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Géraldine Tobe Mutumande was born in 1992 in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she continues to live and work. In 2012, she graduated with a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. Since 2014, she has been exploring the spirituality of her ancestors – a process she sees as both self-reconciliation and a form of resilience. In 2019, after being invited by the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels for a residency focused on the spiritual identity of her ancestors, she decided to turn this endeavour into a collaborative project. She named it “Spirit of the Ancestors.” She is also the creator of the project Mental Handicap, which organizes art therapy workshops for psychiatric patients in Kinshasa. In addition, she founded the organization LOBOKO YA SANSA. Géraldine Tobe uses black smoke as the centrepiece of her work – symbolizing introspection and an inward journey. Her artistic process involves mastering the smoke, shaping it with her intention and aesthetic vision.
