Patrick Bongoy is an internationally renowned artist based in Cape Town. The artist’s background in fashion design informs his myriad technical approaches alongside his references to traditional basketry. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts, Kinshasa, DRC. Solo exhibitions include: Ebbing, Spier Wine Farm, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2024; Unseen Dimensions of the Known, Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa, 2022 and Weaving the Entropy, at THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE, Lisbon, Portugal, 2021. In 2024, Bongoy was shortlisted for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. His work has also been exhibited in multiple group exhibitions and projects, including Intersections at THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE, 2020 and Discourses of Decoloniality, curated by Graça Rodrigues and Sónia Ribeiro, Lisbon, 2020.
Bongoy has described rubber as akin to ‘dead material’. Through his practice, its torpor becomes expressive. Sourced from recycled tyre tubing, Bongoy cuts his rubber into vast quantities of strips. Weaving and stitching these into large-scale tapestries and sculptures, often combining hessian stacking and other waste textiles. Here, synthetic materials gather, resembling thresholds or chambers. Universal themes around presence and expression also combine with historical specificity in Bongoy’s work. The lasting impact of colonialism in his homeland of DRC runs through the artist’s thought and practice. Rubber, as it’s engaged by Bongoy, is acknowledged as having an enduring relationship to pollution, physical labour and erosion. Yet, through his work, such material becomes imbued with resistance and other-worldly presence.