Michèle Magema

Michèle Magema
Michèle Magema

Michèle Magema, born in Kinshasa in 1977, is a Congolese-French video, performance, and photography artist. She was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1977. She emigrated to Paris, France in 1984, and currently resides in Nevers.^[1]

Biography

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 Cité Internationale des Arts, 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 through video 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 price 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]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michèle Magema.

References

Bibliography

• Africultures, Michèle Magema. http://www.africultures.com/php/?nav=personne&no=5261
• African digital art. The Video Artwork of Michèle Magema http://africandigitalart.com/2016/01/the-video-artwork-of-michele-magema/
• Signs journal (2005). Michèle Magema, Goodbye Rosa (2005). http://signsjournal.org/michele-magema-goodbye-rosa-2005-2005/
• Julie Crenn. Michele magema /// without echo, there is no meeting(2013). https://crennjulie.com/2013/01/11/michele-magema-without-echo-there-is-no-meeting-n-paradoxa-vol-31-2013/
• BrooklynMuseum (2010). Global Feminisms: Michele Magema. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3QHF_1GVv0
• Muller, Dena (Winter 2008). "Reviewed Works: Global Feminisms by Maura Reilly, Linda Nochlin;
• Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art by Maura Reilly, Linda Nochlin". Signs. 33 (2): 471–474. doi:10.1086/521560. JSTOR 10.1086/521560.
• Pensa, Iolanda (Ed.) 2017. Public Art in Africa. Art et transformations urbaines à Douala /// Art and Urban Transformations in Douala. Genève: Metis Presses. ISBN 978-2-94-0563-16-6