Sisqo Ndombe

SISQO NDOMBE AKISIEFUL is a Congolese painter born in 1985 in Kikwit, the main city of the Kwilu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Passionate about drawing since childhood. After his primary and secondary studies, his taste for drawing led him to integrate the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa to train in the know-how of arts in order to perfect his look and his practice where, after several years of learning, Ndombe obtained a degree in Plastic Arts.

«I paint everything that affects humans» he says.

Ndombe features characters that captivate and hold the admirer’s gaze. He places this gaze at the heart of his artistic creation and his existential and social questioning. Questioning and interpellating eyes that solicit and invite the viewer’s gaze at the same time. Then a dialectic and a trade is established, a game of back and forth on what the eyes of the artist observe, perceive and seize in his societal environment.

Through the glances, Ndombe questions, reflects and makes think in a seductive impulse. The gaze in these works is that of the creator, the artist, and at the same time that of the viewer who crosses the gaze of the painted character. This share of otherness puts in scene a crossing of three glances which express three understandings: of the artist, the viewer and the character in relation to the realities of Congolese society. A society undermined by multiple problems and conflicts, with unfortunate consequences, sometimes negative for a population «victim».

Tired of seeing all the sufferings and injustices that the people undergo independently of their will. «It’s time to take itself in hand and not let itself be distracted or fooled by its false rescuers who are accomplices of those who dominate it». He says.
Through the eyes of his characters, his work is a call to wake up, to be vigilant and invites a deep reflection on the situation that his country is going through.
He asserts his own style by pushing the limits of painting with a touch as seductive as unpredictable that he paints with his fingers to obtain beautiful shades that then allow him to add the effects of cracks on the faces of his characters. These cracks are a symbolic exaltation of all the sufferings that the population undergoes independently in its «inner self» which, in complicity with the look, escape in the expression of the eyes.

The ancestral hairstyles which intervene in his creation are one of the most popular means of expression of the history of Africa.
If they are considered today as superficial, without interest and having a purely aesthetic aim, the African braids constituted, a few years ago, a fundamental element in the culture of the continent. They were anchored in traditional African values and served as a means of expression.

The gaze in Ndombe’s work is both symbolic and revealing of the looked at towards the beholder, of the observed towards the beholder.