Left image: Person wearing anchor-patterned pajamas standing on a digital scale displaying "50.6". Right image: Person wearing rolled-up jeans standing on a digital scale displaying "54.85". Both scales are on a grey floor.

Godelive Kasangati Kabena Residency

Godelive Kasangati Kabena was in residence at Studio Voltaire from May to July 2025.

Kabena’s work explores how different bodies interact, challenging traditional human-centered perspectives. Her practice examines reproduction and the assumption of equality, creating a space to rethink these ideas.

For the past four years, she has focused on archives and the body, often using performance art to question the political status of bodies and explore emancipation beyond the human form.

During her residency, Kabena deepened her research into reproduction and distribution, particularly examining archival images as contested spaces. This opportunity provided time and resources to experiment with new approaches.

A key focus of her current project, Mbwa, explores how images of the Basenji dog, native to the Democratic Republic of Congo, shift through reproduction and circulation. This challenges the idea of an “authentic” original, instead suggesting that meaning is constantly reinvented.

To expand on these ideas, Kabena experimented with glassblowing, a process that embodies both repetition and uniqueness. By working with glass, she hoped to translate archival concepts into physical forms, opening a dialogue between history, materiality, and transformation.

Kabena is particularly interested in how the environments in which we work shape our perspectives. Archives, as social apparatuses, carry an antiquated ambiguity that reveals their influence in the social realm – whether familial, bureaucratic, or otherwise. Through this residency, she aimed to explore glassblowing as a space where reproduction can be reimagined and challenged, offering new possibilities for experimentation and discourse.

This residency was generously supported by The Defise Foundation.

Godelive Kasangati Kabena (b. 1996) is an artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She currently lives and works between Kinshasa and Kumasi, where she continues her studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Kabena’s work is rooted in speculative research, exploring the engagement of different bodies – bodies that open an emancipatory, speculative field of post-humanist analysis while contributing to a discursive arena on reproduction and notions of axiomatic equality.
Since 2019, Kabena has participated in solo and group exhibitions, including How much do you weigh? FCA Ghana, 2024; Silent Invasions: The Art of Material Hacking, an exhibition presented by Ghanaian blaxTARLINES and the art communities of Uganda at Amasaka Gallery, Masaka, 2023; Worldmaking, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, 2023, curated by Gideon Appah and Ylinka Barrotto; JAOU PHOTO, the 6th edition of Jaou Tunis, commissioned by Karim Sultan, and organised by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation and the French Institute of Tunisia, 2022; Kinshasa–(N)Tonga: between future and dust, Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts, 2022; Materials and Things, 2021, curated by Exit Frame, as part of the public state’s Un Quartier Généreux in Roubaixby public state, on the occasion of the Africa 2020 season; and Bamako Encounters, African Biennale of Photography, Bamako, Mali, 2019.
Between 2019–2022 Kabena was a participant in the PICHA workshops, as part of the Lubumbashi Biennale. In 2023 the artist was represented by The Efie Gallery at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London.
Alain and Vanessa Defise are dedicated to supporting the Congo's cultural and artistic landscape both within Africa and internationally. Through the Defise Foundation, they are committed to extending and encouraging the dissemination and promotion of modern and contemporary art from Africa and its diasporas by fostering a vibrant community through collaborations.
@thedefisefoundation
1. Image courtesy of Edward Prah
2. Kasangati Godelive Kabena, Mbwa, 2024. Installation view as part of How much do you weigh? Image courtesy Isaac Gyamfi
3. Kasangati Godelive Kabena, Mbwa: Now Mine, 2024. Cast recycled aluminium, wearable object. Image courtesy of the artist