The Color of Perception

In his work Dark Filament, Jean uses color as a metaphor for how we might extend our minds and change our perception. The work is made up of a diagramatic drawing filled with a collage of electronic waste. 

 ''My drawings tend to be in black and white. If I could find a color that represented perception, I would paint it onto my work. Colors are the markers of the visible world, they are the limits of our perceptions. My collage is made up of darkened filaments, of powerlessness. If we are to develop as a nation, we need to expand our perceptions. We need a new color.''

Dark Filament uses the image of a lightbulb filled with burnt out waste as a way in which to shine light on the daily struggles of people in the DRC despite the country's rich natural resources. 


''I want to show how our people in DRC still struggle, even though our land is rich in minerals. We mine copper, cobalt and now lithium to power batteries. 

Other people’s batteries.''

'I grew up in a mining town and the contrast between life here and the life we enable elsewhere in the world has always struck me as strange.''

''My collage is made up of darkened filaments, of powerlessness. If we are to develop as a nation, we need to expand our perceptions. We need a new color.''

Electricity by Jean Katambayi Mukendi



We have chosen to live with water, with electricity, with school, with classical political regimes, with town planning... but we do not know how to maintain them.


We are escaping the challenge of globalization, which allows the exchange of knowledge...


While the human resource exists, the technology exists, the earth and the sun exist... What is this imaginary ingredient that is lacking to align consciousness and mentality?How to get out of this dichotomy, which puts well-being in conflict with well-doing. It is not clear when