Godelive Kasangati KABENA, The Stellenbosch Triennale Specials
Godelive Kasangati KABENA (b. 1996) is a multidisciplinary artist who boldly expresses herself through photography, installations, and self-portraiture. The Congolese native regularly challenges perceptions and invites new perspectives, exploring notions of identity, objects and collectivity. As part of our special coverage of the 2025 Stellenbosch Triennale, she opens the doors of her creative lab, presenting Chumba—a work that urges the public to focus on the act of breathing.
Kasangati Godelive Kabena
In this interview, Godelive Kasangati KABENA takes us through her artistic journey and reflections. The Congolese artist embodies a rare, unapologetic sense of self that resonates throughout her work.
MAYÌ-ARTS : How would you describe the evolution of your artistic technique since incorporating photography ?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : It is not in terms of technique that my work is driven; maybe I can discuss how photography plays a role.
I was introduced to photography as an important tool in 2018, when I started working on a series of self-portraits that refined my relationship with myself and my family dynamics throughout my childhood. This work led me to think about my body and the camera, which was always in front of me, as a body itself. I also considered how the camera operates between self-referential imposition and its role as an object of order, leading me to rethink how the positioning of bodies can always be an argument.
Chumba 2025, Kasangati Godelive KABENA, ©JumpinTheGun, Stellenbosh Triennale 2025
MAYÌ-ARTS : There’s an element of balance between the individual and the collective in your work, The Made 5 Series is a good illustration, can you tell us more about this body of work?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : Made 5, as part of a serial work that includes Made 1 to Made 11, has been momentous in what became Mbwa, which I will discuss below. This is due to its discursive stance, which is grounded in a speculative response to objects—or what I call bodies—that are not limited to the human, thought, or physical entities. Therefore, Made cannot deny the emancipatory anchor on which it is seated, as the speculative indexing argument forces the question of axiomatic equality—an equality that cannot be defined by the projection of our thoughts or the relationships we form with entities or bodies, whether in terms of art production or more generally.
Furthermore, collectiveness, understood not as agreement, creates the conditions for a multitude of events that emerge from the very impossibility of defining what collectivity truly means—due to the self-referential nature of bodies.
Made 5 (2022), Kasangati Godelive KABENA, Courtesy of the artist
MAYÌ-ARTS : Photography feels like a pretext to explore deeper subjects while your work almost feels like contemplating the results of a scientific research, how do you start your creative process?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : Photography perhaps becomes a prompt that, at a certain point, unfolds a set of relations to the image—relations in which photography itself seems to be embedded. The archival pictures of the Basenji dog from the DRC, which I discovered in 2020, highlight for me the very discussion of the image itself. These images reveal an intricate imagery complex —one that, in its volatility, is constantly in the process of becoming something else.
MAYÌ-ARTS : In what ways does society influence your research on what the future might hold?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : This question compels me to revisit a classic phrase that I believe still holds relevance: "Everyday life and art are not separate." I cannot define clear boundaries around the influences that are inherently embedded in life.
MAYÌ-ARTS : The Mbwa series (Dog) explores the notion of use of reproduction of images, tell us more about it?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : Serial reproduction positions itself at a point in time where the future is known yet challenged by reproduction itself—whether in terms of image, material, knowledge, form, and more. This is the contingency of reproduction as a process of production. For me, the reproduction of a picture fits within this process due to its egalitarian orientation, emerging from the proliferation of images that have challenged museums and institutional frameworks. The position of the object shifts from being singular and authentic to becoming ubiquitous. In this way, reproduction momentarily disrupts the center. Karî’kạchä Seid’ou expresses this well when he states, "boundaries nowhere, but centers everywhere." This proposed egalitarianism extends to what a picture could become. However, another dimension emerges—one where non-serial reproduction operates within a spectral field. It is not merely spectral but also a challenge to systemic hegemonic structures and the predetermined future they impose.
In this context, a picture—conventional and seemingly complete—depends on the viewer to fulfill it. But how does it transform into an image, one that is volatile and in flux? I do not need pictures as fixed containers; I need parts.
These parts become prompts once again, drawn from my interest in the bodies of dogs—their weight, their livelihood, and more. This, for example, offers a space where the picture breaks free from being a whole and instead becomes a set of parts. Here, speculative arguments surrounding archival material and the presence of dogs in these archives become a means of analyzing the dynamics of the picture and its reproduction.
“My work could be grounded in a discursive stance that engages with speculative responses to objects—or what I call bodies—which are not limited to the human, nor to thought or physical entities alone.”
MAYÌ-ARTS : What role does the notion of the body play in your artistic exploration, particularly in relation to themes of reproduction, equality, and post-humanity?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : My work could be grounded in a discursive stance that engages with speculative responses to objects—or what I call bodies—which are not limited to the human, nor to thought or physical entities alone. Thus, Made and Mbwa cannot deny the emancipatory foundation on which they rest, as they are shaped by a speculative indexing argument on axiomatic equality—an equality that cannot be defined solely by the projections of our thought or the relationships we form with these bodies, whether in artistic production or beyond.
If equality does not start from inequality, then there is the question of a self-referential position where these bodies do not need any projection to justify their relation to themselves. In this sense, reproduction proposes this, as mentioned above, because reproduction itself is anti-hegemonic. As posthumanity comes as an umbrella term, it could fit within the speculative argument that denies the rational projection on bodies.
MAYÌ-ARTS : What are your future aspirations in terms of artistic development and new mediums you would like to explore?
Godelive Kasangati KABENA : It is important for me to take a glance at the work I am producing or have produced—not in terms of looking at the future as a place of opportunity, but as a space where anything can be challenged.
The Stellenbosch Triennale will run until the 30 April 2025 with three exhibitions. Find out more about Godelive Kasangati KABENA on Godelivekasangati.onfotomat.com
