Sandra Mujinga: Skin to Skin

Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989 in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo) lives and works in Oslo. Her multidisciplinary practice spans installation, sculpture, photography, performance, video, and music. The central themes in her work revolve around the visibility of Black bodies in public space as well as the way in which opacity and ambiguity harbor the possibility of agency and self-protection. 

Skin to Skin is Sandra Mujinga’s first museum presentation in Austria. The Norwegian-Congolese artist is occupying Belvedere 21’s central exhibition space with an expansive installation that comprises sculptures, sounds, and reflections. Here, repetition becomes an artistic strategy for plumbing the depths of (in)visibility, community, and transformation.

At the center of Skin to Skin is a group of 55 identical larger-than-life figures. Swathed in heavy fabrics, they seem like creatures from another time—at once archaic and futuristic. Mirrored elements in the space multiply their presence, while a specially composed electronic soundtrack acoustically supplements the sculptural staging. Sandra Mujinga’s installation occupies the exhibition space of Belvedere 21 and invites visitors to immerse themselves in these different visual and auditory levels.

From avatars to clones and ghostly apparitions to unknown species, Mujinga’s hybrid figures invite a variety of associations. The artist develops speculative worlds where spatial and temporal layers overlap. In her newly produced work, she takes up themes from science fiction, Afrofuturism, and posthumanism, which she combines with reflections on animal survival strategies, such as camouflage and nocturnal activity, as well as an interest in bodies and identity. Repetition and camouflage function in the exhibition as means of self-empowerment and protection against external control and the imposition of stereotypes.

Inspired by Naomi Klein’s concept of the doppelgänger in her eponymous book, Skin to Skin refers to the possibility of evading explicit legibility through multiplication. The installation thus deals with hypervisibility and surveillance—especially with regard to Black bodies—in physical and digital space. Exposed to viewers’ gazes from the museum’s first floor above, the faceless beings and the connection between them open up a new perspective on collective existence and mutability.

Sandra Mujinga counters the logic of neoliberal individualization with her artistic approach to recent and future concepts for social coexistence. Her figures, for example, can be seen as a community, a group, a family, or another form of coexistence. Skin to Skin invites visitors to engage in an in-depth examination of perception, visibility, and social transformation, opening up a space for experience that invites them to linger and imagine. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Sandra Mujinga – Skin to Skin, with contributions by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Bianca Manu, Sandra Mujinga, Masande Ntshanga, Stella Rollig, Rein Wolfs, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

Curated by Axel Köhne (Belvedere), Melanie Bühler and Vincent van Velsen (Stedelijk)
Assistant Curator: Carla Wiggering (Belvedere)

The exhibition Sandra Mujinga. Skin to Skin is organized by the Belvedere and the Stedelijk Museum.
Skin to Skin is kindly supported by kvadrat.

Supported by OCA – Office for Contemprary Art Norway.

Press contact: presse [​at​] belvedere.at / T +43 1 79 557-185. View press materials here.