Jean Katambayi Mukendi

Spiritualizing

57

Jean Katambayi Mukendi Sanou Oumar Johanna Unzueta

58 Jean Katambayi Mukendi (b. 1974, LubuMbashi, DeMocratic repubLic of the conGo) began his Afrolampe series of light bulb drawings in 2016. Each one is a wildly inventive proposition resulting from the combination of electrical components, geometric shapes, and verified mathematical formulas. Originally trained as an electrical engineer, Mukendi’s background in mathematics preceded his artistic practice, and his schematic diagrams of abstracted light bulbs are carefully proportioned to approximate the golden ratio because, like his contemporaries Sanou Oumar and Johanna Unzueta, Mukendi believes in the power of mathematics and symmetrical geometries to achieve aesthetic and spiritual harmony.

Employing rulers and compasses to draw over uniform grids that he carefully marks beforehand, Mukendi’s precisely rendered light bulbs are choreographed compositions of symmetrical and parallel black ballpoint pen lines. The drawings appear as dark outlines covered with paint when seen from afar, but “their solid shapes are built up one laborious black ballpoint line at a time,” critic Will Heinrich noted, exhibiting “a sticky glimmering striation” that is visible only upon close inspection.1 In spite of the exacting technical structure of Mukendi’s light bulbs, they “obliquely suggest the machinations of global capital, which produce uneven development and neocolonial dependence on local and hemispheric scales.”2 In addition to being the center of activity for many of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s biggest mining companies, Lubumbashi supplies almost half of the world’s cobalt. But the country’s citizens are not only deprived of access to the goods manufactured from their rapidly-depleting mineral resources, they also suffer from constant blackouts. Mukendi’s light bulb drawings are also meant to incite and educate the people in his hometown of Lubumbashi to fix this dysfunctional system of electrical access and distribution. In this way, his work illustrates the age-old Marxist idea that the use of imagination is the first step in overcoming concrete political and economic problems. As Mukendi has said, “My goal is to show that all one requires to achieve the revolution is paper and pen.”3

1 Will Heinrich, “4 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now,” The New York Times,

December 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/arts/design/galleryshows-right-now.html. 2 Chloe Wyma, “Jean Katambayi Mukendi,” Artforum, March 2021, https://www. artforum.com/print/reviews/202102/jean-katambayi-mukendi-85016. 3 Jean Katambayi Mukendi, in conversation with the author, September 22, 2021.

PL. 33 Ombilical, 2021