PH
Painter Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga’s little, sweltering Kinshasa studio appears universes from his sparkling, generally welcomed remote presentations.
The 25-year-old painter says he is enlivened by his nation’s huge social and mineral riches — yet in addition by the district’s difficult frontier history.
That message radiates through in his enrapturing, confoundingly splendid works of art of figures garbed in brilliant Congolese and French materials, their dim skin scarred by the mark markings of PC circuit sheets, which are regularly made of Congolese-mined cobalt. Ilunga’s work has been shown in South Africa, Europe and the United States, as African art has become progressively more famous.
One of his pieces can fetch up to $30,000 in an international auction.
But that figure is far from his daily reality. He rents this space for $300 a month. His paints have to be imported from Germany. And, art industry experts say, while those seemingly high prices make him one of Congo’s most lucrative artists, his extraordinary work only fetches average prices by international standards.
