NEW YORK, NY.- Presented in French and English, this is the first monograph dedicated to Moridja Kitenge Banza (b. 1980), a Canadian visual artist of Congolese origin.

Known for dynamic works shaped by the places where he has lived and worked, Kitenge Banza’s art is a subversive blend of reality and fiction that questions and challenges discourses of power while opening new spaces for marginalized histories.

Chronicling a multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, photography, video, drawing, and installation, this volume presents a comprehensive outline of Kitenge Banza’s artistic practice. Texts by curators, historians, and theorists focus on the geopolitics, culture, religion, and iconography of the artist’s lived context, accompanied by more than 100 artworks.

Whether confronting the impacts of resource extraction in his native Democratic Republic of Congo or in his adopted home of Québec, or recasting histories shaped by religion, violence, and colonialism, Kitenge Banza’s work explores how his personal narrative is intertwined with the past. His re-appropriation of the codes, customs, and conventions associated with religious, cultural, political, social, and economic systems serve to underscore the contradictions that construct his identities.

Moridja Kitenge Banza is a Canadian artist of Congolese ancestry, born in Kinshasa in 1980 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is a graduate of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa, the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes Métropole, and the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at the Université de La Rochelle. In 2010, he won first prize at the DAK’ART Biennial of Contemporary African Art for his video Hymne à nous and his installation De 1848 à nos jours. He received a Sobey Award in 2020.

His work has been shown at the Musée Dauphinois (Grenoble, France); the Museum of Contemporary Art (Roskilde, Denmark); the Arndt Gallery and Ngbk (Berlin, Germany); the Casablanca International Biennale and the Fondation Attijariwafa bank (Casablanca, Morocco); the Fondation Blachère (Apt, France); the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Projet Casa, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, Canada); and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada). The Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Museum, the Musée d’art de Joliette, and the Phi Foundation have presented his solo exhibitions. Works by the artist can be found in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Foreign Affairs Canada, and the City of Laval, as well as in numerous corporate collections, including BMO, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Canadian Shield Capital, Hydro-Québec, Mouvement Desjardins, RBC, and TD Bank Corporate Art Collection.

Diane Gistal is an independent curator of Haitian-French origin based in Canada. Through her practice, she interrogates the dynamics of the Black Atlantic and the processes of constructing cultural narratives, exploring the intersections between the visual arts, literature, and the humanities. Her work unfolds through exhibitions, research programs, and curatorial initiatives that reactivate the memory, archive, and practices of artistic resistance of African and Afrodescendant diasporas. She is the founder and director of Nigra Iuventa, an organization dedicated to the recognition and promotion of African, Caribbean, and diasporic visual arts. Nigra Iuventa is a laboratory for curatorial reflection and experimentation, rooted in a decolonial and critical approach to cultural institutions. The organization works to support the creation, circulation, and preservation of works by Black artists by promoting transnational dialogues between Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America.

Julie Alary Lavallée is curator of collections at the Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ). Passionate about both traditional and contemporary art, she is interested in the curation of performance art in museums, cross-cultural issues, and curatorial practices, all of which she applies to her role as the curator of a collection of over 8,300 works from the past and present. Her curatorial projects at the MAJ include Exilé dans l’Eden by artist Moridja Kitenge Banza (2024), L’héritage des restes (2024), and Salvifique (2021). For the past three years, she has been working on the co-curatorial project Actions collectives: perspectives féministes sur la collection, a virtual exhibition that will be displayed in the MAJ’s permanent collection. Her previous exhibitions, drawing on North-South relations and issues related to globalization and colonization, have been presented at l’Écart (2018), as part of the Biennale nationale de sculpture de Trois-Rivières (2020), and at the Maison des arts de Laval (Triennale banlieue, 2018), among others. She is involved in the CIÉCO research and discussion group on new uses for art collections and art museums.

Pedro Monaville is a historian of modern Africa. His research focuses on colonial and postcolonial Congo, revolutionary movements, political subjectivities, knowledge production, popular culture, memory work, and the connections between visual arts and history. His first book, Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo, was published by Duke University Press in 2022. The book focuses on student activism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1960s and 1970s. Through their activism and intellectual work, students introduced and mediated new ideas about culture, politics, and the world. In this book, Monaville shows how students reimagined the Congo as a decolonized polity by connecting their country to global discussions about revolution, authenticity, and equality.

Cheryl Sim is the Director and Chief Curator at PHI in Montreal as well as an artist and scholar. She began her career in 1992 at Studio D, the feminist studio of the National Film Board of Canada, where she organized a film institute for women of colour and Indigenous women filmmakers, which led her to discover video art and artist-run culture. As an artist, her work in video and installations, which has been presented in North America and Europe, has consistently dealt with questions of identity formation, women’s labour, and relations of power. Her work as both a director and curator is greatly informed by an artist-run ethos and learning from the margins, which emphasize a holistic approach and being of service. Prior to joining the PHI Foundation in 2007, she was the Director of Activities and Communications at OBORO, one of Canada’s foremost artist-run centres, overseeing exhibitions, public events, residencies, and publications. At PHI, she has curated major exhibitions, most notably, Yoko Ono: Growing Freedom, Stan Douglas: Revealing Narratives, Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way and the group show Relations: Diaspora and Painting, which all met with critical praise and touring engagements. Cheryl has contributed essays to numerous artist publications, and her doctoral dissertation became the book Wearing the Cheongsam: Dress and Culture in a Chinese Diaspora, which was published by Bloomsbury Academic UK in 2019. She has guest lectured at universities across Canada and has presented numerous panels and artist conversations at arts institutions, festivals, and fairs, including Papier Art Fair, MUTEK, Ars Electronica, Art Toronto, and World Art Foundations. She has served on several peer-review juries for the Canada Council for the Arts as well as the jury for the prestigious Sobey Art Award (2022), the Claudine and Stephen Fellowship in Contemporary Art (2018), and the Musée nationale des beaux-arts du Québec Contemporary Art Prize (2024). An active volunteer, she is currently President of the Board of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization (CAMDO) and serves on the Board of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC).


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