The inaugural Young Congo Biennale will take place in the cosmopolitan city of Kinshasa and include projects from more than 40 artists, designers, architects, art historians, curators, art critics and other creators from five continents.

The contemporary festival of art, will take place over 33 days in public spaces, a fine Art Institute, gallery spaces, Kin Art Studio space, the Institut Français and Bilembo art center.

The title of this first edition of the biennale is Transition, and is curated by visual artist Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo, with a public spaces programme curated by architect and designer Nicolas-Patience Basabose.

The organisers explain that “Transition invites artists and thinkers to reflect on the general history of the DR Congo from the Berlin conference in 1885, when the country was privately owned by the Belgian King Leopold II, to the present day, and to reflect on its position and relations with the rest of the planet.”

The Congo Biennale also wants to engage artists, designers, architects and participants working in the city to rethink a social and public space, in dialogue with its history and most immediate urban reality, and to be focused on the urbanity of the city province of Kinshasa by engaging artists and the population.

The Biennale would like to create a space for creation and innovation in a public arena to support socially engaged practices in a local and international context with innovative projects in the social space, so that they can work with the local community, in order to produce and contribute to social development.

This action will revive the local memory and at the same time question its existence while raising some of its issues in order to reflect on common and concrete decisions of actions related to this place. It also consists of a transformation of spaces through collective interventions, because art also has its share of responsibility in society.

“ The artist who will be able to execute noble works in order to inspire an ideal of greatness in his people is the man who responds, in the measure of his gifts, to the needs of his time and the problems that arise among his people.“ – CHEIKH ANTA DIOP

Also, the objective of investing the public space during the Biennale is to communicate and make known a possible reproduction of the role of art in society, through the increased awareness of contemporary artists engaged in creative processes that consider art and society as interdependent.

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