Antwerp Art Weekend

18 - 21 May 2023

Michèle Magema

Represented by Irène Laub Gallery

Born in 1977 in Kinshasa, Congo Lives and works in Bourgogne, France

Michèle Magema is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly with video, performance, photography and drawing. Her work focuses on articulating a permanent exchange between individual stories, collective memory and History. Walking the line between personal experience and shared collective anxieties, she draws on her own stories and souvenirs to approach themes such as feminism, sociology, politics, and mythology. The exploration of her feminine identity, displaced through time and memory, reflects the image of a woman completely detached from any historically imposed exoticism. She often uses historical facts, which she reinterprets through frontal staging and various metamorphoses.

Born in Democratic Republic of Congo in 1977, the artist left Kinshasa for Paris with her family when she was six years old, to be with her father who was then a political refugee. She situates herself within an intermediate zone between North and South and questions the world through a perception hybridized by her culture of origin and her country of adoption. She often presents a critical view of the multi-layered forms of exploitation and oppression in Africa and underlines the relations between continuous violence, natural resources and corruption.