Territoires tissés by Melisa Kayowa
As part of the Afropean Intelligence Residency Program.
Challenge “Provenance and Social Memory”
The selected project
TERRITOIRE TISSés: Kuba Royal Art between Tradition and (R)evolution
Territoires tissés (Woven Territories) is a project that traces the journeys and trajectories of various Congolese art objects since their contact with the West. Focusing particularly on the ancestral techniques of Kuba tapestry and Ndop, sculpted portraits of various Kuba kings that trace the kingdom’s genealogy, this project uses artificial intelligence to examine the absence in the DRC of certain original art objects preserved in ethnographic museums and a few private collections in the West, as well as the relationships they now have with their source communities.
AI is used in this project to help reconstruct and archive the memory of the Kuba people for present and future generations.
Host institution
Académie des Beaux-Arts, Kinshasa (CD)
European partner
Africa Museum, Tervuren (BE)
The artist
Melisa Kayowa
Melisa Kayowa is a Congolese visual artist and weaver based in Kinshasa. She holds a bachelor’s degree (Bac +5) in graphic arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa.Her artistic approach confronts ancestral Congolese practices with modernity, creating a “tradimodern” aesthetic that reflects a dialogue between the intimate and the collective.
+ Instagram
& Check-out the other selected projects for the Afropean Intelligence Residency Program:
+ Challenge 1: Intercultural AI: Weaving Worlds through Art and Algorithms | “Untangler: Worlds Reimagined” – Peace Olatunji
+ Challenge 1bis: “Decoding Egwu: reclaiming indigenous intelligence through AI, dance and Igbo” – Emmanuel Ndefo & Dan Xu
+ Challenge 3: Plural Computation | “The Affogbolo’s Home” – Pierre-Christophe Gam
+ Challenge 4: Psychogeography and the Influence of AI | “Bursting the last bubble” – Tamer Elshabrawy
+ Challenge 5: Archives & Memory | “Adorned memory: Reimagining Egyptian Indigenous Archives Through Jewellery” – Khanya Mthethwa
+ Challenge 6: ZaZi: An African Educational AI Model | “LORAS AS AN ARCHIVE – A LIVING ARCHIVE” – Evans Akanyijuka
+ Challenge 7: Beyond Borders: AI, Climate, and Resource Justice in Africa | “Cry To The Water” – Chipo Mapondera
+ Challenge 8: Digital Lukasa: An Intelligent Archival Tablet | “The Memory Performer: digital reincarnation of Luba wisdom” – Mahoutondji Kinmagbo
+ Challenge 10: Futurism and Geolocation | “Mobility as Memory: a decolonial AI cartography of Kinshasa” – Chinedum Muotto
+ Afropean Intelligence is bringing together 10 cultural organizations across Africa and Europe:
