Born in 1992 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic oof Congo.
Hilary Balu’s desire to become an artist was born in childhood. He copied images from cinema, trailers, and posters, as well as his father’s drawings, who spent his free time reproducing household objects. With the help of his aunts and uncles, he received artistic training from his father. He later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. As a young graduate, Hilary Balu’s academic convictions were overturned during a conversation at a vernissage of the artist Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo in Kinshasa. He emancipated himself from Western codes and techniques learned at school and sought an aesthetic with which he could identify as Congolese, but also as African.
Hilary Balu’s paintings reveal an African society transformed by globalization and consumerism. The “brutal mutation” that the Democratic Republic of Congo has undergone in its cultural, political, economic, and spiritual identity is represented through a symbolism of objects. The artist elevates the object within collective memory. Thus, the leitmotif of the Nkisi Mangaaka, an ancestral divinatory sculpture, returns in his work in contrast to the new symbols of capitalism. Between tourist bags and flip-flops, traditional statuettes also recall the imbalances of the DRC in its international relations. The experience of Black skin is evoked through the technique of scratching into acrylic, a method the artist has used since his student years.
In the series Voyage vers Mars, Hilary Balu stages contemporary migration in a metaphorical way. A true journey toward another continent imagined as another planet, cosmonauts—allegories of migrants—leave a land rendered uninhabitable by war or economic hardship. Ironically, the luggage of these forced travelers consists of tourist bags displaying images of world capitals.
In his new series, In the Floods of Illusions, the artist deepens the theme of displacement by focusing on water. The sea, the ocean, and the ports become promises made to the traveler that may turn out to be illusions: “The Western world is a utopia transmitted to Africa through screens. The attraction is so strong that it pushes some people to cross the Mediterranean Sea or the Libyan desert to live it rather than transform their reality. But this utopia often turns out to be a deadly dystopia. That is what Afrodystopia is: a still dream that ends in a real nightmare.” Quoting Joseph Tronda, the artist questions the links between the history of Black displacement and the destructive force that pushes certain African youth to venture into the deadly waves of seas and oceans, driven by the conviction that a better life exists elsewhere. Blending African history and contemporary realities, Hilary Balu composes paintings that elegantly combine realism and poetry.