Lubumbashi, where I live and work in DRC, was founded in 1910 by the Belgians as Elisabethville and renamed Lubumbashi in 1965 as part of President Mobutu's philosophy of returning to authenticity. Created on an African territory with the influence of Western cultural values, Lubumbashi is a mix of identity, culture and aesthetics.

In my work, I often question these cultural mixes, these new practices, identities and forms of expression that were born in Lubumbashi through occupations; its traces and consequences. 

I decided to get into Art in 2016. Originally I am a quiet, introverted and even shy person. Art entered my life as a new language, a new form of expression beyond the ordinary. In our countries where giving your opinion freely can cause harm, art can help to manipulate tools, objects, words.

My work is mainly interested in the city of Lubumbashi. Fascinated by this city, I delve into its realities, its history, its pre-colonial and post-colonial period, its relationship with other cities in the world and even its relationship with me to make my work.  As a photographer and graphic designer, I always approach my projects with extensive research and exchanges with specialists before moving on to creation. Art has taught me to reappropriate space, collective history and to paint my works with a touch of individuality and a very personal look. 

What drives me as an artist is the possibility to communicate in a subjective and universal way at the same time. I continually feel the need to participate in and contribute to the world's artistic creation. To give my point of view, to draw from my own experience and that of others, to imagine, think, invent or manipulate the elements of the past and the present to create new works.

I was born in the hospital of Gécamines, La Générale des Carrières et Mines in Likasi, D.R. Congo, where my father worked for 19 years as a miner. I grew up between copper, cobalt and uranium. When I came to Europe for the first time for a residency in Wiels in Brussels, I was very surprised to learn about the mining history of Belgium, which was completely unknown to me.

I visited several former mining sites, both in Wallonia and in Flanders, and what I discovered there inspired me so much that I wanted to start a long research project on the mining history of the Euregio (Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany) in a cross-referenced way with that of my country.  Many aspects are similar to the mining history of the greater Katanga - D.R. Congo: the same approaches in the creation of mining companies, the same politics of paternalism, the same notion of classes (elite, working class) and sometimes the same financial institutions.

Alain Nsenga is a Congolese artist born in 1986. He lives in Lubumbashi where he works as a graphic designer and photographer. He graduated in Design & Multimedia at the Ecole Supérieure d'Informatique Salama (ESIS) where he currently teaches. His photos are a permanent quest for originality and authenticity. His encounter with the Picha association and his activities as a graphic designer led him to participate in several workshops and to work with the team of the Lubumbashi Biennale since 2013.

In 2019, he is artist in residence at Wiels in Brussels and participates in the exhibition Multiples transmissions: Art in the Afripolitan Age. In the same year, he participated in the Lubumbashi Biennale and presented the series Métamorphose, which deals with questions of identity, self-affirmation and the impact of the gaze of the other. A series that also questions a postcolonial conception of beauty.