Name/Title
Portrait of Malaika IEntry/Object ID
2026.01.01Description
Moridja Kitenge Banza (b. 1980) is a Montreal-based artist from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He holds degrees from l’Académie des beaux-arts de Kinshasa, l’École supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole, and the Humanities and Social Sciences faculty of l’Université de La Rochelle.
Banza’s work concentrates on the tension between his Congolese heritage and the legacy of colonialism, subverting narratives by blending traditional symbolism with western imagery. Using a wide range of mediums, Banza aims to provoke dialogue to discuss both personal and collective identity and memory.
In Portrait of Malaika, Moridja Kitenge Banza introduces Malaika the First, a fictional princess who embodies ancestral memory, resilience, and the imaginative reconstruction of histories disrupted by colonization. Through this invented figure, the artist questions how stories about Africa and its diasporas have been told and whose voices have been left out.
Malaika’s image is closely tied to Banza’s use of botanical forms. These plant elements are not decorative; they root the figure in the land and evoke ecological memory. They recall the natural resources extracted during colonial expansion and the intimate relationship between people, territory, and environment. By merging human and vegetal forms, Banza proposes an alternative to Western portrait traditions that shifts the focus from individual likeness to interconnectedness, community, and the continuity of life.
Through this painted portrait, Banza invites viewers to reflect on how identity is shaped by both history and the natural world. Malaika becomes a symbol of reclamation, an imagined ancestor who restores what was fragmented and offers new ways of seeing the past.Made/Created
Artist
Banza, Kitenge MoridjaDate made
2024