By Alessia D’Introno

The 9th edition of the Lubumbashi Biennale, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will be held from October 15 to November 15, under the artistic direction of Sorana Munsya.

The Lubumbashi Biennale was established in 2008 as one of the initiatives of Picha, an art collective founded in Lubumbashi, which is now an art and research center. Picha aims to support the local art scene and create opportunities for encounter and exchange between Congolese and international artists. Figures who accompanied its birth include Sammy Baloji, artist, co-founder of Picha and founder of the Biennale, together with George Senga, Rosa Spaliviero and Jean Katambayi. Other activities of the center include Ateliers Picha, a program that includes residencies, workshops, exhibitions and research projects dedicated to contemporary art.

Featuring a program that brings together 35 Congolese and international artists, the 2026 Biennale develops around the theme “Eating the Soil / Manger la terre” (kukuria bulongo), drawing inspiration from the knowledge of the territory and the transformation practices of the so-called “copper eaters” of the Katanga region.

From this knowledge and tradition starts a reflection on the material, social and imaginary consequences of extractivism, as stated in the press release. Resources, from this perspective, are not seen solely as materials to be extracted and commercialized, but as elements that intertwine and coexist with the knowledge, practices and cosmologies of those who inhabit the territories where they are found.

However, Congo is often represented through the subtraction of its mineral wealth, or recounted as a country in a state of permanent emergency. Extraction also affects the narrative built around it and the way it is perceived.

The theme of this ninth edition therefore invites us to shift the gaze from a reading that seems to exhaust itself in the traces of loss, emptiness and lack, to wonder what continues to exist and generate possibilities despite extraction.

This journey incorporates the thought of Valentin-Yves Mudimbe and his idea of indiscipline, understood as the possibility of questioning the ways in which we are accustomed to knowing and interpreting the world. Alongside this is the concept of fugitiveness, which opens up the possibility of imagining alternative paths, outside the logics of control and appropriation.

Below are the 35 selected artists:

Sorana Munsya is a Belgian-Congolese curator based in Brussels and founder of Nsomi, a platform dedicated to critical reflection on art and society.

Her curatorial practice develops around reflections on ways of creating places, the production of archives of the present and the practice of indiscipline, through the perspective of Black lives and Black creative practices. Starting from concepts such as fugitiveness, opacity and reparation, and through exhibitions and discursive practices, since 2016 she has developed curatorial and research projects between Africa and Europe, in collaboration with institutions such as Kanal-Centre Pompidou, Bozar, Photoforum Pasquart, Kunsthal Extra City and Kunsthal Mechelen, as well as with independent platforms like Chimurenga and Afrikadaa.

Her most recent projects, The Last Place They Thought Of, have explored Black conceptions of geography and place, while her previous projects, such as The Act of Breathing, Watermarks, Silent Traces and Primordial Earth, have addressed the themes of collective memory, reparation and the relationships between bodies, territories and histories.

She graduated in Political Science from UCLouvain and in Psychology from the Université libre de Bruxelles and is currently a fellow of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRArt). She is the curator of the ninth edition of the Lubumbashi Biennale.