Cigarette

Amani Bodo, a self-taught Kinshasa born artist (in 1988), grew up in a world of artists beside his father Pierre Bodo, Moké and Chéri Samba who started the now famous Popular School of painting. Amani’s surrealist paintings explore a diverse range of themes from spirituality and sexuality, to the impact and influence of Western culture in Congolese society. He includes strong cosmic elements while also drawing his inspiration from the posters of " Bollywood " cinema with their advertising style.

The particular quality of Amani’s canvasses consists in this technique that just "happened to him" which is to treat them with " Mwangisa " a Lingala term which means to speckle them. Indeed, his paintings are speckled with droplets of colors completely unrelated to the subject matter, but which makes them even more spectacular.