(Alikuwa amekufa kwa uchawi.)(Pietà)

Congolese-Australian artist Pierre Mukeba explores themes of violence, atrocity, and autobiography in this evocative series of mixed-media compositions. Synthesizing his personal experiences with media images, contemporary myths, and current events, Mukeba’s work involves his childhood memories of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo alongside references to the experience in the refugee camps in Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the face of violence and brutality, his reflection of the Black body is endowed with strength and resistance.

(Alikuwa amekufa kwa uchawi.), which translates from Swahili as “he was dead by magic,” is part of a series of large-scale tableaus with different textile patches overlapping irregularly, framing appliquéd cut-outs of canvases. (Alikuwa amekufa kwa uchawi.) (Pietà) is a diptych that employs the kikwembe, a type of wraparound cloth worn by women in Congo, and the calico textile, an unbleached plain-woven cotton. In one of the two pieces, a Black woman in white underwear and blue high heels is kneeling down in a squat. She looks directly in front of her intensely, her expression a combination of combativeness and a wide grin, her hands gesture in a manner reminiscent of casting a spell, her fingers twisted, her nails long and colored. In the other piece, three men gather around supporting a dead body covered in flowers and wearing military boots. The scene of a wake resonates with the title “Pietà,” the men holding the body in a horizontal position, in a manner reminiscent of the sorrow of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Jesus in her arm after the deposition from the cross.

(Text written by TBA21 and used as a wall label for the exhibition "Remedios", C3A, Cordoba, 2023)