DAVID KATSHIUNGA

Esengo means joy in Lingala, my native language. I was born in 1987, well after the independence of the Congo proclaimed in 1960. This work therefore does not refer to a lived memory, but to a transmitted emotional heritage. Through these children in motion, I evoke the collective joy associated with the idea of independence a sincere, almost childlike joy, carried by the hope of a free future. Over time, this independence proved to be incomplete, particularly on an economic level. Esengo expresses the gap between inherited hope and observed reality, but also the choice to preserve joy, not as an illusion, but as the starting point of a path toward a freedom that is still being built.