Photo of the performance Sentinelle by Sarah Ndele in 2023. Sarah Ndele
Sarah Ndele is a visual artist and cultural operator who lives and works in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa in 2013.
Sarah Ndele is the type of artist who expresses herself through different mediums, such as installation, performance, painting or writing. Her work questions the memory, the roots and the present of initiation among the Bakongo people in the west of the DRC. The anti-colonial revolutionary and prophetess Kimpa Vita (1684-1706) is her main source of inspiration. This is how she conducts research into Kongo art.
Sarah Ndele has participated in several festivals, such as KinAct in Kinshasa, the Emomé Art Festival in Togo and the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda. She curated and participated in artistic and cultural projects in Benin, Cameroon, Congo and Brazil. Next to that, she wrote the article Congo: fertile trees near the source, organises night exhibitions in Kinshasa and is coordinator at the Farata collective. Ndele also organises and coordinates the 2024 performance art festival Kin-Etelemi-Telemi and the women’s festival Kasala in the Soul of Women, with the collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle in Kinshasa.
Sarah Ndele’s performance for Maintaining the Root (2024) at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: © Marlise Steeman / Framer Framed