Mukenge/Schellhammer

Mukenge/Schellhammer is a Congolese–German contemporary artist duo working across painting, performance, video, digital media, including augmented and virtual reality and grounded in a post-digital understanding of painting. Based between Kinshasa and Berlin, their practice combines Congolese and Western painting traditions as well as contemporary popular culture, within a formal approach that treats painting as a site of friction between cultural systems, images and bodies. The duo consists of Christ Mukenge (born 1988 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Lydia Schellhammer (born 1992 in Konstanz, Germany).

Biography

Early life and education Christ Mukenge completed his secondary education with a specialisation in ceramics at the Institut des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa from 2000 to 2006. He studied painting at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa from 2012 to 2017.

Lydia Schellhammer studied extracurricular art pedagogy with a focus on painting at the University of Augsburg from 2013 to 2017 and painting at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa with Prof. Dr Henri Kalama from 2016 to 2017. The two artists started working together at a squat at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Kinshasa called "Noyaux", later renamed "Carré Magique" (2000–2016). It was the birthplace of Kontempo which included different artistic movements such as urban performance and Partagisme, which continue to influence Mukenge/Schellhammer's working methods.

The collaboration began as a necessity, working between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Europe, they are confronted with traces of the colonial past, economic inequalities and structural racism and it was this political pressure gave rise to the fusion of the two artists as the duo, Mukenge/Schellhammer.

Mukenge/Schellhammer founded Laboratoire Kontempo, a digital and analogue platform for experimental contemporary art in Kinshasa. An early work by the duo is the film Your Exoticism is My Daily Bread, which introduces Mukenge/Schellhammer's concept of "strategic auto-exoticisation", while the film has been shown at the Pan-African video festival BodaBoda Lounge titled Now Bite the Hand that Feeds You (2020), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2021), The Pool Malebo work series deals with painting in the local context of Kinshasa in relation to international art scenes and the art market. It has been presented at Ifa Galerie Stuttgart (2022), and Haus der Statistik, Berlin (2022).

Mukenge/Schellhammer's hybrid, multimedia painterly approach is consolidated in the exhibitions Barking Dogs in the Head (Plateforme Contemporaine Kinshasa, 2022) and Undigested Images (Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Galerie Barbara Thumm, 2023). The combination of digital and analogue paintings and the radically collaborative working process lays the foundation for a new aesthetic. As a result, the artists declare the duo to be an entity: "a double-headed monster, shaped and deformed by the pressure of the conditions of our present."

Exploring the medium of painting in the post-digital age, the duo uses virtual and augmented reality techniques, giving rise to an interweaving of painterly, digital and real spaces. This expanded painterly approach has been visible in the group exhibition Between Pixel and Pigment at Marta Herford (2024), Fellbach Triennale (2025), and Rohkunstbau (2025), among others.

For Mukenge/Schellhammer, radical collaboration is a formal approach and this understanding gives rise to transdisciplinary collective projects such as the multilingual publications Kinzonzi and Pool Malebo, or interdisciplinary performances such as Mbok'Elengi at the Yango Biennale in Kinshasa. Since 2019, the duo has also established the Laboratoire Kontempo platform in Kinshasa as a space where artists and theorists can work without the influence of institutional power dynamics.

Exhibitions

Solo shows (selected) 2026: Elima - NoBody (Part I), Musée de l’art Contemporain et de Multimédia, Kinshasa, DRC 2026: Elima - NoBody (Part II), Kunsthalle Giesen, Germany 2025: Lost in Translation, Frieren Room, Berlin, Germany 2024: Forward Flight – Flucht nach vorn, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, Germany 2023: Undigested Images, multimedia exhibition, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin and Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany 2022: Barking Dogs in the Head, multimedia exhibition, Plateforme Contemporaine, Kinshasa, DRC 2022: Pool Malebo, ifa Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany 2024: Singenkunst, Kunstmuseum Singen, Germany 2023: Art Basel Miami Beach, Galerie Barbara Thumm, USA 2023: Weaving, Stitching, Painting, Galerie Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris, France 2023: Plural Perspectives, Soft Power, Berlin, Germany 2023: Planetary Skins – The Future of Demonstration, an art series by Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler, Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck, Austria 2022: Lumbung Film by Centre d'art Waza, Documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany 2022: Re/Projections: Video, Film and Performance for the Rotunda, Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA, invited by Christian Nyampeta 2021: Boda Boda Lounge, cross-continental digital, multimedia and video art festival featuring in over 20 spaces throughout Africa 2020: QP, Quartiers-Parcours, Art3Kultur, Augsburg, Germany 2019: Freiheit – Grenzenlos frei?, Galerie Noah, Germany 2017: Erniedrigung ist nicht das Ende der Welt by Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany

Performances (selected) 2025: Stretching the Notion of Painting, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Germany 2025: Memory, Speak!, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany 2025: Kasala Kontinuum // Ancestors, References, Initiations, Plateforme Contemporaine, Kinshasa, DRC 2024: Nager dans l'opulence, Galerie Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris, France 2023: Intégration, Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa, Symposium Formes, lettres, identités?, Kinshasa, DRC 2017: Dialog direkt Kinshasa – Berlin by Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, Double Vision, Kinshasa, DRC 2016: Mbongwana, exhibition and performance, Grand-Hotel Cosmopolis, Augsburg, Germany

Projects by Laboratoire Kontempo

2025: Le Partage du Travail Sensible: Landscape, group show curated by Dereck Marouço Sant'Anna da Silva, Mokili Na Poche, Kinshasa, DRC 2025: Kokende Liboso Eza Kokoma Te, group show curated by Dzekashu MacViban, Mokili Na Poche, Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa, Institut Français, Kinshasa, DRC 2022: Kinzonzi, collaborative multimedia exhibition, Haus der Statistik and Acud Galerie, Berlin, Germany 2022: Kinzonzi 2.0, exhibition, talks and exchange, online 2021: Kinzonzi, collaborative multimedia exhibition, National Museum of Kinshasa, DRC 2019: Laboratoire Kontempo, a dialogue between visual art, critical theory and everyday life, Plateforme Contemporain/Aw'art/DoubleVision, Kinshasa Bandal, DRC

Curated shows (selected) 2022: Fiction is Never Innocent, online space "New Viewings" by Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, Germany 2021: Fiction Might Be Speculative and Inspire Particular Developments, ArtClub Augsburg, Germany 2020: Popular Images, Congolese Perspectives, Urban Scenes and Global Networks, Erlangen International Comic-Salon, Germany 2016: Ateliers Ouverts, Urbain Museum Lingwala, Goethe Institut Kinshasa, DRC

Scenography (selected) 2025: Cité d'Or, by La Fleur, Theater Rampe and Staatsoper Stuttgart, Germany 2025: Josephine Baker, by Monika Gintersdorfer and La Fleur, Theater Freiburg, Germany 2021: Sturmtief O'Hara, La Fleur collectiv, Theater Oberhausen, Germany 2020: Nana kriegt keine Pocken, by La Fleur, Theater Bremen, Germany and La Commune, Paris, France 2019: Nana ou est-ce que tu connais le baras, MC93 Paris, Theater Bremen, Theater Rampe, Stuttgart, Germany 2017: Dialog Direkt Kinshasa-Berlin, Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, HAU 2, Berlin, Germany

Artworks in public space 2024: Hommage Skelly aka the Rare Bird, the Son of the Wind, the Machete, the Son of Abla Pokou and the Virgin Mary, interactive mural project, Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire 2023: Gestural Living, multifunctional paintings, Brechtfestival, Augsburg, Germany 2022: Mbok'Elengi, Mukenge/Schellhammer feat. Pigeon de la Terre and Beauté Sauvage, painting, Yango Biennale de Kinshasa, DRC 2018: Urban Museum, Kinshasa, supported by Swiss Embassy Kinshasa and Goethe Institut, DRC 2016: Yaka Totala, Urbain Museum Kinshasa, supported by Goethe Institut Kinshasa, DRC

Articles and publications (selected) 2025: Between Pixel and Pigment: Painting in the Postdigital Present, ISBN 978-3-496-01714-1 2023: Pool Malebo, exhibition catalogue, ifa Galerie Stuttgart, Germany 2023: "Shattering the Structure", interview with Christ Mukenge, Lydia Schellhammer and Sorana Munsya, e-flux 2022: "Laboratoire Kontempo Embraces the Art of Conflict", interview by Enos Nyamor, Contemporary And C& 2022: "Das Potential von Fremdheit", by Agata Hofrichter, Missy Magazine

Talks and lectures (selected) 2024: Lost in Translation, artist talk, Miss Read Berlin, Germany 2024: Artist talk, Utopies Urbaines, MingiWingi, Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa, DRC 2022: Dinnertime Talk, DHBW Ravensburg, Germany 2020: Spam 3, a radio program of undesired-desired messages, ACUD macht neu, Berlin, Germany

Residencies and grants (selected) 2024: Brandenburg work package fellowship 2023: Fellowship of the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation 2023: Rostock fellowship 2021–2022: Fellowship Visual Art and Media Practice Field, Akademie Schloss Solitude