We are delighted to announce Beau Disundi's participation in the ninth edition of the Lubumbashi Biennale.

FLAIR

My research into cod and makayabu has led me to trace the flows of materials, goods and knowledge which, over several centuries, have transformed landscapes, cultures and ways of inhabiting the world. These flows tell stories of displacement, transformation and appropriation: materials that travel, change in form and value, and ultimately become embedded in bodies and territories.

From this research emerged the forge: the place where matter changes state, where fire precedes form, where transformation is, first and foremost, an act. The forge is also a place of transition between the soil and the body: a material extracted from the ground is heated, worked and transformed by the hand, becoming something else.

For the Lubumbashi Biennale, I wish to extend this reflection through an installation comprising a monumental chair placed atop a mountain of coal.

Here, coal is both material and trace. It comes from the soil, but it is also the result of a transformation. It carries within it a history of labour, energy, extraction and circulation. In Lubumbashi, where the landscape is deeply marked by mining history and by the successive transformations of the territory, this mountain of coal can be seen as a fragment of soil that has been displaced, extracted and made visible.

"Eating the soil" resonates with this idea of soil entering the world's cycles before returning in other forms. What we extract from the ground never disappears completely: matter circulates, transforms and returns to our landscapes, our economies, our bodies and our imaginations. The soil thus becomes a material that we transform just as much as it transforms us.

For some time now, the mountain has featured in my work as a place of distance and projection. From its heights, the world takes on different proportions. It provides a sense of perspective: we can observe its contours, its paths, its obstacles and its expanses. Some mountains exist before us; others exist within us. They can be crossed, contemplated, inhabited.

At its summit, the chair introduces another scale. It seems to await a body larger than our own. It evokes a scale that myths sometimes attribute to the gods: the one from which worlds can be viewed, shaped and reorganised.

But this elevated position is not necessarily one of power. It can also be one of shifting one's gaze: taking a step back to look anew at what surrounds us and what constitutes us.

This idea resonates with the thinking of Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, and in particular with "L'Odeur du père". Mudimbe questions the persistence of frameworks of thought inherited from colonial domination: the "father" may have disappeared, but his scent remains. It is embedded in institutions, knowledge, categories and ways of understanding the world. The challenge, then, is not simply to return to a previous state, but to create a gap - an opportunity to think differently, drawing on our own realities and experiences.

The mountain of coal, too, embodies a form of persistence. It is a transformed material that retains the memory of its origins. It is at once soil and transformation, extraction and trace, past and still-active matter.

The chair placed at its summit thus becomes a vantage point, but also a starting point. It invites us to gain height in order to rediscover a different scale of the world: no longer that of large-scale infrastructure, extraction systems or the powers that organise territories, but that of the body and its capacity to observe, imagine and act.

For me, "Eating the soil" lies in this paradox: reducing the immensity of the world to an intimate act, on the scale of the human body, whilst recognising that this body is itself permeated by the histories, materials and transformations of the territory.

A mountain.
A chair.
Coal.
Wind.
Sparks.

And the possibility of action.

- Beau Disundi, October 2026

The Lubumbashi Biennale is an international contemporary art festival held in Lubumbashi. Rooted in the city of Lubumbashi and its history, the Biennale views the city as a space for research, creation, encounter, and dialogue, while connecting the Congolese art scene to African and international art networks. Each edition explores a specific theme through exhibitions, performances, screenings, talks, research, and public programs.

The 9th Lubumbashi Biennale will take place at various venues throughout the city from October 15 to November 15, 2026. 

Admission is free.

More info here