The lecture-performance presented on 15 August 2025 at Kunstmuseum Ravensburg is part of the series ‘Stretching the Notion of Paintings‘. This specific performance refers to the current exhibition ‘Under Pressure – Expressionist Prints’ and ‘John Akomfrah – The Unfinished Conversation.’

After declaring the duo as independent entity in 2024, Mukenge/Schellhammer is currently researching the duo’s ancestors, references, and initiation. The duo’s transnational aesthetic is related to a series of historical culture clashes in the history of painting. These include the encounter between art from former german colonies and the german Expressionists. In ethnographic museums, in human zoos, in the circus, and on trips to the colonies, artists such as Kirchner, Nolde and Gauguin encountered artists and artworks, particularly from the South Pacific and Africa. In doing so, they found themselves caught between inspiration and appropriation. Anonymous art from the colonies became a projection screen for escapist dreams, a supposedly counter-image to bourgeois German society. At the same time, stylistic elements were adopted without questioning colonial power relations and racist contexts.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, around the same time, at the beginning of the 20th century, the congolese hut painters Albert and Antoinette Lubaki met the colonial administrator Georges Thiry. In order to be able to bring Lubakis‘ ephemeral works to Europe, Thiry gave the artists paper to work with. The export of modern Congolese painting to Europe began. In relation to the expressionist prints presented at the Ravensburg Art Museum, the duo Mukenge/Schellhammer explores the culture clashes of their ancestors and their influence on the formal aspects of the duo’s painting style.

Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Photo: Wynrich Zlomke