Patrick Bongoy

Patrick Bongoy conveys complex narratives around migration, displacement, and exploitation in textural sculptures and wall works made with locally sourced, historically loaded materials like recycled rubber and hessian sacking. These materials allude to the violent colonial past of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Bongoy was born, and its lingering effects in the current day. The figures in his works are often trapped in dense, knotted webs of rubber and jute strips, a visual metaphor for the impact of state oppression and environmental degradation on the individual. The scrap-rubber sculpture Revenants III, sold at auction for $17,295 in 2018, depicts a pregnant woman with her hands bound and her head covered with heavy hessian sacking. A chain is wrapped around her waist and spiky protrusions cover her legs. The figure serves as a stark visual representation of the abuses Congolese people have suffered from corrupt regimes and foreign colonizers. Bongoy studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. He fled to South Africa in 2013 after he was involved in a politically provocative protest piece in the city. He is currently based in Cape Town.