COMING SOON: “AWA” African Women arts exhibition: Bruxelles
ANGE SWANA
RDC/FRANCE
Artiste plasticienne, Ange Swana explore les frontières entre l’art, mémoire et identité culturelle.Sa pratique se caractérise par une manipulation audacieuse de la matière, où la peinture à l’huile, travaillée au couteau, devient une structure presque sculpturale sur sa toile. Elle interroge la notion du corps comme une armure, une seconde peau et un langage symbolique reliant ses racines congolaises à son environnement européen.
Sa démarche artistique est une célébration de l’hybridité. En détournant les codes traditionnels pour les projeter dans une esthétique contemporaine et habitée, elle insuffle un « souffle vital » puissant à ses créations. Son oeuvre ne se contente pas de représenter le sujet; elle lui donne une dimension vibrante et vivante, témoignant de la résilience, de l’élégance et de la métamorphise constante des identité afro-descendantes.ANGE SWANARDC/FRANCEA visual artist, Ange Swana explores the boundaries between art, memory, and cultural identity. Her practice is characterized by a bold manipulation of materials, where oil paint, worked with a palette knife, becomes a nearly sculptural structure on the canvas. Trough interplays of volume, dense textures, and complex layering, she questions the notion of the body as an armor, a send skin, and a symbolic Language linking her Congolese roots to her European environment.Her artistic approach is a celebration of hybridity. By subverting traditional codes to project them into a soulful, contemporary aesthetic, she breathes a powerful « Vital Breath » into her creations.Her work does not merely represent the subject; it gives it a vibrant, living dimension, bearing witness to the resilience, elegance, and constant metamorphosis of Afro-descendant identities.Julie Tshiongo Theys
vernissages expo l’éveil du souffle vital
Dans un esprit de curiosité et de détermination, nous faisons se rencontrer pensée audacieuse et exécution réfléchie. Donnons du sens à ce que nous créons ensemble.
GROUP SHOW
Congo Contemporary
Curated by Julie Theys
16.10 – 20.12.2025
Gallery 41 — Rue Ernest Allard 41, 1000 Brussels
Congo Contemporary offers a rare and vital journey through the artistic landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing together a new generation of contemporary voices alongside key figures of the country's modern art history. Curated by Julie Theys — founder of Palanca Gallery in Kinshasa — the exhibition highlights a creative richness that remains largely underrepresented on the international art scene.
Far from exoticizing or Western-centric perspectives, Congo Contemporary asserts an aesthetic and intellectual autonomy. The works on view are not shaped by imitation or the desire to conform to Western art canons; rather, they draw their strength from within — from narratives, gestures, and visual languages rooted in Congolese realities. They reflect an inward gaze and a world view shaped by the tensions, histories, urgencies, and hopes that define the social, political, and cultural fabric of the DRC.
This exhibition showcases a body of work that is free, inventive, and unequivocally contemporary — a form of creation that, while unflinching in its confrontation with local challenges, also probes memory, power structures, postcolonial wounds, chaotic urbanity, spiritual vitality, and the resilience of bodies and territories.
By fostering a dialogue between generations and artistic movements, Congo Contemporary invites us to reconsider dominant geographies of art. It reveals a Congo that creates, critiques, transforms — a Congo whose artistic voice, long sidelined, demands to be heard and recognized with the same legitimacy as those of global cultural centers.
The exhibition features works by Enyejo Bakaka, Bela, Amani Bodo, Bers Grandsinge, Jean Bosco Kamba, Mwenze Kibwanga, Lofenia J. C., Dolet Malalu, Houston Maludi, Mwembia, Precy Numbi, Chéri Samba, Kura Shomali, Ange Swana and Vitshois M.B.
Exposition 2025, Bruxelles, Gallery the 41, Belgique