Born 1948, Kimbembele Ihunga, Democratic Republic of Congo
Died 2015, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
Bodys Isek Kingelez taught in a secondary school until 1977. After more than a year of isolation and research, he created an unusual model in 1979 that caught the attention of the director of the Kinshasa Museum, where he became a restorer.
Beginning in 1985, he devoted himself entirely to what he called “Architectural Modelism.” At that time, Kinshasa was a vast, chaotic, and deteriorating metropolis. Witnessing the damage caused by policies indifferent to the public good, Kingelez developed an architectural body of work that embodied all the essential conditions for the growth of his capital and his country: housing, education, justice, health, and security. His work—both poetic and political—raises profound questions about the human condition.
After creating more than one hundred models from found materials such as paper, cardboard, and plastic, in which the Present, the Future, and the hopes of an African renaissance seem to coexist, he began in 1992 to imagine entire cities. These “cities” are assemblages of unusual, brightly colored buildings—grand, complex structures that integrate all the functions of the ideal cities the artist dreamed of seeing constructed.
His first city, Kimbembele Ihunga, was named after his native village. Speaking about works such as Ville Fantôme (1995), Kinshasa: Project for the Third Millennium (1997), and The City of the Future (2000), Kingelez declared:
“I wanted my art to enable the new generation to create a new world, because the pleasures of our earthly world depend on the people who live in it. I created these cities so that peace, justice, and freedom could endure universally. They would function as small secular states with their own political structures, without the need for police or military.”
His career reached a major milestone with Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams, a retrospective held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2018–2019.