Sandra Mujinga

Are they human beings, deep sea creatures or entities from another solar system? Some spectral figures loom on pedestals. Others are almost swallowed by the shadows. Strategically placed mirrors multiply their numbers, filling the space with an army of reflections. As you navigate the green, murky landscape, the light shifts and the sound displaces. Soon, you lose all sense of direction. Mujinga’s installations play with opposites – immobility and movement, visibility and disappearance – drawing you deeper into her liminal narratives.

Mujinga’s hybrid creatures recall avatars – almost human, eerily alike, like echoes of a single being. In Skin to Skin, she uses science fiction to explore what happens when our identities are copied and scattered across digital space. Her creatures ask: who are you when your ‘self’ is copied, multiplied, or turned digital? And when you're seen everywhere, can you still be seen at all—or do you end up hidden in plain sight? At the same time, her installation challenges how Black bodies are perceived—constantly watched and under surveillance, yet rarely truly acknowledged or represented in public spaces or positions of power. This tension lives within her sculptures. Like bodyguards, her towering, humanoid figures give off a feeling of both protection and threat. Through them, Mujinga reveals the uneasy balance between being looked at and remaining invisible.

In Skin to Skin, Mujinga’s otherworldly space vibrates to the artist’s compositions of light and sound. Mutating green light plunges us into a shapeshifting landscape. Reality bends and warps. Skin tones disappear, fabrics gain another texture, shadows pulsate. From time to time, Mujinga’s soundscape grounds the space with an enveloping electronic presence. 

ABOUT SANDRA MUJINGA
Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989, Goma, DRC) is one to watch: groundbreaking and radically contemporary. She is an artist, DJ, and musician. Her interdisciplinary practice combines visual art and performance, music, and online platforms. Her work includes performances, sculptures, installations, film, and sound, through which she creates alternative realities that question our view of the world. In 2021, she won the Preis der Nationalgalerie. Her work has been shown at institutes including the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Yokohama Triennale, and the Venice Biennale (The Milk of Dreams, 2022). She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel (Time as a Shield, 2024), MdbK Leipzig (Fleeting Home, 2023), Hamburger Bahnhof (BMSWR: I Build My Skin With Rocks, 2022), Malmö Konsthall (Closed Space, Open World, 2022), Swiss Institute New York (Worldview, 2021), and Vleeshal Middelburg (Midnight, 2020), among others.