A painter by training, Hilaire Balu Kuyangiko was born on April 16, 1992 in Kinshasa, in the DRC, where he lives and works. Contemporary Congolese artist with a diploma in plastic arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa and collaborates with the Kin Art Studio (KAS) in Kinshasa. He is co-founder of the Vision Total group. In 2016, Balu decided to learn to carve wood in the styles of African ancestral works after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. This experience allowed him to develop his own perspective on the transformation of Congolese society through the new symbols of power which he describes as the “new gods”, which he reinterprets as the “capitalist chaos” symbol of a consumer society. On this basis, he approaches a thought process in which the re-appropriation and contextualization of the aesthetics and philosophy of the ancestral myths of Kongo / Nkisi Mangaaka appear at the crossroads of world iconographies referring, among other things, to the symbolic languages ​​of contemporary power. , popular culture and art history from elsewhere. In these paintings, sculptures and drawings, the Nkisi occupies a preponderant place as a timeless divinity today effaced by the “new gods” of consumerism. However, the hybrid images, which Balu offers, act as symbolic or metaphorical forms of the identity process situated in the unequal cultural exchange between the African continent and the rest of the world.

His work has been presented in various exhibitions such as “Kinshasa 2050” organized by the French Institute of Kinshasa; “Congo Star” in Austria at the Graz Museum in 2018; collective exhibition entitled “Megalopolis, the voices of Kinshasa” in Germany at the Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig; “Kinshasa Chroniques Urbain” in France at the MIAM Museum in Sète, “Young Congo” at Kin ArtStudio in Kinshasa. His works are in private collections.