{"id":2767,"date":"2009-05-02T23:06:08","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T23:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=2767"},"modified":"2023-11-20T14:52:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T20:52:09","slug":"emmanuel-makonga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/emmanuel-makonga\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmanuel Makonga"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Emmanuel Makonga, whose paintings of village life in the Congo are now on view at\u00a0Art Access Gallery, has lived a turbulent life. A Congolese comic book artist and political cartoonist, he knows well the struggle for democracy, has survived terror to challenge repression, has fought to conquer injustice and reached out to the world to plead for preservation of the environment. This type of activism in one of the most violent countries of Africa was not easy and led to an exile that eventually brought Makonga to the United States. His quiet and idyllic watercolors on exhibit at Art Access may seem a far cry from the political satire that took on one of the world\u2019s bloodiest dictators, but they are still part of this artist\u2019s interest in social concerns. Makonga, in his soft-spoken voice, conveys his faith in his country, saying that, \u201cWhen people think of Africa they think of only war and disease and poverty, but we have something to give and to teach people. When you go to the village you find only peace.\u201dEmmanuel Makonga grew up in Zaire, the name given to the former Belgian colony of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) by its 30-year dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. With the aid of the CIA, Mobutu came to power in 1960, two years before Makonga was born in a small Congolese village. By the time the artist was 6\u00a0his family had moved to the capital city, Kinshasa, where, in the \u201970s, Mobutu fully consolidated his power and began forming the country in his own image. Children are innocent, unaware of the grand political battles happening around them, so the struggles Makonga faced growing up were much more local. Like many aspiring artists around the world he had to struggle with his parents, who wanted him to pursue a practical profession. After going to school for mechanics and also teaching, Makonga chose to explore what he had developed a love for as a very young child and, going against his parents\u2019 wishes, began to study art.Makonga was trained in the graphic arts, and it was in this realm that he was propelled to the forefront of his country and achieved celebrity. He first came onto the national stage when, as a high school student, he designed an award-winning stamp, used in the fight against AIDS.\u00a0His training had prepared him for a career painting the sides of buildings with advertising, the standard \u201cbillboard\u201d in the Congo and its most prevalent form of marketing. His talent showed quickly and he began making money. When he purchased some expensive clothes for his mother she marveled at how much he made, saying, \u201cJust for drawing on the wall?\u201dMakonga\u2019s fame increased and he must have taken satisfaction in being able to show his parents that he had not been lost to the penurious world of art. He began drawing comic books,\u00a0and appeared on television and on the radio, receiving visiting artists from France and other countries.<\/section>\n
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With the courage of a true artist, Makonga put all his hard-earned success at risk when he began drawing political cartoons in the late 1980s. As the Cold War waned so did U.S. support for the Mobutu regime. The world increasingly focused its attention on the violence and atrocities happening in the country, and to appease world opinion Mobutu loosened some political restrictions, including those on the press. Political satire, which had a long tradition in the Congo, resurfaced and the famished political public clamored for more and more newspapers. They wanted freedom and democracy. Makonga was among a handful of prominent cartoonists in the country and one of the first to openly satirize Mobutu. Looking back, he realizes what he was doing was dangerous \u2013 \u201cPeople were still being killed,\u201d he says \u2013 but he was young and courageous and wanted to fight for his country. His brother, who worked at the presidential offices, was worried. \u201cHe came to me and said \u2018Why do you do this? Do you want us to be killed?’\u201d His response was, \u201cThis is what I was taught to do. If it was illegal they shouldn\u2019t teach it . . . If you don\u2019t want me to do it then you give me your paycheck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Makonga was not completely insensitive to the danger he was creating for himself and his family. But he says that because the world was watching Zaire and the political discussions there, public figures like journalists were in a protected position. That didn\u2019t mean that he didn\u2019t have to escape and go into hiding for having spoken out against injustice, but his family was luckily left alone.<\/p>\n

As a political cartoonist, Makonga was able to exercise that quality that makes a great artist, qualities that go deeper than paint and brush. Makonga was able to utilize his vision to generate hope for a people who had known only despair. He persuaded them that there could be an end to mass violence, solutions to the madness of the AIDS epidemic, and hope for the land. He continued drawing his cartoons at various papers and publishing his comic books until the political situation became unbearable. In 1993, while Mobutu was contending with a rival government set up by a conference of various political parties, Makonga left his homeland for Gabon, a French-speaking country on the coast west of Zaire. Because of the trouble he had in his native country Makonga wanted to quit drawing when he arrived in Gabon. But his friends and colleagues there naively assured him their country was different, that he wouldn\u2019t have the same problems.<\/p>\n

In Gabon, Makonga\u2019s energies turned more and more toward larger societal and environmental issues. In 1996 the European Union published a collection of his cartoons called\u00a0Les braconniers d\u2019Afrique<\/em>, which focused on the environment and is still used in classrooms for young students today. He also published a comic book exploring the life of the Bantu.<\/p>\n

Makonga says he was relatively unmolested as a cartoonist, but when he became an editor and published his own newspaper,\u00a0Le Nganga<\/i>\u00a0(the fortune teller), he ran into trouble with the Gabon government \u2013 which had its own long-term, corrupt president. He returned to his homeland, but what was now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo was suffering from years of Civil War and conflicts with neighboring countries, and it quickly became apparent Makonga couldn\u2019t stay there either.<\/p>\n

In 2002 Makonga emigrated to the United States, becoming an exile far from his native land living in a place where he didn\u2019t speak the language. Here he had lost all of his celebrity. He wasn\u2019t anyone to anybody. He tried to establish a career as an artist, but when he realized people were trying to take advantage of him he decided to wait until his English improved and he could better understand the system before relaunching his career here. After first living in Ohio, he came to Salt Lake City last year and that\u2019s when he began showing his portfolio around town.<\/p>\n

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\nAt Art Access II Gallery you\u2019ll find none of the political activism that marked Makonga\u2019s early career. What can be seen is a manifestation of the artist\u2019s hopeful vision of another side of the Congo. The images incorporate the best of what Makonga knows to be true of his fellow Congolese and their land. Makonga paints market scenes where villagers gather, bringing fresh produce, and fish mongers who contribute with the catch of the day. He paints beautiful African woman in traditional Congolese costume washing clothing in a stream, enjoying the satisfaction that is the reward of hard work. He paints giraffes and elephants that can drink from the pond without fear of poachers. He paints children at play, groups of boats gathered in a cluster in the bay while their oarsmen chatter casually under the midday sun. He paints villages and huts which do not know time. In these watercolors Makonga seems to forget politics and the suffering he has witnessed and uses his vision to transcend all that has plagued his nation.<\/p>\n

Makonga sees the village as a place of peace, endangered by encroaching modernization. He speaks of the joys of village life. He speaks of villagers in their \u201990s who have never seen a hospital, whose medicine comes from the communal herbalist. His vision of his country is abundant with gifts from the land and giving back to the land, enjoying a natural world that is lush and pervasive. The village, he says, is disappearing. In his paintings he wants to \u201cstop time\u201d and preserve the village for the future generations before the bush is taken over by cities and cars. \u201cIt is a style of life that is really important. Really rich,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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The exhibit at Art Access is only one aspect of the artist\u2019s work. He is a talented artist who is exceptionally skilled in a variety of mediums and he doesn\u2019t plan on restricting himself to just one part of his portfolio. In September, Makonga will be exhibiting his comic books at the Gallery at the main branch of the Salt Lake City library. They deal with our need to protect the environment. The story, he says, will be \u201cin Africa, but it is the same story for all of us. . . It will be a universal book.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also plans on producing political cartoons in the future. He says the recent election in the United\u00a0States\u00a0inspired him, but he missed the opportunity to be involved.<\/p>\n

Emmanuel Makonga\u2019s young desire to become an artist manifested itself in ways he could not have foreseen or planned. His vision has made him not only a great artist but a great man: a leader, an activist, a role model, an educator, and especially a man of vision. By following his impulse to practice what he loves, he has been able to affect millions in the third largest country of Africa. Through Makonga\u2019s artistic talent, his intellect and vision, many people have found relief through humor, and hope, without which nothing is possible.<\/p>\n

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Emmanuel Makonga\u2019s watercolors will be on exhibit at Art Access through May 9. You can view more of his work at\u00a0www.makongart.com<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A profile of Congolese artist in exile Emmanuel Makonga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":2768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[163,162],"class_list":["post-2767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-art-access-gallery","tag-emmanuel-makonga"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/03s1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 01:43:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2767"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72017,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions\/72017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}