Michèle Magema Explained

Michèle Magema

Michèle Magema (born in Kinshasa in 1977) is a Congolese-French video, performance, and photography artist. She currently resides in Nevers.[1]

Biography

Magema as born in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1977. She emigrated to Paris, France in 1984. In 2002 Michèle Magema received her MA in fine arts from l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Cergy. After her graduation, she travels to South Korea for a post diploma residency, followed by an Ifritry residency in Morocco. In addition to being a resident artist at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, she has participated in the Africa Remix Exhibition. Her work has been exhibited in the Global Feminisms exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum,[2] the Hirshoron Museum, and Sculpture Garden.

With a background in plastic art Michèle Magema started her career as a painter. Then she followed experimenting with video, performance, photography and finally mixing video with drawing and text. Nowadays she is a multimedia interdisciplinary artist expressing herself mainly throughvideo performance, where she overlaid different medias such as photography with drawing, drawing with video, photo on lace. The art of Michèle Magema has been influenced by many disciplines and artists: in literature and poetry by Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Maya Angelou, Senghor, Edouard Glissant, Franz Fanon; in music by Billie Holiday; from the experimental cinema she has been inspired by Antonioni, Fellini, Rossilini, Wim Wenders, Ingmar Bergman, as well as from women artists like Pipilitorist, Cindy Sherman, Anna Mendieta, Eva Esse, Gina Pane, Renée Green.Michèle Magema artworks are at the intermediary mental zone between individual histories, history and art history. She tries to establish a permanent dialogue between her own stories and souvenirs with the collective memory of the spectators by approaching different themes such as feminism, sociology, politics, and mythology. The presence or the absence of the body is always at the center of her work.

Michèle Magema earned several art awards and professional achievements among which the first prize of the Dakar Biennale 2004 and the Yango Biennale IFAA prize 2014. Some of her works are stored within private contemporary art collections including Sindika Dokolo Collection in Luanda (Angola), Tervuren Contemporary Collection (Belgium) and the Artothèque Villeurbanne (France).

One of her most well-known works is Oyé Oyé, (2004) a two‐channel video installation, in which a woman (Magema) is shown marching in place on the left, while on the right historic footage of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko overseeing parades of Congolese cultural pride.[3]

Bibliography

Exhibitions

individual

Collective

Nordwind Festival

See also

Notes and References

  1. Michèle Magema, Goodbye Rosa – 2005 (2005). Signs. Summer 2013. 38. 4.
  2. Muller. Dena. Reviewed Works: Global Feminisms by Maura Reilly, Linda Nochlin; Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art by Maura Reilly, Linda Nochlin. Signs. Winter 2008. 33. 2. 471–474. 10.1086/521560. 10.1086/521560.
  3. Web site: Michèle Magema. doual'art. 30 May 2015.

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