M HKA, Antwerp

“A ratio is a relationship between two elements. Today, many kinds of relationships are at play. We can speak of the North-South relationship, the economic relationship, the balance of power, but also, possibly, of support — the relationship of backing or care.” 

Jean Katambayi Mukendi

In RATIO, artist Jean Katambayi Mukendi questions the dualities that shape our world: the natural and the artificial, growth and destruction, wanted and discarded materials, and the relationship between resources and power.

Katambayi’s practice is deeply informed by his training as an electrician and his sustained interest in engineering and mathematics. His work examines contemporary technological developments while simultaneously addressing the social, economic and ecological imbalances he identifies as consequences of global structural inequities in resource extraction and power distribution. For Katambayi, there is a direct correlation between who possesses literal power (energy) and the broader geopolitical axes along which power is distributed between countries. Copper is extracted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to power other nations, while he himself lives with recurring power outages.

RATIO features newly produced hybrid sculptures, large-scale paintings and a series of A1-format drawings. At the centre of the exhibition is mukendi kabongo Air hybird Wings RDC26FG, a large installation inspired by machines from the fields of aviation, agriculture, and the military. Katambayi merges and combines components from these machines to imaginatively multiply their functions, exploring the ecological potential of technology through processes of recycling and repurposing. Among the four large scale paintings, Divina resembles a printed circuit board, a structure fundamental to nearly all electronic devices. Its title is an anagram of Nvidia, a leading US-based technology company specialising in AI computing hardware. Combining technical schematics with spiritual symbolism — most notably the hand at its centre, evoking the divine — the painting draws attention to the extraction of raw materials such as copper and cobalt in the DRC, materials essential to global electronics production. With Vita, Katambayi reflects on the social fractures shaped by competition over natural resources and living systems within a capitalist order struggling to find equilibrium. The painting evokes tectonic, floral and faunal forms to suggest nature’s own capacity for balance, structured through invisible axes governing the Earth. Growing from geometric figures and lines, the artist’s drawings form speculative reflections on human experience in relation to ecology, technology and the economy, ranging from the impact of climate on human routines to cryptocurrency.

RATIO is Mukendi’s first solo museum presentation and is part of M HKA’s IN SITU programme, dedicated to newly commissioned work.

*The exhibition is curated by Emma Enderby and Linda Franken (KW) and Anne-Claire Schmitz (Muhka), and co-produced with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. The works were constructed during a production residency held in Berlin in autumn 2025, using locally sourced recycled materials.

*A first iteration of RATIO is presented at KW from 21 February to 10 May 2026.

*The exhibition is accompanied by Circuits, Mukendi’s first monographic publication, co-edited by Leuven University Press, the Contemporary Art Committee KU Leuven, KW and M HKA.