Since the start of the project On-Trade-Off I have participated as an artist with my work, my research and my vision upon a subject that we work on collectively but each from out our own practice. This project enables a multitude of artistic voices to unfold a highly complex theme for us as artist but also the viewer. Through another approach of collectivity and artistic collaboration, OTO supports each artist in their individual practice, placing each work in a complementarity way towards each other, which forms in my opinion a single body of work.
Born in 1983 in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo), Georges Senga is a photographer.
He develops his photographic work around history and the stories revealed in “memory, identity and heritage”, shedding light on our actions and the present. Three of his projects thus explore memory, in search of the resonances that men, their facts and objects leave behind, and the resilience of memory in his country, Congo. Georges Senga’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions : Lubumbashi Biennale in 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2019, Asbl Dialogues in 2013, Bamako Biennale in 2011, 2015 and 2017, Addis Fotofest in 2014 and 2018, Kampala Biennale in 2014, Cape Town Art Fair in 2018, Sesci_video Brazil in 2019, Contour Biennale in 2019, Kigali PhotoFest in 2019, Fondation A in 2019, Wiels art centre in 2019, Galerie Imane Farès in 2019, Cargo in Context in 2019, FOMU in 2019, Jean Cocteau cultural centre in 2020, United Nations, United States in 2020.
From January 2014 to February 2020, Georges Senga carried out numerous residencies in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
He has won the Thamie Mnyele Award (Netherlands, 2019), DemoCrasee, Bamako Biennale (Mali 2017), CAP PRIZE – International Prize for Contemporary African Photography of the IAF Basel (Switzerland, 2017), SADC Research Residency Prohelveltia (South Africa, 2017), Leon the African RAM, Bamako Biennale (Mali, 2015), SADC Research Residency Prohelveltia (South Africa, 2014), Special mention, PHOTOAFRICA (Spain, 2009).
In 2021, he develops a project at Villa Medici entitled Comment un petit chasseur noir Païen devient prêtre Catholique (How a small black pagan hunter becomes a Catholic priest), a project born after meeting in 2017 the daughter of a Catholic priest, who by his function, shouldn’t have had children. During this gathering, the priest’s daughter reveals a bag containing several undated slides, belonging to the father who died in 1989. Georges Senga’s project retraces the journey of this Catholic priest named Bonaventure Salumu, from his village to his stay in Europe.
Georges Senga (based in Lubumbashi, DRC & Rotterdam, NL): Georges has had a solo exhibition at A-Foundation in Brussels (2019) and has been presented in group exhibitions such as Multiple Transmissions: Art in the Afropolitan Age, Wiels, Brussels (2019); Kampala Art Biennale and in Muzee to Ostand in 2014; at Rencontres Picha Biennale de Lubumbashi in 2013 & 2009. In 2015 he was a fellow at WIELS Contemporary art centre, Brussels, Belgium, as well as part of the project African Odyssey at the arts center BRASS in Brussels, BE and presented work at the Bamako Biennale, where he received the price Leo the African RAM, was in residence in Stuttgart Akademi solitude. He was a researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, NL (2018 - 2019). He received the Thami Mnyele Award in Amsterdam in 2019.