LA FAB
Merveille Kelekele Kelekele:
'Bienvenue dans mon instabilité '
02 september 2025
From September 6 to October 26, 2025, Galerie du Jour agnès b., located at Place Jean-Michel Basquiat in Paris’ 13th arrondissement, will host the first French solo exhibition of emerging Congolese artist Merveille Kelekele Kelekele. Titled 'Bienvenue dans mon instabilité' ( translation - Welcome to my instability), the show offers a visceral journey into the artist’s emotional landscapes, where personal history, inner turbulence, and haunting symbols collide.
An Intimate Universe of Instability
Through his large-format canvases, Kelekele channels sensations that are deeply corporeal—vibrations between body and world. His paintings are not straightforward narratives but immersive fragments of his being, populated with enigmatic creatures, mythological forms, and elusive presences. “The nights are long, the days no longer exist,” reads one of his works, capturing the tension of a state where fear, vulnerability, and creativity intertwine.
The compositions—dense, vibrant, and unstable—evoke a world at once fragile and violent. Colors shift between deep gradients and explosive tones, echoing both pain and transcendence. Each canvas serves as both therapy and testimony, an attempt to externalize sensations that otherwise remain intangible.
“It was the day of the baptism, the day of the drowning, the day of the dead dead dead drowned, God Devil be praised, Amen!” , 2025 © Merveille Kelekele Kelekele
A Life Shaped by Movement and Resilience
Born on February 6, 2001, in Mbuji-Mayi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Merveille grew up in Kinshasa until the age of nine. His family’s forced departure marked the beginning of a long migration across Belgium, Spain, and eventually Portugal, where the young artist began to confront Western realities of race and displacement.
It was in Portugal that painting became a path—first through school workshops and the encouragement of teachers, later as a necessity for self-expression. What began as drawings and short films evolved into a visual practice rooted in storytelling, myth, and the rawness of lived experience.
After moving to France at 17, Kelekele continued his studies, eventually entering the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he now continues to refine his artistic voice. Today, at just 24, his works have already been shown internationally in Milan, Douala, Los Angeles, and São Paulo.
Portrait of the artist © Axel Gahizi yuhi – @harlem_blues_ , 2025
Between the Sacred and the Troubled
Kelekele’s paintings refuse stability. They oscillate between dreams and nightmares, between sacred ritual and personal struggle. In one work, he stages a rebirth through a violent rupture: “I die and am reborn again, except this time I tear my mother’s belly open, because I am too large, there is blood everywhere…” In another, the words “the day of the drowned dead” echo with spiritual paradox: “God Devil be praised, Amen!”
Such works blur the boundaries of reality, faith, and mythology, immersing viewers in an experience that is more about sensation than comprehension. As curator Ami Diouf notes :
Bienvenue dans mon instabilité is an unsettling experience that’s less about understanding than about feeling. And no one, not even Merveille, really knows what emotions it will awaken.
Plan your visit and learn more about the exhibition online
Galerie du Jour / La Fab
Place Jean-Michel Basquiat - Paris 13e
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11am - 07pm | wednesday to saturday,
02pm - 07pm | sunday
