PhD Candidate, Paris Diderot University – University of Paris
Aline Pighin is an art historian at Paris Diderot University. She won a research fellowship at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (Paris), where she took part in the discursive programs and exhibitions Made in Algeria (2014-2015) and Seismography of Struggles (2017). In 2018, she was a research assistant for the Pan-African Festivals Archive: Panafest Archive. She is currently completing a PhD on artistic training and the visual arts in Brazzaville, Kinshasa and Lubumbashi during the 1940s-70s. Aesthetic categories, narrative frictions and memories are core issues in her work—for which she collaborates with artists of various generations and media. Her research was supported by several grants, including IFAS-Research (French Institute of South Africa) and the Musée du quai Branly (Paris). Recent publications include «Wenze ya performance—Body Politics, Body Commons», an essay on performance art in Kinshasa for the exhibition catalogue Kinshasa Chroniques. Kinshasa Chronicles (ed. D. Malaquais, Éditions de l’Œil, 2019).
Chéri Samba likes to throw people off. The cartoon-like texts with direct messaging that frequently figure in Samba’s complex visual universes function to maintain authorial control. As the artist notes, they are “a way of not allowing freedom of interpretation to the person who looks at my painting.”
