Art from the earth: Khabula Lango confronts Congo’s cobalt wars and global silence

From childhood, Khabula Lango was always drawing. He had no formal training in art, but creativity came instinctively. Growing up in the mining town of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he used nature as his canvas and the earth itself as his medium. The stories that shaped his youth — minerals, conflict and survival — became the foundation of his artistic voice.

His current exhibition, Matières Voyageuses, showing at Alliance Française, centres on sustainability in art. By transforming recycled and abandoned materials into textured work, Lango constructs narratives of struggle, exploitation, and rebirth.