At its launch event in October 2024, the Defise Foundation announced its first pioneering project: a three-year partnership with Studio Voltaire, through which three Congolese artists would undertake a 12-week residency in South London. These residencies will provide each artist with essential support to develop their specific practices, whilst benefiting from specialist professional development, in turn creating opportunities for meaningful international exchange between the Congo and the UK.

The first artist-in-residence is Godelive Kasangati Kabena, selected from a highly competitive group of applicants. Kabena’s work explores how different bodies interact, challenging traditional human-centred perspectives.



About Godelive's project
Godelive’s work centres on the political acts of creating, archiving and circulating images of human and non-human bodies through the mediums of performance and photography. During her residency, she has furthered her research into these questions in new geographic contexts and media. 

A key focus of her current project, ‘Mbwa’, explores how images of the Basenji dog, native to the Democratic Republic of Congo, shift through reproduction and circulation. This challenges the idea of an “authentic” original, instead suggesting that meaning is constantly reinvented.

During her residency, she has furthered her research into these questions in new geographic contexts and media. Working with local practitioners, she created new pieces of blown-glass work to explore the medium's resonance with notions of materiality and repetition. This work was presented during her open studio, alongside other new pieces created during her residency, which, together, continue her interrogation of archival images and their reproduction.