Jean Katambayi Mukendi – RATIO

RATIO is the first solo exhibition of Congolese artist Jean Katambayi Mukendi (* 1974, DRC) in Germany. Constructed from locally collected, recycled materials, Mukendi's sculptures engage with contemporary technological developments ranging from agriculture and the military to robotics. His multi-part structures combine and transform machine functions, imaginatively exploring their ecological potential through recycling and reuse. The artist's drawings extend these investigations with observations and speculative reflections on human experience, including ecology, economics and language.

The works shown in the exhibition were created during a six-week residency at KW in the fall of 2025, working with materials collected from various locations in Berlin, including KW's warehouse and several of the city's recycling yards. Using newly created drawings and large-scale sculptures, RATIO explores global structural inequalities in the exploitation of resources and energy distribution. The exhibition questions the dualities that characterize our world, between the natural and the artificial, growth and destruction.

RATIO is a co-production of KW Institute for Contemporary Art and M HKA - Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium, where the second part of the exhibition will be presented in summer 2026. It will be accompanied by Mukendi's first monographic publication Circuits, co-published by Leuven University Press, KW and M HKA.

Curators: Emma Enderby & Linda Franken

Supported by KW Friends

In co-production with M HKA