Aimé Mpane

Aimé Mpane (born 1968, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a Congolese artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores colonialism, identity, place, memory, and the enduring relationship between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Belgium. Working across sculpture, installation, painting, mosaic-like wall hangings, and carved wood portraiture, Mpane examines postcolonial history and contemporary Congolese life through rough-hewn surfaces, layered construction, and the repeated use of wood as a materially and symbolically charged medium.  Mpane studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, where he trained in sculpture. His work often engages colonial history, race, public memory, and Congolese self-representation, using wood carving, painted surfaces, portraiture, and a traditional adze to consider how identity is formed across personal experience and larger historical structures. Many of his sculptures and installations address the aftermath of Belgian colonialism, while his portraits of people encountered in Kinshasa foreground the social and emotional texture of contemporary urban life.  His work has been exhibited at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Liverpool Biennial, the University of Wyoming Art Museum, Haines Gallery, and the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. He received the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Prize from The Phillips Collection, and his work is held in collections including The Phillips Collection and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Aimé Mpane lives and works between Brussels and Kinshasa.