© Villa Medicis Georges Senga
Georges Senga (1983, Lubumbashi, DRC) is a photographer based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He develops his photographic work around history and the narratives revealed by ‘memory, identity and heritage’, illuminating our actions and the present. His projects explore memory, looking for the resonances that people, their facts and their objects leave behind, and the resilience of memory in his country, DR Congo.
His publication How A Little Pagan Hunter Becomes A Catholic Priest published by Kunstverein Publishing Milano, investigates the figure of Bonaventure Salumu, so-called ‘pagan hunter’, who between the 1940s and 60s received a Christian education from missionaries in Congo, following which he was ordained to priesthood as a Jesuit, moved to Europe, eventually returning to his native village where he became a husband and father.
Georges Senga is part of the artistic dynamic of the city of Lubumbashi at Atelier Picha in DR Congo, the artists collective On Trade Off and at the Photo Market and Phototools workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. His work has been exhibited internationally in institutions; in 2021 he developed a project at the Villa Medici. In 2023 his work has been presented at Framer Framed, Amsterdam as part of the exhibition Charging Myth by the artist collective On Trade Off.
On Trade Off is a transnational artist collective and long-term research project investigating the mining culture of Manono, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The artist-led research of On Trade Off was sparked by the large-scale mining of lithium in Manono, DRC. A site of historical extractivism, Manono has also become swept up in the race for green energy as lithium has become a valuable material for electrical technology. The members of On Trade Off created a collaborative platform for the exchange of trans-disciplinary knowledge in order to investigate how technological innovation has become dependent on natural resources, following chains of value across the globe.
Exhibitions
