Ndaya Ilunga, 1995 was born in Johannesburg, South
Africa to two refugee parents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her
passion for Art started when she accompanied her mother, Nathalie Ilunga, to
her studio at the Bag Factory. From 7 years old Ilunga enjoyed painting, making
sculptures, and collecting interesting objects. Energetic and curious - stories
and ancient mythologies seemed to be the only way to grasp her attention and
she soon became known for her inquisitive, extroverted, and infectious energy.
Having studied art in high school, Ilunga went on to study Fine Arts at the University of Johannesburg. in her third year she was awarded the German archdiocese exposure trip to Stuttgart, this opportunity further inspired her keen eye for unique universal connections and ignited her passion for detailed paintings, sculptures and prints from the surrealist and renaissance epochs.
Art became her way of discovering more about her displaced refugee heritage and she soon realized her divergent nature. the need to explore her roots as well as the world around her became the source of her creative agency, in her fourth year she attended the ampersand fellowship in Manhattan New York. This influenced her artistic style as she attentively started merging and manipulating styles and techniques from surrealism with Afrofuturism.
Ilunga had tasked it upon herself to become a student of surrealism, Afrofuturism and pan Africanism. obsessed with the human experience she attempts to cure her own neurosis by studying Jungian psychology, Freudian theories of personality and different psychoanalysts’ theories, to better understand the collective human experience and develop her unique identity.
Ilunga's themes predominantly explore collective
consciousness. blackness, othering, archetypes, and various states of being.
She then blends and morph humanoid figures into different creatures in
alternative realities to create visually striking imagery. Ilunga lives and
works in Johannesburg as an Afrofuturist Surrealist.
