a street sweeper. His practice is variable and made up of the dregs of dream and shock.
Guy Wouete’s work is exhibited throughout the world in biennials, festivals, museums, galleries and other art centres.

Aimé Mpane

Mpane has lived and worked in Belgium since 1994 where he studied Painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels, La Cambre. He was awarded a variety of prizes including the Fondation Blachère Award at the 2006 Dakar Biennial. His works combine the rawness of “primitive” art with a political commitment which forcefully denounces the darkness and light of our human condition. Some of them are permanently exhibited in different international museums, the Brooklyn Museum in NY, the Smithsonian Museum & The Phillips Collection Museum in Washington, the Lacma Museum in Los Angeles. Others can be found in private collections in the USA, France, Belgium, Israel… His work is represented by the Gallery Haines in San Francisco.

Bers Grandsinge

Jean-Pierre Bers ‘Grandsinge’ might appear to have a surprising nickname but the story behind it is actually very closely linked to our artist’s career. Jean-Pierre Bers, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, studied at the Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts before setting off in search of new horizons, first African countries before heading for New-York. If Basquiat gave him this nickname in a friendly manner to highlight his intelligence of things, it would first and foremost play an important role in the direction Bers’ work would take him. The artist deliberately places himself in Time and Space.

Nganji

Nganji Mutiri is a photographer-director who was born in Congo in 1980 and has lived in Belgium since 1997. In his work he explores the humanity of Afro-Europeans.