Written and edited by Tanlume Enyatseng, this studio conversation brings Congolese painter MUMBY and photographer Hélène Feuillebois together to reflect on presence, visibility, and the quiet labour of being seen in contemporary Paris.
© Hélène Feuillebois
In a Paris studio, large canvases lean against the walls. Paper rolls curl across the floor. Here, presence is not a fixed state; it is negotiated. Congolese painter MUMBY prepares for her exhibition ‘Act of Presence’ (opening 5 February). Photographer Hélène Feuillebois quietly documents the labour behind the work: the pauses before brushstrokes, the hesitations around colour, the physical tension of being seen.
What unfolds between them is not a conventional interview. It is a conversation shaped by their physical proximity: the painter and photographer reflect on what it means to enter a space that feels already inhabited by both. They consider how style, posture, and colour function as forms of communication, and how the presence of Black individuals in contemporary Paris involves ongoing negotiation, observation, and reinterpretation. Rather than focusing on the visual spectacle of Congolese La Sape, ‘Act of Presence’ dwells on transitional moments—such as the anticipation before a parade, the calm after a performance, or the subtle tension between stillness and movement. MUMBY’s figures do not just occupy space; they deliberately hold, assert, and experiment with how their presence is experienced by others. As Feuillebois’s camera observes the actions, pauses, and effort involved in making the paintings, the studio emerges as a place where being seen feels like a burden or test, rather than a simple acceptance.
The exchange begins casually, as many acts of presence do.
Hélène: You invited me to photograph you while you were painting the flyer for your exhibition.
MUMBY: Why poster? Why not flyer? (laughs)
Hélène: It’s probably the scale. Seeing you paint it in person gave me “poster” energy—even though it’s a painting.
MUMBY: Exactly. It’s just a painting that turned into a flyer.
Already, the distinction between object and function dissolves. What matters is not what the work is called, but what it does—how it circulates, how it asserts itself, how it takes up space.
© Hélène Feuillebois
When MUMBY is asked what “presence” means, she does not begin with art history or aesthetics, but with a personal decision.
MUMBY: Presence, for me, is showing up when no one asks you to. I decided to leave Belgium, come to Paris, and make exhibitions happen without waiting for the perfect conditions. I didn’t have a clear plan; I just knew I wanted to take up space and speak from my culture.
That choice—coming anyway, creating anyway—became her first act of presence. While some read the work politically, she insists this is not a performance of politics but an expression of self. “I paint from who I am—as a Black woman. For some, that is already political. For me, it is simply my perspective.”
Hélène: So, preparing this show allowed you to take space, even as someone who doesn’t enjoy being perceived?
MUMBY: Exactly. (laughs) I hate being perceived. But that’s what makes this project so interesting, it’s literally about navigating visibility.
At this point, the studio becomes a rehearsal for public life. Here, presence is not formed but negotiated. The figures in MUMBY’s work are not searching for identity. They arrive already embodied and intentional. What interests her is what happens once that presence enters a shared space—how posture, gaze, proximity, and distance shape it. The sense of suspension in her work is about composure in tension, not uncertainty.
This also reframes Paris. The city did not teach MUMBY how to exist; she arrived already present. Paris intensified the pressure of being seen. It brought a constant negotiation of how presence is read, misread, or resisted.
For Feuillebois, witnessing this process raises an ethical question: what does it mean to frame someone whose presence is already there, yet continually negotiated?
This question sharpens when the conversation turns to La Sape—short for Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes. La Sape emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. It is a deeply coded practice of self-fashioning, transforming clothing into a declaration. Often misread as spectacle, it is shaped by colonial histories and political conditions, as well as by discipline, commitment, and intention. It is not only a story of survival, but also of authorship, pleasure, and self-definition through style.
For MUMBY, La Sape is not subject matter—it is language.
© Hélène Feuillebois
MUMBY: What you wear communicates confidence, hesitation, pride. It’s a visual language. Not about trends—but about attitude.
“I’m not painting La Sape culture,” she continues. “I’m using it to express other themes—identity, visibility, self-definition.”
In her work, clothing does not just decorate the figure; it speaks for them. Colour, gesture, and posture are visual grammar. They communicate composure, confidence, resistance, and pleasure—without a word.
Yet MUMBY resists reducing La Sape to metaphor. She honours its seriousness—its codes, discipline, and intentionality. These sustain it as a living cultural practice.
Her figures appear mid-gesture—never static, never resolved.
MUMBY: When a figure stands alone, there is an act of presence. When another enters, a relationship begins. With a third, tension emerges. Presence needs no confirmation—but once someone witnesses it, it becomes negotiated.
This ongoing process—interacting with others, exchanging looks, and connecting different histories—is the source of the artwork’s energy and meaning.
When Hélène speaks about composition, she does not see herself as a portraitist. She calls herself an observer and archivist. Her framing is intuitive, shaped by years of looking. She has learned when to pause and when to enter. MUMBY responds by revealing her own hierarchy: composition first, colour second, detail last. Framing is not technical for either woman—it is political. Framing decides what is seen, what is withheld, and where power resides.
© Hélène Feuillebois
In this exchange, photographer and painter become mirrors. Each asks the other: Who decides what presence looks like?
The vibrancy of MUMBY’s paintings often surprises viewers. Many expect sombreness when they encounter Congolese history. For her, colour is not only about tension or survival. It is also about pleasure, elegance, and the right to self-definition beyond inherited narratives.
“Pain and joy can coexist,” she says.
Congo’s political unrest, resource exploitation, and colonial legacy are not absent from the work. They are held alongside brightness, not overwritten by it. Colour becomes a site of complexity—not a denial of pain, but a refusal to let pain be the only register of Black life.
What shapes ‘Act of Presence’ is not Paris’s museums, but the intensity of being here. It is the loneliness, the reinvention, the awkwardness, and the forming of community.
MUMBY: Being here forced me to reinvent myself. That process—awkward, exciting, lonely—went into the work. It’s my act of presence in a new environment.
As the conversation closes, the work remains open.
Hélène: Are you building the MUMBY Universe?
MUMBY: I love that. I’m still figuring it out.
What remains is not a conclusion, but an opening—a reminder that presence is never static. It is continuously negotiated, re-framed, and reclaimed. ‘Act of Presence’ opens on 5 February, offering not a final statement, but an invitation into a world where presence is authored, held, and continually remade.
This conversation is an edited and composed exchange, shaped from a recorded dialogue between the artist and photographer.
Tanlume Enyatseng is a journalist and cultural strategist working across contemporary art and creative economies. With a decade of experience spanning public relations, cultural production, and strategic storytelling, his work explores how art, community, and cultural systems intersect across African and diasporic contexts. He is the founder of Banana Emoji Studio, a multidisciplinary creative practice focused on making art more accessible through editorial thinking and culturally grounded strategy, and Banana Club, a cultural non-profit organisation that creates space for dialogue through contemporary art. Tanlume was the 2023/2024 Writer in Residence at Photoworks UK, a 2025 Prince Claus Seed Award recipient, and has served as a juror for the Portrait of Humanity photography award by The British Journal of Photography.
