In 2001, Kura Shomali interrupted his medical studies to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. There, he participated in the emergence of the EZA Possible collective, a group formed by students seeking to rethink artistic practice through everyday materials and urban experience.
Shomali works primarily on paper, combining charcoal, ballpoint pen, gouache, ink, felt-tip pen, and collage. This mixture of media gives his drawings a dense, layered texture. His early works, created in a sense of urgency, draw inspiration from the intensity of Kinshasa’s urban life as well as from magazines and images circulated informally across the city. His practice reflects this chaotic megacity, which he describes as something he “digests” before transforming into visual form.
In more recent work, he reappropriates iconic images by African photographers such as Samuel Fosso, Sammy Baloji, Malick Sidibé, and Jean Depara, reinterpreting them with irony and humor. He also constructs puppets from found materials, which he animates in videos to address themes such as corruption and ongoing conflicts affecting his country.
The EZA Possible collective was formally shaped in 2003 at the Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts by a group of students experimenting with discarded urban materials—scrap metal, objects, remnants, and “stories” gathered from the street. These materials were transformed into installations presented within the Academy, notably in the exhibition Kinshasa Wenze Wenze (“wenze” meaning “small market” in Lingala), a reference to the city’s dense visual and material culture. As the artists put it: “Team spirit is like scrap metal. When separated, it does nothing. But when you gather it, when you weld it, it becomes something.”
Following this exhibition, the collective consolidated around six artists: Pathy Tshindele, Méga Mingiedi, Eddy Ekete, Kura Shomali, Kennedy Dinanga, and Freddy Mutombo. EZA Possible positions itself as a space for experimentation where meaning is reconstructed from what appears lost or fragmented, promoting a free and contemporary form of art outside established norms. Through workshops, performances, residencies, and multidisciplinary exchanges (visual arts, music, video, architecture, and performance), the collective fosters artistic transmission and collaboration with students, young artists, and broader audiences.
