Baby Joachim Damana, the young ladies of Brazzaville

2023

26min

A precocious sculptor, famous at the age of 15, Joachim Badindamana was born in Congo Brazzaville in 1950. He began by working in wood in the style of Muta Mayola and very quickly won a first sculpture prize and then a scholarship. allowing him to study fine arts in Germany. He made his life between Berlin and Dusseldorf in the 1970s and then turned to creating monumental bronzes before returning to Congo at the invitation of President Sassou Ngesso in the early 1980s. Author of monumental bronze sculptures erected in the public squares of Brazzaville from the 1980s, his emblematic works of the Congolese capital disappeared during the events of 1997. The population recovered the bronze to make pots. For Gastineau Massamba, Les Demoiselles de Brazzaville is an important work for the history of contemporary Congolese sculpture.