On flowered grounds that recall the wallpapers of the past, Mika paints elegance, irony and joy: the Congo's dream made visible.
JP Mika (Jean-Paul Nsimba Mika, b. 1980, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) grew up in the N'Djili commune of Kinshasa in a poor family, revealing an early gift for drawing: at thirteen he was already painting advertising panels and cinema posters for local shops and bars to earn a living. While pursuing commercial studies, he continued to train as a painter, and in 2004 founded his own studio, Événement des Beaux-Arts (EBA). In 2005 he entered the Atelier de recherche en art populaire (ARAP) led by Chéri Chérin, who became his master, and completed his formal education at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Kinshasa, graduating in 2007: an academic grounding in anatomy and proportion that he deliberately brought into the free, uncoded language of popular painting. It was Chérin who gave him his first opportunity abroad, an exhibition in Bilbao in 2008.
Mika's early works belong fully to the tradition of the Congolese popular school: chronicles of society and international politics treated with subtle irony, in which the painter, as he has said, does almost the same work as the journalist, recording the events of his time on canvas. From there began a gradual emancipation from the master: Mika progressively abandoned narrative figuration in favour of simplified compositions and, finally, of the portraits that have become his signature. Painted on flower-patterned fabrics that evoke the wallpapers of the past, his figures, sapeurs, dancers, couples, and often the artist himself, in a knowingly controlled extravagance, pay homage to the black and white studio portraits made in the 1960s by Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé and Jean Depara, to which Mika adds colour, tenderness, nostalgia and a touch of derision.
In January 2015 he presented his first solo exhibition, "JP Mika!", at the Espace Texaf-Bilembo in Kinshasa; a few months later his consecration arrived with "Beauté Congo - Congo Kitoko" at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris (2015-2016), curated by André Magnin, where he was the youngest of the popular painters presented and one of the revelations of the exhibition. Since then his work has been shown at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, New York, at Art Genève with Galerie Magnin-A, and in exhibitions across Europe, Africa and North America, alongside masters such as Chéri Samba, Chéri Chérin and Bodo. In Italy his work was presented as early as 2010 in the group exhibition "L'Africa nei loro occhi", curated by Antonella Pisilli in Viterbo, alongside Chéri Chérin, Pierre Bodo, Amani Bodo and George Lilanga: a recognition of the new generation of the popular school five years before its international celebration in Paris. He lives and works in Kinshasa.