The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection

Hilary Balu

Born in Kinshasa in 1992

Lives and works in Kinshasa

Hilary Balu studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Kinshasa.

As a young graduate, he decided to emancipate himself from Western codes and techniques in search of an aesthetic he could indentify with as a Congolese and as an African.

His paintings reveal an African society transformed by globalization and

consumer society. The "brutal mutation" that the Democratic Republic of the Congo has

known in its cultural, political, economic and spiritual identity is represented through a

symbolism of the object. Present in most of his works, the figure of Nkisi Mangaaka, ancestral divinatory sculpture, is the symbol of a collective memory neglected in favor of the new symbols of capitalism.

Between tourist bags and flip flops, the traditional statuette is also a reminder of the imbalances of the DRC in its international relations.