David Shongo — Café Kuba (2025)
Dutch premiere at IFFR 2026, as part of Art Directions.
After winning the Main Prize State of the ART(ist) at Ars Electronica 2025 and selections at DOK Leipzig, Café Kubawill be presented as one of the four main immersive installations at IFFR’s Katoenhuis (30.01–07.02.26).
An immersive cinematic installation following a coffee vendor through nocturnal Kinshasa, where sound, movement, and urban life unfold as living memory—shaped by colonial history, political struggle, and resistance.
📍 Katoenhuis, Rotterdam
🗓 30 Jan – 7 Feb 2026
@IFFR #artdirections
#DavidShongo #CafeKuba #IFFR2026 #ArtDirections #ImmersiveCinema #ExpandedCinema #Kinshasa #SoundAndImage
I am deeply honored to announce that my work CAFÉ KUBA 2025 has just been awarded the State of the ART(ist) Grand Prize at @arselectronica in Austria.
My heartfelt thanks to the entire team with whom I worked — with rigor and precision — to verbalize and politicize the substance of silence: the traumatic history of the eastern region of my country.
This award also belongs to you — to the Kivusians, for whom silence has become the only voice, the only sound, the only image through which to exist.
Thank you to my production team:
@tommysimoensgallery , @ollywud , Caroline, @divin_sky , @kevinbooto , Djo Wamba, Christian Tamba
Thank you to all the yankés of 24, the brave souls of Victoire, and the market mamas, with whom we co-created a choreography of existence in a non-space that no longer exists.
Thank you to the Ars Electronica jury for its insight and sensitivity in listening to the silent geopolitical entanglements of our time.
Jury statement:
« The jury awards Café Kuba the 2025 State of the ART(ist) main prize for its aesthetic precision, conceptual clarity, and unflinching engagement with one of the world’s most enduring and underacknowledged conflicts. In a moment when visibility is dangerous and silence is imposed, this work dares to listen. It is a deeply moving political-poetic response to survival in times of collapse—and a powerful example of what art can offer when the world turns away. »
MEET THE FOUNDERS
DAVID SHONGO
Co-founder and President
David Shongo is a Congolese composer and visual artist internationally recognized for his powerful work in photography, sound, experimental video, and multimedia installations, exhibited notably at the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, the Bangkok Biennale, and the MAXXI Museum in Rome.
He received the State of Art(ist) Grand Prize at Ars Electronica 2025 and was a co-recipient of the STARTS.EU Residency in 2022. Between 2019 and 2023, he was an artist-researcher at the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is the founder and artistic director of the Pianos de Kinshasa Festival.
If you happen to be in Wiesbaden, Germany, I’m delighted to share that my film Café Kuba will be featured at the @goeastff Festival Symposium, in collaboration with the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum @dff.film
A special tip of the hat to my friend @film_borg for curating such a thoughtful and meaningful program.
Big up
@tommysimoensgallery@olga.pitton
