Mukenge/Schellhammer is an artist duo consisting of Christ Mukenge (*1988, Kinshasa, DRC) and Lydia Schellhammer (*1992, Konstanz, Germany). Living and working between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Germany, their practice is defined by a dynamic confrontation between Congolese and Western artistic traditions. Mukenge/Schellhammer explore new possibilities of painting in the post-digital age, extending their painterly approach to various media, including AR, VR, video and performance.

The collaboration of the two artists started in 2012 at a squat at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa known as “Noyaux,” later renamed “Carré Magique” (2000–2016). This space became a birthplace for various artistic countermovements directed against the academism of the Western-influenced art academy, which still carries the legacy and spirit of colonialism. Among these movements were urban performance practices and Partagisme, both of which continue to shape Mukenge/Schellhammer’s working methods. The formation of the duo emerged out of necessity. Moving between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Europe, they encountered persistent traces of the colonial past, economic inequality, and structural racism. This ongoing political and social pressure led to the fusion of their individual practices into the collaborative identity Mukenge/Schellhammer.

The visual language of Mukenge/Schellhammer is shaped by the transcultural encounter of the two artists, arising from a culture clash of different artistic traditions, and moving beyond categories of nationality, geographical origin, and gender. The duo has been defined by the artists as an entity independent of them, with its own formal specificities and aesthetics, shaped by the conditions of the present. By co-signing their works Mukenge/Schellhammer blur common classifications of authorship. Over years of collaboration, a third style emerged from in-between their respective methods, modes of expression, and visual habits: the imagery of the “Duo”. This Duo has become an independent being with its own formal specificities and aesthetics, a double-headed monster, shaped and deformed by the conditions of our present.

For Mukenge/Schellhammer, radical collaboration is a formal approach and this understanding gives rise to transdisciplinary collective projects such as multilingual publications, performances and videos. These collaborations artistically examine power dynamics in globalized contemporary art scenes and imagine new collective narratives, often in collaboration with writers, theorists, YouTube stars, Sapeurs (Congolese fashionistas), or other artists. Rather than trying to bridge differences and continents, the Duo’s relentless translation process feeds on the intercultural misunderstandings it highlights.

Through the everyday confrontation with the radically different effects of planetary forces on local reality, the duo has developed a highly subjective approach to contemporary issues such as globalisation, post-colonialism and interculturality. The Duo‘s work can be described as a micro-examination of individual and social realities, highlighting shared beliefs, thoughts, patterns, affects and everyday actions in which contemporary global contradictions, epistemologies and ontologies of our colonial, neo-colonial and post-colonial world manifest themselves.

Mukenge/Schellhammer‘s works have been shown internationally, among other venues at the pan-African video festival ‘BodaBoda Lounge’ (2020), National Museum of Kinshasa (2021), ifa Galerie Stuttgart (2022), Yango Biennale Kinshasa (2022), documenta fifteen (2022), Marta Herford (2024), Fellbach Triennial (2025), Musée d’Art Contemporain et Multimédia (2026) and at Galerie Barbara Thumm (2024). They were fellows at the Akademie Schloss Solitude In 2021/22 and at the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg in 2023.