Léonard Pongo at the Venice Biennale

Kristof De Clercq gallery is honoured to announce that Léonard Pongo (b. 1988, Belgium | working between Belgium and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is taking part in In Minor Keys, the central exhibition of the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, where his work will be presented at the Arsenale. The exhibition was conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, and is being realised by the curatorial team she assembled, honouring her vision.

Pongo has also been selected for the exhibition Simba Moto ! Seize the fire ! Saisis le feu ! at the DR Congo Pavilion, curated by Nadia Yala Kisukidi, at the Antico Refettorio of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, Venice—alongside Sammy Baloji, Arlette Bashizi, Patrick Bongoy, Damso, Gosette Lubondo, Nelson Makengo, Aimé Mpané, and Géraldine Tobé.

This double presence—in the Biennale's central exhibition and in a national pavilion—is a rare distinction, and marks a powerful new chapter in Pongo's artistic trajectory.

Grounded in the Congolese diaspora, and working between Brussels and the DRC, Pongo has built a layered practice that weaves together photography, textile, moving image, and installation. His work moves away from documentary logic toward a relational and sensorial investigation of land, cosmology, and perception. These are works that do not ask to be decoded. They ask to be entered.

His ongoing project Primordial Earth approaches the landscapes of the DRC as a living manuscript—a bearer of ancestral knowledge and cyclical time. Working with infrared and ultraviolet recording, natural and chemical transfers onto glass, woven jacquards, and mirrored surfaces, Pongo redefines what a photographic image can be. His earlier series The Uncanny, which culminated in his first monograph (Gost Books, 2023), established a visual language in which the familiar turns strange and perception begins to tremble. Together, both bodies of work shape a practice that transforms the camera from an extractive instrument into a receptive medium.

Over the past decade, Pongo's work has unfolded across major international exhibitions and biennials, including Paysages Mouvants at Jeu de Paume (2025), A World in Common at Tate Modern (2023–24), the Dak'Art Biennial (2024 / 2022), the 6th Lubumbashi Biennial (2019), the 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial (2018), and Rencontres d'Arles (2017). Solo presentations include SMAC Gallery (2026), Mu.ZEE (2022), Kristof De Clercq gallery (2022), The Agprognostic Temple (2021), and Bozar (2021). Following Venice, Pongo will open a solo exhibition at FOMU Antwerp in autumn 2026, and return to Kristof De Clercq gallery for a new solo in 2027.

His work is held in the collections of KANAL–Centre Pompidou, FOMU Antwerp (via the Collection of the Flemish Community), Mu.ZEE, M Leuven, and the Chazen Museum of Art (University of Wisconsin–Madison), as well as the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, Fondation H, the Defise Foundation, the Ekard Collection, and the Collection of Friends of S.M.A.K. Roger Ballen selected Pongo among ArtReview's Future Greats 2025, singling out ‘The Uncanny’ for its dreamlike tension where the familiar turns mysterious.

Ahead of Venice, Kristof De Clercq gallery will present works by Léonard Pongo at Art Brussels 2026 (April 23–26, 2026). 

Venues: In Minor Keys at the Arsenale—Simba Moto ! at the DR Congo Pavilion at the Antico Refettorio, Scuola Grande di San Marco

With the support of the Venice Biennale, the Teiger Foundation, in partnership with Americab Friends of Zeitz MOCAA, and with the support of the Flemish Community.