J'Aime Cheri Samba

Born in 1956, Cheri Samba lives and works in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After leaving school in 1972, he earned his living painting advertising billboards, and at the same time created comic strips for his publication "Bilenge Info. In 1975, he began to put his comic strips onto canvas, thus inaugurating African painting with word bubbles. His work illustrates social life: customs, sexuality, AIDS, social inequalities, corruption. Along with the painter Moke, he is one of the principal founders of the movement in painting known as "Popular Zairean," His acrylic paintings, imbued with political awareness, are always representational, realistic, and colorful. "My painting focuses on people's lives. I'm not interested in myths or beliefs. I appeal to people's consciences. Artists must make people think."From the 1980s on, he himself became the main subject of his paintings, "so that people would nut only know my name, but also my face."