Lydia Schellhammer

Born in Radolfzell/Germany in 1992.

Lydia Schellhammer studied extracurricular art pedagogy at the University of Augsburg/Germany from 2013 to 2017, and painting at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa/DRC with Prof. Dr Henri Kalama from 2016 to 2017.

She has been collaborating with Christ Mukenge as half of the duo Mukenge/Schellhammer since 2016.
The artists expose themselves to transcontinental conflict situations within rapidly changing social systems and respond to their experiences and investigations in an ongoing artistic process that includes analogue and digital paintings and drawings, experimental videos, urban interventions and performances. Their specific collaboration makes it difficult to categorize and classify them according to binary notions of cultural context, artistic traditions and geographical origin.

The duo has recently showcased works at the Plateforme Contemporaine and the Institut Français Kinshasa (2019) and Galerie Noah Augsburg (2020). Their work also featured in the pan-African video festival »BodaBoda Lounge» (2020) in 20 countries on the African continent and appeared at City Salts Basel/Switzerland, the Guggenheim Museum New York//USA (2020/2021) and the National Museum of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2021), among others. In 2019, the duo created the project »Laboratoire Kontempo«, a transdisciplinary and experimental platform for contemporary art in Kinshasa.

Mukenge/Schellhammer have collaborated with Gintersdorfer/Klaßen and Gintersdorfer/Yao on projects at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin/Germany, in the context of the exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster/Germany, at MC93, Paris/France, and at Theater Kampnagel, Hamburg/Germany.