Kongo Astronauts

Kongo Astronauts is an art collective founded in 2013 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, by Michel Ekeba and Eléonore Hellio. Their transmedia practice combines performance, photography, video, sculpture, sound, and text, engaging with the alternative cultural scene of Kinshasa. The collective develops an Afrofuturist imaginary centered on the figure of the astronaut, a character often wearing suits made from recycled technological materials and appearing in urban and rural landscapes across the Congo. Through these performative and visual interventions, Kongo Astronauts reflects on extractive economies, colonial legacies, digital globalization, and the social and environmental transformations affecting the region. Their work operates through an open and collaborative structure that brings together artists, musicians, and thinkers. These actions function as poetic and critical interventions connecting past, present, and future while exploring questions of memory, displacement, and survival within postcolonial contexts.