GALLERIA FONTI at PARIS INTERNATIONALE 2026
with
KILUANJI KIA HENDA
and
FELIX SHUMBA
Fonti presents a dialogue between Felix Shumba (Zimbabwe, 1989) and Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, 1979). Shumba’s works were created in 2025 during his residency at Gasworks, London, UK. They are 12 half-length imaginary portraits, executed in charcoal on paper, inspired by photographs from the colonial period held in Zimbabwe’s public and online archives. Through a process of subtraction and erasure from a dense buildup of heavily pressed charcoal—revealing fragments of the white background—the artist suggests and exposes mutilations, disfigurements, and psychological wounds. ‘Eyes Without a Soul’ by Kia Henda is a series of 24 photographs mounted on aluminum of a powerplant in Barcelona, where the artist exhibited during Manifesta 15: iron screws embedded in the reinforced concrete emerge as weary, hollow eyes, forming abstract yet eerily human faces, the boundary between flesh and architecture dissolving, as if the individual has become just a remnant of an obsolete machine. Taken together, the two bodies of works deliberately reference a historical device of power—the gallery of ancestors of aristocracy, universities and academies - in order to use it as a critical tool that bears witness to histories of violence, extraction, and transformation that persist today in both spectral and material forms.
Kiluanji Kia Henda (1979, Luanda, Angola) explores history, geopolitics, war and the impact of colonialism. Angola lies at the epicentre of his research, as a place through which to reconnect distant points in space and time, in the interweaving of history and fiction, fact, documentary, narrative and humour. He was awarded the National Prize for Culture and Arts by the Ministry of Culture of Angola and selected among the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by the American magazine Foreign Politics. In 2017 he won the Frieze Artist Award. His works are featured in major public collections, including: Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Tate Modern, London; Fondazione di Venezia, Venice; Metropolitana di Napoli, Naples; Kadist Foundation, Paris; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Migros Museum, Zurich; Frac Grand Large - Hauts-de-France; Calouste Gulbenkian, Coleçõe de Arte Moderna, Lisbon; Ellipse Foundation, Lisbon; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; MASP, São Paulo. He has participated in major institutional and biennials around the world, including: Sharjah Biennial (upcoming); Project a Black Planet, Barbican, London, MACBA, Barcelona, Kanal – Centre Pompidou, Bruxelles, Art Institute Chicago; Manifesta 15, Barcelona (2024); Biennale Arte 2024: Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa (2024); Sharjah Biennial (2023); Serpentine, London (2022); Lagos Biennial, Nigeria (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); The Barbican, London (2020); Yinchuan Biennale, Yinchuan (2018); Busan Biennale, Busan (2018); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2018); Tate Gallery, Liverpool (2017); Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2015); Dakar Biennale, Dakar (2013); Bergen Triennal, Bergen (2013); 29th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2010); Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou (2008); African Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice (2007).
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Eyes Without a Soul – Post Industrial Portraits (5), 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper (cotton paper). 50 cm x 37,5 cm
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Eyes Without a Soul – Post Industrial Portraits (12), 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper (cotton paper). 50 cm x 37,5 cm
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Eyes Without a Soul – Post Industrial Portraits (21), 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper (cotton paper). 50 cm x 37,5 cm
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Eyes Without a Soul – Post Industrial Portraits (11), 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper (cotton paper). 50 cm x 37,5 cm
This series was created inside Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys), a decommissioned thermal power station in Catalunya built in the 70s, leaving behind a legacy of industrial contamination. The toxic footprint of its past still lingers in the soil, a silent testament to the era of heavy industry.
Kia Henda wandered through the plant’s decaying interior, reading the marks left by years of industrial activity. In this photographic essay, iron screws embedded in the reinforced concrete emerge as weary, hollow eyes, forming abstract yet eerily human faces. These spectral figures evoke a profound sense of emptiness, alienation, and dehumanization—symbols of technological obsolescence and the residue of a vanished industrial age.
The eyes in these portraits seem to express anguish and distress, yet they remain devoid of a soul. The power plant, once a hub of energy and motion, now stands as a monument to decay, its crumbling structure birthing distorted reflections of the human form. Here, the boundary between flesh and architecture dissolves, as if the individual has become just another remnant of an obsolete machine.
Price upon requets
Felix Shumba (b. 1989, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice is structured around the conceptual framework and alternate universe he calls Fold Field Space (FFS), an imagined site untethered from fixed geography. FFS operates as an inverted and parallel rendering of the real world, and is a domain that is governed by a grammar of the irrational. Within this terrain, the absurd converges with notions of grotesque, excess, obscenity, disorder, power, and violence. Positioned at the extreme edge of the real-illusory spectrum, FFS functions through arbitrariness and contradiction, deliberately disrupting reason and conventional schemas of sense-making.
Shumba’s work has been presented internationally, including 9th Biennale de Lubumbashi, Lubumbashi, DRC (upcoming) in 2026 at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, as part of the Zimbabwe Pavilion, as well as at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires and at the Biennale Des Arts Visuelles at Labanque, Béthune. In 2025, his work was presented at Tiwani Contemporary, London; Galerias Municipais de Lisboa; Lilith Performance Studio, Malmö; and Panorama Pozzuoli, with Galleria Fonti, curated by Chiara Parisi. In 2024, he had his first solo exhibition at Galleria Fonti, Naples, and participated in exhibitions at Uitstalling Gallery, Belgium, and Koop Projects, Brighton. In 2023, he participated in Sharjah Biennial 15 and presented Memories of a Poisoned River at the Museum of Natural History and Jahmek Contemporary Art, Luanda.
Shumba has undertaken residencies at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York and at Gasworks in 2025, at the Sharjah Art Foundation and at Kiluanji Kia Henda Studio in Luanda in 2024. His work is held in institutional collections including Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, IT; Frac Bretagne, FR; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE; Nicoletta Fiorucci Art Foundation, Venice, IT; Nesr Art Foundation, AO
Felix Shumba, Telephone Reader QUIU45/ Antenna - Dust, 2025
Felix Shumba, Telephone Reader YU334/ Antenna - Dust, 2025, charcoal on paper, 56 x 56 cm
Felix Shumba, Telephone Reader IMU84/ Antenna - Dust, 2025, charcoal on paper, 56 x 56 cm
Felix Shumba, Telephone Reader EJU00 Antenna - Dust, 2025, charcoal on paper, 56 x 56 cm
This series of imaginary portraits was created during Felix Shumba’s residency at the Gasworks, London, in 2025. They are portraits of non-defined, human figures, distorted and disfigured into ominous masks, originating from spontaneous sketches and traced through the index of Fold Fields Space.
Shumba brings to the surface fragments of violence drawn from unresolved pasts, removing them from their seemingly concrete contexts in order to speculate on possible futures. These historical residues, uprooted from linear temporality, are recycled and reactivated, generating unstable narratives in which the boundaries between memory, fiction, and lived experience become permeable.
Price upon request