Yves SAMBU lives and works in kinshasa in Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2007; received his degree in Plastic Art of the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa. Anchored in late post-modern conceptualism, Sambu’s aesthetic vision has several facets with visible impacts. Taking on a distinct political-ethnographic cast, his artworks are concrete visual manifestations and interactive artistic interventions that pertain to vital and often troubling Congolese socio-cultural and economic issues.

Yves Sambu’s art practice is grounded in photography, video, art performance as well as in the signifiers pertaining to traditional artisinal customs that lend themselves towards expressions of the folkloric. Through these mediums, Sambu’s art practice attempts to give rise to coexisting elements of a contradictory nature, while seeking a common point in order to bring forth the unexpectedly new, nestled between the lines. Sambu’s approach to artmaking consists in valorising and revalorising dead or asphyxiated cultures and social practices while giving voice to outsider-art impulses and visual fields of production that have no precise definition and that are presently devoid of artistic social status. In short, Sambu’s cultural work is invested in opening up a dialogue of what constitutes « art » from « non-art », who gets to decide what is valued or validated aesthetically, and under what terms and conditions.

While still a university student Yves Sambu founded the collective SADI (Solidarity of the Artists for the Integral Development), with his academic colleagues. SADI is a dynamic and active cultural platform in Kinshasa. This platform stands out for its artistic and social commitment, whose inter-influences allow for an open dialogic interface to occur between society and artists. The goal of the SADI collective is for its individual members to be involved together in one project in order to achieve an integral development in the community. The Collectif Sadi (as it is known in French) is a space where many young Congolese artists and their talents have been discovered and encouraged. SADI continues to contribute to the emergence of active artists in today’s Congolese artistic scene.