Michel Ekeba was born in 1984 in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa in Visual Communication, he created the BACK DESIGN Label. It is in the field of contemporary art that Michel Ekeba is most realized through performances, films, texts, photos and installations that he develops with the collective KONGO ASTRONAUTS, which he initiated with the artist Eléonore Hellio. Stimulated by the Hip Hop movement and the urban cultures of the world’s megacities at the end of the 1990s, he practices rap poetry. To free himself from the social violence he faces, he shares his flow in the street and gradually introduces visual elements which his urban performances are the result of. His best known series of performances is that of the “astronaut”. Often spontaneous appearances, they question the concept of exile and the dream of other worlds. The astronaut is one of the keys to the films of the artist Eléonore Hellio in the series “postcolonial dilemma” (2014-2019). The astronaut is one of the main characters in the latest documentary film by director Renaud Barret “System K” (2019). He has inspired clips by international artists such as Bongwana Stars and Baloji, and has appeared in a clip by Youssoupha and other young up-and-coming artists such as Arno Perf. His approach is above all part of a permanent creative process of interaction and collaboration. Michel Ekeba is a founding member of the “Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise” (CATPC) based in Lusanga in the Province of Kwilu/Bandundu, a project initiated by the Dutch artist Renzo Martens, founder of the “Institute for Human Activities” (IHA). Ekeba is co-pilot of the collective Kongo Astronauts initiated in 2013 in Kinshasa, DRC. Kongo Astronauts crosses the vertigo of worlds. Michel Ekeba, embodies KA through an action that proceeds from modified states of consciousness, urban drift, telescoping. He makes space suits with old electronic circuits loaded with cobalt, copper and coltan, puts them into action, crossing the capital but also the forests, fields and villages of the country. Ekeba describes his outings in a cosmonaut’s suit as a real ordeal. Inside the costume, made of thick, heavy materials, it is dreadfully hot. Going out dressed like this in the intense heat of a tropical zone is exhausting and leads to dreams of exile. Some of his Afrofuturist performances are re-staged for photography or drawing. The photos are then the object of collages imagined by the collective, which enlarges KA’s fields of action by means of improbable connections. These baroque collages reflect the visions of Kongo Astronauts. “KA is a visual, sonic, textual and spatio-temporal experience. To the troubles and syncopations of the contemporary cyborg, the collective responds with performative actions and writings, attempts to resist the psychic ghettos born of the (post)colonial condition. It manifests itself in the interzones of digital globalization where past, future and present clash. Playing in the post-discipline, its cosmic apparitions and polysemic fictions question the conditions of production, creation and diffusion of works that are sometimes difficult to classify. » textual and spatio-temporal experience. To the troubles and syncopations of the contemporary cyborg, the collective responds with performative actions and writings, attempts to resist the psychic ghettos born of the (post)colonial condition. It manifests itself in the interzones of digital globalization where past, future and present clash. Playing in the post-discipline, its cosmic apparitions and polysemic fictions question the conditions of production, creation and diffusion of works that are sometimes difficult to classify. » textual and spatio-temporal experience. To the troubles and syncopations of the contemporary cyborg, the collective responds with performative actions and writings, attempts to resist the psychic ghettos born of the (post)colonial condition. It manifests itself in the interzones of digital globalization where past, future and present clash. Playing in the post-discipline, its cosmic apparitions and polysemic fictions question the conditions of production, creation and diffusion of works that are sometimes difficult to classify. » future and present clash. Playing in the post-discipline, its cosmic apparitions and polysemic fictions question the conditions of production, creation and diffusion of works that are sometimes difficult to classify. » future and present clash. Playing in the post-discipline, its cosmic apparitions and polysemic fictions question the conditions of production, creation and diffusion of works that are sometimes difficult to classify.
