Born in 1979, Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Died in 2015 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where he lived and worked.
Kiripi Katembo was first a painter and video artist before turning to photography—“these still images”—to express his relationship with his urban environment, his city, Kinshasa. Un regard is his first photographic series; it emerged by accident. Confronted with the hostility of inhabitants toward the camera, Katembo began using reflections in puddles of stagnant water on the city’s streets to create his images of the urban landscape. “And there, everything is placed into context: people, architecture, landscapes… The reflections in the water allowed me to bypass this problem while offering a surreal vision filled with details that correspond very closely to the reality of my city.”
Presenting the images upside down allows him to magnify everyday reality and go beyond it. “If you look at the image in its normal orientation, it is chaos. As soon as you turn it around, everything becomes more positive, more beautiful.” Produced between 2008 and 2013, the Un regard series was presented in Kinshasa and at the Lubumbashi Biennial. In 2011, he received the Blachère Foundation Prize at the Rencontres de Bamako before being exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Berlinale. The image Survivre was used for the poster of the Avignon Festival in 2013.