interview by Oliver Kupper
photography by Hailey Heaton
styling by Camille Ange Pailler & Tyler Okuns

Sandra Mujinga is a Norwegian artist and musician who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through a multidisciplinary practice, herworks are a necropolitical examination of postcolonialism’s hauntologythrough the unique lens of Afrofuturism. Her work exists in an amorphoustimezone bereft of past and present. Layers of visibility, disappearance, andopacity—the lightness of fragile existence—manifest as sculpture,installations, holograms, and electronic music. They ask eternal questionsabout the survival strategies of othered bodies. Heavily inspired by sciencefiction, Mujiga uses speculative storytelling to imagine alternate realities as adelivery system for hope.

OLIVER KUPPER Much of your work has been discussed in the context of Afrofuturism, but it would be great to start off with the present moment and the hauntological aspect of your work. Our current zeitgeist seems wholeheartedly focused on this heavy darkness, the end of times. Can you talk about the spectral quality of your art, and these gossamer-like looming figures?

SANDRA MUJINGA Reading about the ghost forest in the book The Art of Living on a Damaged Planet (2017), edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt, and Heather Swanson, made an impression on me. I read it after discovering Necropolitics (2019) by Achille Mbembe, which helped me grapple with deathworlds—how so many people are sacrificed for the comfort of others. Being born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and learning about its history later, on your own, because it is hardly touched upon in the educational systems, one cannot overlook the numbers of lost lives, and those that continue to be lost. Then again, why are those numbers normalized? Zombies, which are shared among Haitians and Central Africans, come to mind—what constitutes a lived life when it is dehumanization through exploited labor? Being haunted gives hope in a sense because it reminds us that our bodies bear witness in ways we cannot imagine.

OLIVER KUPPER You once said in an interview that you felt this sense of floating in your work. Can you talk about what you mean by this? Do you think that as a society we are living in a time of antigravity?

MUJINGA I think I was contemplating floating on water. My thoughts turn to Micaela Coel analyzing her series I May Destroy You for British GQ, particularly the scene where Arabella sits on the beach, alone and terrified. Coel talks about these invisible borders, how we are made up of water and yet also terrified by powerful waves—perhaps even by our own power. I believe the genuine fear of one's own power is real because it can feel alien and foreign, especially since our notions of power are often rooted in dominance rather than vulnerability and co-existence. For instance, I am also water, not just a user of water. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Alexis Pauline Gumbs' Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (2020); it was a book I breathed with. Often, I find myself thinking of animals' heart rates when I produce a track. So, floating perhaps involves being more in tune and erasing those invisible borders. My experience of time is very much like this, as I don't perceive it as linear.

KUPPER Non-linear timelines are also a big hallmark of the science fiction medium. How did you become interested in sci-fi?

MUJINGA I had seen some sci-fi classics before, but my interest grew after discovering Octavia E. Butler. My first encounter was with the "Lilith's Brood" collection; after that, I wanted to devour everything she had written. I consider her a mentor. I thoroughly enjoy reading her interviews and even examining her notes. I believe that working with electronic music helped me to contemplate shapeshifting bodies and invisible bodies that still possess a presence—like ghosts. There was something deeply fascinating about transitioning from the sound produced by four people to producing it solo, and then undergoing a transformation yourself, and composing as if you were an octopus playing drums at 180 bpm. Additionally, I've viewed clothes as a form of self-building and body-building, and sci-fi has provided me with the space to explore all these ideas. Just today, I visited the Mori Museum in Tokyo and encountered works by Kimura Tsunehisa from the 1970s as part of the group show Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living. It moved me because it served as a reminder that sci-fi has long been a portal for artists to express urgent matters concerning our planet.

KUPPER Opacity is another aspect that ties into your work—there is a lightness to opacity, but the ability to see yourself through the work is really interesting. Can you talk about the use of opacity in your work?

MUJINGA I insist on my works being multi-layered networks, where the opacity of each layer can vary. I feel that is one of the many gifts art making can provide me—it creates space for contradictions. That's why sometimes when asked what I am reading, I hesitate to reply because my art can also serve as a trace of friction and may encompass everything I disagree with. [Édouard] Glissant activated my thoughts around coded languages and belonging, particularly due to the dynamics of power and surveillance. Being misunderstood can also be a gift.

KUPPER Speaking of Glissant and his archipelagic thinking, specifically in relation to cultural institutions, because your work traverses these waves of post-colonialism and you are tied to these two worlds, how do you contend with or confront the Western museum framework when commissioned for an installation? Especially at a time when there are calls for repatriation and acknowledgement of these institutions’ own violent colonial pasts.

MUJINGA I see the term post-colonialism more as a manifestation than a reality, and I believe it's crucial to also use terms like neo-colonialism to examine deeply-rooted systems that perpetuate oppression. I view post-colonialism akin to utopian thinking—a place that may not exist, but this doesn't negate the necessity of decolonial practices. It's about world-making for all of us. I think engaging in intergenerational conversations is also a part of decolonial practice. I believe in documenting and archiving to communicate with the future, acknowledging those who paved the way before me, making my journey easier. Despite the discussions feeling like a sci-fi loop at times, where frustration grows regardless of the choices made, I think they can generate more clarity. My friend Linda Spjut once beautifully said, "Love is also discipline,” I do believe in the possibility of honest conversations. I have to.

KUPPER Going back a little bit, because you explore your own personal history, you were born in Goma and raised in Norway—what have you learned about your own lineage through your artwork?

MUJINGA I explored that lineage in my exhibition, Real Friends, which was shown at Oslo Kunstforening in 2016. It marked the first time I traveled to Cono on my own, a trip I undertook to visit Virunga National Park. I realized I somehow didn't feel like I belonged anywhere; in Congo, I was seen as Norwegian, while in Norway, I was seen as Congolese, having practically lived there my whole life. What I hadn't considered before the trip was my gaze, and which cultural lens I carried with me. I also grappled with the expectations I had of myself to assimilate, only to realize that my upbringing in Norway was immediately apparent the moment I spoke. I believe the contradictions my sculptures embody—being hyper-visible and invisible simultaneously—have also a lived experience.

KUPPER You not only work in the medium of sculpture, but also multichannel video, moving images, like holograms. How did you come to these media to express your artistic vision of the world?

MUJINGA At art school, I primarily focused on sculptures and performance. I began working with video to document my performances. When we had a video course, I aimed to efficiently learn and decided to create a music video, believing it encompassed all the essential elements and could aid in my understanding of time. Eventually, I chose to craft a performance diary and produce a video for my music project, Naee Roberts. These videos also served as a means to archive ideas, evolving from self-filming to engaging in dialogue with other online videos. At the time, I developed a parasocial relationship with Congolese wedding videos from around the world, finding them intimate and longing for connections with Congolese communities in Scandinavia.

Sandra Mujinga, Closed space, Open World, 2022.
Three-channel video installation with sound. Consisting of 3 x aluminium sculptures with projectors inside and led-strip light. Esti-mated size each 150cm (D) x ca.3 m (H). Three clear frosted plexiglass boxes, 2x (H:3000mmx L:3024mm x D: 2002mm) 1x (H:3000mmx L:4026mm x D: 2002mm), glass clamps, carpet,walls painted black and green light. Animation drawn by: Nancy Saphira. Three different files, 10 minutes asynchronized loops.

KUPPER You explore the hypervisibility of surveillance and how we’re sort of collectivized under the guise of this authoritative, all-seeing eye—why is surveillance so fascinating to you?

MUJINGA I became increasingly intrigued by surveillance technology when I discovered the world of the deep sea. Something was fascinating about creatures living in deep, dark spaces and how it altered their vision and bioluminescence. Reflecting on the melancholic relationship we could have with the sun due to the state of the planet, I found the idea of a world absent of sunlight captivating. Bioluminescence deeply inspired my work Pervasive Light (2021). I contemplated how the appearance of the performer served a function, whether as a negotiation or as a strategy to find new ways to hide. As Joy Buolamwini has stated, "If you have a face, you have a place in the conversation about AI." I am interested in the growing conversation surrounding biased surveillance and the realization that the technology we are surrounded by is not created in a vacuum. Its biases stem from the lack of diversity among makers, and this disproportionately affects Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies.

Build My Skin with Rocks 2022
Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, DE

KUPPER Can you talk about the significance of the color green in your work?

MUJINGA I work with multiple mediums. My process can start on the sewing machine, then switch to creating a sound loop and doing some writing at the studio. I see it all as part of bodybuilding. My first exploration of the blue screen was driven by my interest in the chaotic spaces of Seapunk online, along with the worldbuilding in aquariums and aquarium YouTube videos. This was around 2013, and I was fascinated by simulation and how I increasingly found myself googling images of trees instead of going outside to take pictures. Instead of erasing or replacing the blue screen, I found it intriguing to use it as something that would camouflage itself as water. When I traveled to Virunga National Park, I was surrounded by dense greenery, which was also interesting because beautiful green nature could be found in relaxing videos. The screen became a window, and that's why the gorillas I saw there seemed almost unreal. This led me to contemplate endangered animals that we may only see on screen—will they even be accurately represented? So, the green background remained prominent, later transitioning into a void, interchangeable with blackness.

KUPPER This issue is about our world and offering an antidote to the doom loop in order to see the future. So, I want to end with a quote by Octavia Butler: “There is no end to what a living world will demand of you.” How do we learn to deal with the demands of the living world? How do we use levity to see the future?

MUJINGA I believe the future is already here, guiding us through what needs to be done. The violence that is happening in Gaza, Congo, Sudan, Haiti cannot be separated from history. James Baldwin once said, "You think that your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” Love is transformative, and the step to that is curiosity, even when it feels unsafe. Perhaps levity can provide a sense of clarity rather than escapism—a reminder that we embody many aspects, and the world is always intertwined with us.