On exhibit at the Westover Branch Library from February 25 – April 21, 2020.
Images courtesy of Felix Masi
Exhibit Description, by Felix Masi:
The Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra, Central Africa’s only symphony orchestra, can trace its origins to 1992 and the collapse of a local airline in Zaire, as the Democratic Republic of Congo was then known.
Armand Diangienda, a pilot with a love of Western classical music and a dream of becoming a conductor, lost his job. Finding himself with time on his hands, he taught himself to read music, learned a couple of instruments, and formed a group with a few other members of his church.
Today his group has over 200 volunteer members who get together up to six days a week, rehearsing and performing in an empty warehouse across the road from Armand’s home in Ngiri-Ngiri, a district in Central Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using a mixture of home-made and donated instruments, the orchestra’s repertoire ranges from Berlioz to Beethoven.
Made in Kinshasa is a series of images capturing daily life and hustle in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is home to about 12 million people, with most of them officially jobless. Art and entrepreneurship are the only means of survival.
Kinshasa is a busy and chaotic capital, and the second most populated capital in the Sub-Saharan after Lagos, Nigeria. Power blackouts are the order of the day, and the locals connect lack of electricity to the similar situation of the daily struggle to put food on the table - "La situation le nourituae."
I documented a series of images of daily life, capturing the resilience of the Congolese people, and efforts to live day by day despite the endless conflicts that hold the nation from limping forward.
Images courtesy of Felix Masi
Biography:
Felix Masi's work as a newspaper photojournalist in Kenya drove him to cover social issues and humanitarian work across the continent.
His journey took him across Africa, telling everyday
stories of life in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, to showcasing the world’s only black orchestra in Kinshasa, to the U.S., where he shared his story with then Senators Barack Obama and Dick Durbin on Capitol Hill.
His work on Projecting a New Africa was showcased in South Africa at the American corner, a public space by the U.S. Cape Town consulate, where he spoke about the need to tell African stories by Africans under a campaign theme, projecting a new Africa by Africans.
