Jean Katambayi Mukendi speaks about technology, extraction, and speculative infrastructures in his exhibition, ‘Ratio’ at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
27 March 2026
In ‘Ratio’, his first solo exhibition in Germany at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Jean Katambayi Mukendi brings together drawings, sculptural installations, and recycled materials to examine the technological systems that shape the contemporary world. Trained as an electrician and deeply engaged with mathematics and engineering, the Congolese artist constructs intricate visual diagrams that reflect on energy infrastructures, mineral extraction, and the uneven distribution of technological power between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Global North. Working with salvaged materials and speculative forms, Mukendi reimagines machines, circuits, and diagrams as tools for thinking through questions of ecology, geopolitics, and the future. ART AFRICA spoke with the artist about the conceptual framework behind ‘Ratio’, the role of drawing as a system of knowledge, and the contradictions embedded in the global circulation of resources and electricity.
Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Divina, 2025.Courtesy the artist.Photo: FrankSperling
Suzette Bell-Roberts: The title of the exhibition, ‘Ratio’, evokes proportion, calculation, and relational thinking. How does this concept structure the works presented, particularly in relation to the unequal distribution of technological power and natural resources between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Global North?
Jean Katambayi Mukendi: From the outset, the word “ratio” contains the letters A and I, which initiate artificial intelligence. Depending on the angle of view, the world has moved through stages, from empiricism to rationality, before claiming itself as a world of automatisms, while simultaneously conducting an eccentric diplomacy of distributing forces between those who dictate and those who receive. The exhibition ‘Ratio’ surveys this global and unequal environment while showing that the source or the centre of the system sometimes lies in unexpected reference points. Painting, drawings, recycling, onboard equipment, small mechanisms, all coordinated in the management of space, time, and energy, an important form of management that must be transmitted to younger generations while they flirt with announcements of the future, or futurist futures.
Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Satellite (Detail), 2025. Courtesy the artist. Installation view of the exhibition. Photo: Frank Sperling.
Your training as an electrician, along with your continued engagement with mathematics and engineering, shapes your visual language. How do these technical systems influence the conceptual and formal logic of the works presented in ‘Ratio’?
My training as an electrician, combined with a long engagement with mathematical and statistical studies, has helped structure time in an environment where the notions of career and reform remain flexible and volatile. These formations helped maintain and consolidate an innate conceptual logic by equipping it with semantic tools of expression. Thus, in ‘Ratio’, one can see, for example, that the point of support from which to begin a structure or a drawing can be grasped at any moment. Everything is a starting point; the centre of the world is everywhere, but one must know how to see it. In Ratio, one can therefore perceive the mathematical influence of a known principle, that of an “ordered disorder confronted with a disordered order”.
Installation view of the exhibition. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Frank Sperling.
Several works were produced during your residency in Berlin using materials recovered from recycling centres and from the institution’s storage. How did working with these discarded materials influence the narrative and material ecology of the exhibition?
The only work I carried out before beginning production at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin was a series of drawings produced over several months to keep myself in the spirit of production. When the moment arrived, I believe this technique met my expectations. Since art is a projection and a mutual interaction between society and conception, working with locally sourced, recycled, and abandoned materials influenced the narrative and ecology on two levels. First, through my return to and experimentation with certain materials that remain at the periphery of my practice, I encounter an intrinsic ecology. Secondly, there is an extrinsic ecology, visible in the making-do with materials produced by the studio and the city spaces of Berlin, in a poetic back-and-forth dialogue involving multiple interventions, far removed from the spirit of the production and consumption chain.
Jean Katambayi Mukendi, mukendi kabongo Air hybird Wings RDC26FG, 2025. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Frank Sperling.
The sculptural installation Mukendi Kabongo Air hybiRd Wings RDC26FG combines references to aviation, agriculture, and military technologies. What possibilities emerge from this recombination of technological forms?
In addition to the codes of aviation, agriculture, and industrial technologies, one even finds references to the institutions KW and M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp. Typography and lexicon remain large open doors and sources of energy within the conceptual. The first possibility lies in the power of naming a product or operation that seeks to be highly impactful for the greatest number. Another possibility was to show the ambiguity of certain uses and inventions in their after-use dimension. At the very least, the installation proposes thinking about technological mechanisms that are extremely convertible and recyclable in their after-use, partly allowing a response to the dilemma or “trilemma” of overproduction, utility, and overconsumption.
Jean Katambayi, Mukendi, Vita, 2025. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Frank Sperling.
In works such as Divina, the visual language of printed circuit boards intersects with references to global technology companies and to the extraction of minerals such as copper and cobalt in the DRC. How do these compositions articulate the entanglement of technology, spirituality, and geopolitics?
Among the major pretexts for conflict and the fires that ignite many belligerents worldwide are spirituality, technology, and supremacy. There is a clear disruption in the distribution of the right to existence for each individual according to their position; the too empty and the too full have lost their alignment. It is this previous picture that displays the entanglement between technology, spirituality, and geopolitics. Regarding the latter aspect, geopolitics, it should be noted that as long as Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and certain regions of the world are designated exclusively as suppliers of raw materials, achieving a balance will be difficult. Thus, my campaign begins with the inhabitants of the DRC re-establishing their own balance by properly reallocating spirituality and other fundamental sectors, such as education, instruction, and research.
Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Münze, 2025. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Frank Sperling.
Your practice often returns to the paradox that the DRC supplies essential minerals for global electronics and energy infrastructures, while many communities still have limited access to electricity. How does this contradiction continue to shape your work?
This question follows from the previous one. Electricity was a major turning point in the world’s revolution. Without statistics, one might assume that almost all modern devices require electricity at some point in their operation. Electricity requires rigour, regularity, and precision in order to be maintained. It is the failure of local administrative relevance that causes the lack of access to electricity for the population of the DRC, a population invited to pay for household appliances and local electrical services held by multinational companies. As soon as these companies obtain their own electricity for mining in the DRC, they no longer have time to supply electricity to the population, believing it is the responsibility of the Congolese state, even though the state does not provide it. Statistically, in the DRC, only a minority of the population has access to electricity, and even then, in the worst conditions due to recurrent power cuts. Yet the DRC not only has minerals; it also has immense hydrography, an extraordinarily rich fauna and flora, and human resources. This contradiction, seen from Congo and from the world, can only nourish my imagination until a solution is found, but time remains precious. Everyone more or less knows what must be done to resolve it, but no one has the time to stop for a moment, or at least no one has the necessary energy to address it. Meanwhile, the minerals continue their path toward industrial terminals that do not benefit the Congolese population. Minerals are one thing, but organising a nation is another.
Installation view of the exhibition. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Frank Sperling.
The drawings presented in Ratiofunction are almost like speculative diagrams that map relationships among climate systems, technological infrastructures, and emerging digital economies. What role does drawing play as a tool for thinking through these complex systems?
The role of drawing, and particularly the role of the drawings proposed in Ratio, is comparable to that of a galaxy: a galaxy that interlaces drawings, reference points, and coordinates in space, facilitating conceptual diversions amid widespread numerical probabilities and proximities. These offer centres of gravity that are included or excluded, which can all serve as points of departure or points of friction. In drawing, lines in their complexity necessarily operate the conjunction between economic, ecological, and ergonomic parameters, without which a drawing cannot display its own accomplishment in a dialogue that is almost intriguing with the observer who stands before it. The draughtsman, meanwhile, plays the role of a capacitor once he has released his energy into the drawing, waiting to store a second energy for something else.
Installation view of the exhibition. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Frank Sperling.
As your first solo exhibition in Germany, Ratio places these questions within a European institutional context. How do you imagine audiences here encountering the political and technological narratives embedded in your work?
I am very happy to present this truly personal and personalised exhibition in an institution that has made its mark, and in a country like Germany, which succeeded in promoting its technological image in Africa and the DRC after the Second World War.
I am also pleased to see more and more European audiences seeking dialogue with the works and approaches of African artists, unlike earlier periods when the formula was dominated by what was politically or aesthetically correct. Perhaps the times demand it. And on the qualitative, quantitative, and creative levels, artists will continue to live because they have discovered and understood that everything remains to be done in technology. After all, who could say that the world is nothing more than a bicycle wheel?
The exhibition is on view at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin until 20 September 2026.
